I’d be flabbergasted if this mission launched in February! Nasa plans first crewed Moon mission in 50 years for February 2026 www.bbc.com/news/article...

I am once again exiled from the living room on a Saturday night now that dancing show, the one that is basically the same every single year, is back on the box…

House of Commons briefing: “the simplest way of improving the financial position of the UK’s higher education providers would be to raise the tuition fee cap for undergraduate students <ugh no thanks> and/or increase the amount of funding provided through teaching and research grants”. <- YES!

We bail out banks. We bail the steel industry, the water industry, airlines and hotels. The UK higher education sector directly employs nearly 1M people. It's the envy of the world and benefits almost every area of UK society. But apparently it can go burn.

Here is the IoP report www.iop.org/about/news/q...

This is worrying. Physics graduates are vital for so many of the technologies we rely upon for prosperity and defence. Yet the Govt talks of a 3% increase in research budgets over 5 years! A renewed approach to sustainable university funding is urgently needed. www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Oliver King explores aurora of Jupiter with JWST 🔭 at #epscdps2025 - these pix do not do justice to the remarkable movies of time-variable auroral activity nor to the astonishing quality of the H3+ spectra with JWST

A reminder that I’m hiring! The deadline for applications is 14 Sept.

Quite a crowd gathered at the top of Brooke Hill near Oakham, but all we can see is a cloud bank 😣 #GrrEnglishWeather

Sometimes when doing breakfast I am reminded of an Australian beer. Aussies supposedly wouldn’t give two hoots for anything else

There's a decent chance of seeing the aurora tonight - it may be visible as far south as the Midlands (perhaps even further south) 🌃

Leaving aside the implied absurdity that only 7 research projects (mostly in the south of England) are worthy of funding, I worry that such Euromillions-style funding schemes (£££Ms for a handful of projects) risk being a net drain on science productivity. ✉️ calculation… 1/n

Reminder that ESA's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) flies past Venus this weekend. The spacecraft was designed to feel at home in the cold, dark environment of the Jupiter system, and it is too hot at Venus to turn the cameras on. Pics or it didn’t happen? You’ll have to trust us on this one.

These huge awards (rather than many more smaller awards) are predicated on the idea that a panel can foresee -- with high accuracy -- which projects will return the highest science and impact yield. There's zero evidence for that.

Leaving aside the implied absurdity that only 7 research projects (mostly in the south of England) are worthy of funding, I worry that such Euromillions-style funding schemes (£££Ms for a handful of projects) risk being a net drain on science productivity. ✉️ calculation… 1/n

Half of the RS Discovery Fellowships went to the golden triangle (well, 2/3 of it)… and three ended up at Oxford. This is my shocked face -> 😐

Apropos my previous post, shifts in language can throw up gems. Reading Patrick O’Brien’s The Fortunes of War, a tale of adventure and espionage on the high seas, we have “I am exceedingly happy to meet Dr Maturin…, sir, it is to you that we are indebted for the splendid monography on boobies.”

When did “student” replace “pupil” for school attendees? It seems an unnecessary and potentially confusing shift in terminology - we had two perfectly good words to describe people at very different stages of life and learning.

My phone isn’t going to do it anywhere near justice, but if it’s clear where you are in the UK right now, go outside and check out the moon, low in the SE looking resplendent!

I think we should put a 50% tariff on all US goods until they learn that tea requires boiling water.

Images from Palomar at 2 different infrared wavelengths last night - one that Saturn's methane atmosphere absorbs, and one the it reflects! (The faint point source is the moon, Tethys!) Taken by David Ciardi, Catherine Clark, @lowbacca.bsky.social and Miranda Felsmann; animated by me (and ezgif!)

Having recently spent a few weeks in the US, I’ve needed to explain several times to a sceptical audience why first class cricket is an exciting game… Precisely because it can be like this! #ENGvIND 🥵

Fancy joining the #PlanetaryScience team at @uniofleicester.bsky.social? We have 3 postdoc positions open: Mercury with BepiColombo with Emma Bunce; the Martian ionosphere with @bscredrojo.bsky.social; or Jupiter's auroral lightshow with @jnic.bsky.social. Visit jobs.le.ac.uk and search "Physics"

Blimey. Earthquake caused waves that shook the ionosphere on the edge of space.

Oh wow! This is great news, for Michele and astronomy in the UK!

Would you like to analyse these JWST and HST observations of Jupiter’s auroras? What about *brand new ones* to be taken in the next observing cycle? Then apply for my new STFC-funded Postdoc position! Advert closes midnight 14 Sep. jobs.le.ac.uk/vacancies/11... #jobs #astro #jwst #jupiter #aurora

Sol 4608 (yestersol) MAHLI of a particularly interesting rock (to me, at least) dubbed “Paposo” taken by the Mars Curiosity Rover. flic.kr/p/2rizJ2D

Looks like some ToO programs might be about to be triggered…

Interstellar object candidate #A11pl3Z from Deep Random Survey, Chile (obs code X09). No obvious tail, will have to do a stack to see if there's anything... Date is 2025 Jul 2 00:52:39 UTC.

We have another visitor from the stars. 🔭🧪

Fascinating! All the more reason to search for signatures of the magnetic fields of exoplanets

Mysterious link between Earth’s magnetism and oxygen baffles scientists www.nature.com/articles/d41...

International or UK researcher looking for a #fellowship in #astrophysics, #planetaryscience, and/or space instrumentation? Leicester @physicsuol.bsky.social is inviting expressions of interest for this year's STFC 5-year Ernest Rutherford Fellowships (deadline June 26th): le.ac.uk/physics/rese...

There's a fast CME heading into some fast solar wind and some pre-existing slower CMEs. We're currently putting arrival at noon-to-midnight tomorrow, but this forecast may change as more observations become available. Updates here: research.reading.ac.uk/met-spate/hu...

🔭 Herbig-Haro 24 Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage (STScI / AURA) / Hubble-Europe Collaboration Acknowledgment: D. Padgett (GSFC), T. Megeath (University of Toledo), B. Reipurth (University of Hawaii) apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25052...

Astonishing new videos of the Sun show coronal "rain" in (pink-tinted) hydrogen-alpha light. Obtained with advanced adaptive optics research supported by NSF, the National Solar Observatory, and New Jersey Institute of Technology. Details and more videos in the link in the first comment below.

🔭🧪 Congratulations to Prof Nial Tanvir who has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society for his work studying gamma-ray bursts, the most violent explosions we've ever seen. le.ac.uk/news/2025/ma...

Jupiter’s auroras visualise where energetic particles hit its upper atmosphere. A paper in Nature Communications shows JWST observations of Jupiter’s infrared auroras, revealing highly variable features and new auroral phenomena. go.nature.com/4dcOsna 🔭 🧪

We're advertising a 3-year postdoc post on long-term solar activity reconstructions, using data from tree rings, ice sheets, sunspots and spacecraft. Closing date: 4 June. jobs.reading.ac.uk/Job/JobDetai...

According to my children, in this I “ate and left no crumbs”. I’m assuming that’s… good???

We made John Craven's Newsround, which has made my day!

For anyone interested in digging into the details a little more, the paper itself can be read here: rdcu.be/elEmL. It's Open Access, so free to read!

A nice write-up about our observations: Stunning video reveals Jupiter's roiling auroras. See it now. mashable.com/article/jame...

In other news I have been learning to play a bit of Pink Floyd - wow Dave Gilmour bends the strings a lot, he must have steel fingertips!

Webb is astonishing, designed to observe the most distant galaxies, yet it can also yield exquisite movies of nearby planets. But they're not just pretty - they answer questions and pose more about Jupiter's auroral processes. I talk a bit about our observations here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2T8...

Next time anyone searches for auroras on #Jupiter, it's going to be this astonishing movie from JWST that shows up. Kudos to @jnic.bsky.social for leading this work, it was great to hear the gasps of amazement from across the office when these first landed. Another great #JWSTSolSys result.

Whoa. #JWST 🔭 sees aurorae on Jupiter in infrared light, and it is STUNNING! Check out the video!

Jupiter's aurora is fizzing and popping with light faster than anyone expected. Our Prof Jonathan Nichols lead work that discovered this using JWST and the Hubble Space Telescope. www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2T8...

Almost a year on from last year’s terrestrial auroral display, here’s what they look like on Jupiter, as viewed by the James Webb Space Telescope