Mood indigo

Roll camera at the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), Chile. At high altitude with supplemental oxygen, the maintenance crew keeps 66 antennas operating as one system. Every dataset depends on the global network and the teams on the ground. #M87MOVIE

Why go to a laser show if you work at our VLT? 😎 The lasers create ‘fake stars’ used to measure the turbulence in the atmosphere. Observations are then corrected in real time with a special deformable mirror to obtain sharp images from the ground. 🔭 #flashback 📷 M. Lefranc/ESO

From @noirlabastro.bsky.social: Two telescopes, one mission to explore the sky. From Hawai‘i to Chile, the International Gemini Observatory, operated by NSF NOIRLab, can see almost the entire sky. #astronomy 📷: Gemini/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/Kwon O Chul (Gemini South, on left) P. Horálek (Gemini North)

Roughly 6 weeks after $Sunset and we are in the darkest time of winter, here is a photo from winterover Michel of a nearly fully moon over the SPT this weekend! Observing weather has been great recently, with consistently dry clear skies #southpole #Antarctica @NSF @doescience

#MayThe4th Happy Star Wars Day – May the Force be with you! ✨ Looking for a real-life galaxy far, far away? The Zweibrücken Observatory has you covered! 🔭 #StarWarsDay 📷 www.zeit.de/zett/2019-03...

This image was captured below one of our VLT's Unit Telescopes, around the basis of the enclosure. The circular openings are far more than aesthetic, serving a very practical purpose. Discover which one: https://www.eso.org/public/images/potw2618a/ 🔭 🧪 📷 ESO/L. Sbordone

The Roman Baths in, uh, Bath is a very cool piece of history. I recommend drinking some of the hot springs water from the tap near the exit. Is it good? Absolutely not, but it's a tangible link to an ancient time.

A pic from Site Manager Gavin Reynolds from a couple weeks ago during a full moon. View is from a back stairwell on station looking towards the station power plant, which is generating the smoke plume and about 30-feet below the main station. @NSF @doescience #Antarctica

Staying at the liminal space hotel🚪

If Run-DMC was English

Our Newsletter #5 is out 🌿 Bonfires, ticks, Sámi law, energy myths in Shetland — and something you didn't know about the colour green. shorturl.at/lHh8W

From @noirlabastro.bsky.social: a longtime resident of Cerro Pachón in Chile. While they are not part of the operations team, they are well-adapted to high-altitude environments and very comfortable around world-class astronomy. #astronomy 📷: Gemini/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA

Hello sheep with lambs 🐑

Upside down snuggle kisses 💗 Coffee

Passing through

Now filming on location at the top of the world… The Greenland Telescope is helping capture the first-ever movie of supermassive black hole Messier 87. On-site cast (Image #2, L → R): Minchul Kam & Keiichi Asada Remote observing stations: -ASIAA -CfA | Harvard & Smithsonian #M87MOVIE

Chasing sunsets!  Over 70% complete, our ELT is glowing in the sunset light of the Chilean Atacama Desert, surrounded by massive cranes hard at work to get this telescope up and running. 1/2 🔭 🧪 📷 ESO/G. Vecchia

Sun bow 🌞

I'd like to point out how great that photo of the shaking dog is👏👏👏

PSA: The launch scene in "Contact" is still one of the best in the history of cinema with everything (especially the score) being perfect. www.youtube.com/watch?v=67su...

Last week, severe storms battered Maunakea, pushing Gemini North to its limits—icing, moisture, and extreme winds disrupting operations. After it all, @noirlabastro.bsky.social teams have worked hard to push the telescope back into operation. #astronomy

Long observing nights have their pros... A starry night over the Northern Extended Millimeter Array (NOEMA) in the French Alps as the #M87MOVIE campaign unfolds! Photo credit: M. Berenger, IRAM-NOEMA

One of these shows up as a plot device in the 1953 movie, 'The Magnetic Monster'.

Getting dark quickly at the #southpole now, roughly 1-month past #Sunset, and our winterovers are starting to see some signs of Southern Lights! Below is a pic from Michel using his iphone walking back from the telescope this week. @NSF @doescience

Landback isn’t a slogan; it's the solution to some of the biggest challenges we face as a society, from climate to racial justice to food sovereignty. Landback means reclaiming our power collectively to build the future that our great-grandchildren can thrive in.

The Milky Way, seen from Cerro Pachón in Chile (with a meteor passing through!). Behind the Gemini South telescope, you can see NSF–DOE @vrubinobs.bsky.social #astronomy Credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/P. Horálek

Two rainbows ten days apart in the same spot!

Join us tomorrow at 7pm for the online premiere of Guardians of the Waters. This short documentary follows the Chinook Indian Nation and their work in the Necanicum Watershed, grounded in care, responsibility, and sovereignty. Watch with us. www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeO6...

Welcome, ORCA38! 🎉 After 4 days of flawless operations at sea, the ORCA detector just got a major upgrade: 5 new detection units installed in the deep sea, bringing the total to 38. A huge thank you to everyone involved, offshore crews and onshore teams, for making this great step forward possible!

Our La Silla Observatory is a front-row seat to the Milky Way! In the foreground we see the Danish 1.54-metre telescope, followed by the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope and our New Technology Telescope in the background. Read more: https://www.eso.org/public/images/potw2214a/

Shout out to the 'ugly' pollinators that are doing essential work but don't make it onto memes, murals and tote bags. Photo by Merlin D. Tuttle, Bat Conservation International

A cool part of Green Bank Observatory's history is that instead of demolishing homes that were on the land purchased for the facility, they were moved to other nearby locations and sold to new owners. Done today they'd just be debris in a landfill. Photos by NRAO/AUI/NSF

Spotted: curious locals on Cerro Pachón 👀🦊 At NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory, it’s not just about galaxies and asteroids. Sometimes foxes wander by to check out what we’re up to, reminding us we’re part of a bigger ecosystem right here on Earth. Science is wild. Sometimes literally! 🔭🧪

It's the anniversary of the Dwingeloo radio telescope: it was opened by Queen Juliana on 17 april 1956. We celebrated this during the lunch break by reenacting the opening ceremony, with Roelie as her majesty and Michel as Professor Oort. We used the original button, which we recently rediscovered.

Snow in Hawaiʻi? That’s showbiz, baby. On Maunakea, Submillimeter Array (SMA) antennas are rolling for the M87* MOVIE campaign- working through ice, wind, and snow. Mahalo to our Hawaiʻi colleagues braving the elements! Photo credit: Leslie Shirkey #M87MOVIE

Lights, camera… submillimeter action. Image 1: The James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) on Maunakea, observing for the M87* MOVIE campaign. Image 2: The observing team on opening night- running the show behind the scenes. #M87MOVIE

Hello ladybug! 🐞

From @noirlabastro.bsky.social: A fireball over Hawai‘i: Captured above Gemini North telescope, a blazing rock streaks through Earth’s atmosphere, lighting up the sky in a fleeting moment. This view comes from the Gemini North Cloudcam. #astronomy 📷: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA

Pic by Winterover Anjali of SPT, about 2-weeks after #Sunset, even with the Sun several degrees below the horizon there is still a light glow in its direction. Great observing weather recently too, as you can also see in this pic. #Antarctica @NSF @doescience

Taxi, please! 🚖👋 ALMA consists of 66 antennas in the Chilean Andes. They can be rearranged in different layouts, ranging from 150m to 16km apart, to discern different levels of detail.  This is where the yellow trucks come in useful. More: https://www.eso.org/public/images/potw2615a/ 🔭 🧪

Today's entertainment, because we was jammin'.

April is finally here, and at OCEH, we’re mostly just excited to get outside 🌸 The sun is out in Oslo, so we’ve planned a month that gets us moving — from walking seminars about diseases to a social where we're literally "Waking Up the Trees."

Another pic by winterover Michel. Taken from the station looking SPT and DSL, which are 1-km away, and small in the distance roughly below the nearly full moon. The view shows how featureless the landscape is at #southpole. #Antarctica @NSF @doescience

The South Pole ceremonial marker, pic by winterover Michel. Still bright enough to see a little bit of Sun on the horizon in the reflection off the marker, but the moon is the brightest thing in the sky right now. #Antarctica @NSF @doescience

Last fall this butterfly flew all the way to Mexico to overwinter in mountain fir forests. She just flew north again for thousands of miles, dodging cars, predators and pesticides, and hopefully just laid her eggs on milkweed, hope for the first summer monarch generation @biologicaldiversity.org

A three hour long photographic sequence shows the path of a lunar eclipse over our VLT in 2019. As the Moon moves into the Earth’s shadow, it becomes darker and acquires a red hue. Discover what causes this reddening: https://www.eso.org/public/images/potw2304a/  🔭 #flashback

The closer Artemis II gets to the Moon, the more the crew should be on guard against lunar civilizations that want to steal their spacecraft.

Hello turtles :)