Finished my Catmas Chaos puzzle with Bea’s help

You know what to do

Happy Fourth Launchiversary, JWST! And thanks to Richard Panek for this lovely mini review of JWST science… time.com/7342406/jame...

Happy holidays all!

The sky above Rubin is giving some serious festive-season glitter vibes ✨ NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory's dome is coated with aluminum, which reflects sunlight during the day and cools off slowly at night. This prevents thermal turbulence near the telescope, keeping images crisp. 🔭🧪

👇🏻 this

Europa Clipper observations of comet #I/ATLAS released - Clipper had a unique vantage point to study the comet's tails

Should be a great talk!

Yesterday’s official opening of the new “Windows on the Universe” outreach center on Kitt Peak near Tucson AZ noirlab.edu/public/news/...

HiRISE is an amazing camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) that has been mapping the surface of Mars since MRO arrived at Mars in 2006! That's two decades and 100,000 images of stunning views of the Red Planet.

You've heard of elf on a shelf. Now get ready for... 🔭

New results from the International Gemini Observatory 🔭 on interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS, in which it continues to do fun cometary things! The new spectrum confirms 3I/ATLAS is actively emitting CN, C3, and C2 gases, plus a visible dust fan. www.astronomerstelegram.org?read=17503

Amazing 3-D effect in this JWST image of the tip of HH 49/50. The dusty tip of this nearby "cosmic tornado" is so thin that it allows a more distant spiral galaxy to shine through (science.nasa.gov/asset/webb/h...) More info in this Sci-Am story: www.scientificamerican.com/article/cosm...

As an astronomer I get asked a lot what kind of telescope 🔭 so-and-so should get for themselves or their [spouse/kid/etc]. I’m clueless. I use BIG telescopes and have never purchased one in my life. But @philplait.bsky.social knows! Thx, Phil! badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/ban-275-te...

A “Dressbarn” in Muncie, Indiana had been named the inaugural winner of the FIFA “Most Super Glamorous Parisian Haute Couture” award.

Bad framing: ACIP voted to scrap the universal hepatitis B vaccine recommendation for newborns. Accurate framing: Anti-vax conspiracy theorists appointed to ACIP by Robert Kennedy Jr., who made a fortune as an anti-vax profiteer, voted to expose babies to a preventable, incurable, deadly illness.

Fun. I think this makes it a total of 12 main-belt comets . . .

Today’s “CDC” apparently stands for Center for Disease Continuity. Sad. I miss the old CDC that used fact-based evidence to try to control disease and protect helpless newborns from entirely preventable illness.

This is great news that Roman Space Telescope 🚀🔭 is functionally completed! Still some testing, and then Roman will move the Kennedy to be mated with the launch vehicle. Roman is a wide-field Hubble - exciting!

I have eaten the planets that were in the inner solar system and which you were probably saving for living on Forgive me they were delicious so crunchy and so warm

Happy Thanksgiving :) @desisurvey.bsky.social

Since the CDC site can no longer be trusted, what are your alternative go-to sites for science-based medical information. Mayo Clinic? Cleveland Clinic? JHU medical? European sites? Thoughts welcome.

Very excited to share the NASA/ESA/STScI press release of our team's work on Apep! It's a terrific writeup, complete with a brand new beautiful visualisation of the nebula geometry. 1/? ⚛️🔭🧪 science.nasa.gov/missions/web...

Here are the #I/ATLAS releases from varied NASA/ESA missions. Having worked with such telescope & spacecraft data for 40 years, my perspective is: no surprises. It's a comet; its differences from Solar System comets are intriguing but every comet is different! science.nasa.gov/solar-system...

NASA says "3I/ATLAS is a comet" surprising no one except maybe one guy (who likely still won't accept the conclusions) - press conference still ongoing if you want to tune in

Three #NASAWebb discoveries in ONE! Webb shows there are FOUR dust shells (only one was previously seen), allowing researchers to narrow the stars’ orbit of one another to a LONG 190 years. Plus, they confirmed a third star is part of the “party”: https://bit.ly/4n1tpas 🔭 🧪

My most important service to solar system planetary science was being a part of the Science Definition Team (SDT), nearly a decade ago, that made the science case for an NASA Ice Giants Orbiter and Entry Probe. Check out our 2017 document: arxiv.org/abs/2511.13946

From @noirlabastro.bsky.social: And here it is… your favorite Image of the Week of 2025! This wonderful Gemini South image topped our charts on social media by capturing a meteor passing by like no other. #astronomy 📸: @GeminiObs/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/P. Horálek

Lunar firefly

Now that the US gov is open, 3I/ATLAS images from the Mars-orbiting HiRISE camera will soon be out. My money is on them looking just like regular cometary images. If that disappoints you, scan the HiRISE catalog for spectacular Mars images like this one uahirise.org/catalog/

The brightest point in this Hubble image of FS Tau is a binary system, consisting of two stars orbiting each other, that have cleared much of its surrounding dust and gas away. Credit: NASA, ESA, K. Stapelfeldt (NASA JPL), G. Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America). 🔭 🧪

JWST's recent Cycle 5 call garnered 2,935 proposals (requests to use this amazing telescope and its data 🔭), breaking the record that it set last year! The proposals represent 7,509 unique investigators over a range of career stages, and come from institutions in 59 countries and 47 U.S. states!

Happy to share that the "What's Your Map?" podcast just won a Gold Award for Best Education Podcast from the British Podcast Awards 2025 - you can find a link to the podcast I participated in about celestial maps via: oculi-mundi.com/heidi-hammel

🔭

I just saw a clickbait article about how "AI helped fix JWST's blurry vision." For the record, JWST's vision is just fine! This article is talking about a quirky mode of one instrument that doesn't work well and which few astronomers use anyway. JWST is doing great - at the peak of its game!

RIP Donna www.rollingstone.com/music/music-...

We already recovered it with the Lowell Discovery Telescope this morning: cometary.org/@qicheng/sta...

I recommend this article by @meghanbartels.bsky.social and @leebillings.bsky.social for folks who are looking for *factual* information about why 3I/ATLAS is of interest to planetary astronomers: www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-...

Update on the utterly normal activity of comet 3I/ATLAS: the lack of shenanigans continues - this is just a comet doing its comet thing.

3I/ATLAS is behaving just as a comet should. No shenanigans. Looking forward to the possibility of JUICE (a European spacecraft heading eventually to Jupiter) observing this object in the coming weeks!

Perhaps one of the more important posts you'll read in a long time if you care about the future of space exploration. My (biased) tl;dr = the history of spaceflight suggests that gutting NASA tech dev (inc its science side!) may actually gut the future of the "commercial" space programs as well

For my Hawai'i based friends - public talk at the @keckobservatory.bsky.social HQ in Waimea. John Grunsfeld, astronaut and Hubble repairman, will discuss "From the Hubble Space Telescope to the Habitable Worlds Observatory."

What Andy said!

Another STUNNING image from JWST, this time of the Red Spider Nebula—the vast, wispy, gaseous remains of a now-dead star, the white dwarf core still glowing in the centre.

Very cool image of Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) shows a reddish dust tail spiraling around the blue gas tail

Fresh JWST view of Uranus taken Oct 6 2025 with NIRCam. Full size & more info: flic.kr/p/2rByidu 🔭🧪 Credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/Andrea Luck CC BY Proposal PI: Varun Bajaj Proposal ID: 8975 Filters: F150W2-F162M, F410M

Doing traffic duty with my assistant (son26) for the neighborhood’s Annual Halloween Parade

note to self: bring a trash bag (don't want "No Kings" to look like Charlie Kirk's funeral)

Double-vaxxed as of today: "strong" flu and covid. My immune system is ready to rumble!