A bit of a different take on the amazing Artemis II launch footage. Here I stitched clips from the four Solar Array Wing Cameras to make this panoramic video. This is during the later part of the Core Stage burn until MECO and stage separation, sped up to 10x. 🔭🧪 #Artemis

Are you an astronomy graduate student who’s interested in science communication? Apply for the AAS Media Fellowship by June 26! aasnova.org/2026/04/08/a... 🔭 @aas.org

Indianapolis roundup! I was so lucky to go to the Final Four, and watch our awesome basketball team play against Michigan! While the game didn't go quite our way, I had an incredible time talking with fans, media, and fellow Wildcats about both Artemis and athletics! They'll get it next year!!

More context on this #Artemis II image: * This is the night side, lit by moonlight. You can see city lights in Spain & Portugal, & a sliver of day at lower right * The Sun is entirely behind Earth, which makes it a kind of solar eclipse, but w/ Earth doing the eclipsing instead of the Moon: ☀️🌍🚀🌕

Short video showing them cruising across the night sky!

Hot off the press! A shot of our four brave astronauts on the Artemis II mission heading for the moon! They are currently in the constellation Libra moving at about 5400MPH! Shot from my observatory in Tucson AZ. 2026/04/03 8:10UT Sky motion: 36.7"/min at PA 122.9 🔭 #astronomy #artemisII #nasa

to the moon.

So excited to change my slides for class tomorrow to talk about the Artemis II launch!!!!! MORE MISSIONS PLEASE!! 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀

Only 24 people in history have ever seen the full sphere of Earth in space. 🌏🧑‍🚀🧪 @erikahamden.bsky.social explains that this rare view is only possible when you travel far beyond low-Earth orbit. #Space #Artemis #Moon #Astronaut #Earth #Science

This new #JWST image of Saturn is AWESOME

The NASA Hubble Fellowship Program named 24 postdoctoral scientists to its 2026 class. These researchers will investigate how the universe functions, seek to understand how the universe evolved, and try to answer the question: Are we alone? ➡️ https://news.stsci.edu/4t5pxc1

Did you know the Sun is only 20 galactic years old? ☀️ 🧪 This project is part of IF/THEN®, an initiative of Lyda Hill Philanthropies. #Space #Science #WomeninSTEM #Universe #Astronomy

Big iced tea matchup on Friday

Thinking about the past? Astronomers do too! #NASAWebb imaged irregular galaxy NGC 6822, which is thought to be similar to those in the early universe. NGC 6822 could help scientists learn about the life cycles of stars and dust. Credit: ESA, NASA, CSA, M. Meixner.

Astronomers continue to puzzle over asteroid 16 Psyche's formation. LPL grad student Namya Baijal and team have predictions to help interpret the data from NASA's Psyche mission when it arrives in 2029. The predictions may help settle the mystery of Psyche's makeup. news.arizona.edu/news/large-c...

If you are not a (professional or amateur) astronomer and you ask me what some bright point in the sky is, I’ll probably answer “Jupiter”. Neither of us will know if I’m right, but we’ll both be satisfied

astronomy is so funny because it's this fairly niche interest for a small community of nerds and also it's 99.9999% of everything that exists

arXiv is being spun out from Cornell University and is looking for an inaugural CEO. jobs.chronicle.com/job/37961678...

FYI, these are all headed to their new home with @erikahamden.bsky.social! 🤩 Get your own spacey book collection here: www.asplibraryproject.com #ASPLibrary 🧪 📚 🔭 #BookSky 📚💙

ICYMI: Astronomers are losing their minds over #NASAWebb’s latest images of the very brainy-looking nebula PMR 1. Its distinctive form is the result of a dying star expelling its outer layers: https://science.nasa.gov/missions/webb/nasas-webb-examines-cranium-nebula/ 🔭 🧪

Reporting live from Galaxy Slam. Marcia Rieke has already figured out and deployed the flashing light spirit towels we all got.

Five years ago today! We imaged Perseverance on its descent to Mars, under fairly challenging conditions but we did it because we have a kickass team. www.uahirise.org/ESP_068281_9...

Our Sun is a “lonely” star, and that makes it unusual in a universe where most stars have companions. ☀️🧪

Galaxy Slam trading cards are in. Better stock up on Ty’s for selling on eBay after the HWO life detection discovery in 2041.

Hey y'all. I'm hiring. Are you interested in building instruments for astrophysics? wd5.myworkdaysite.com/recruiting/u...

Astrophysicist @erikahamden.bsky.social‬ breaks down how our galaxy alone contains hundreds of billions of stars, and the observable universe holds hundreds of billions of galaxies spread across an unimaginably vast volume of space.

The universe is packed with galaxies, but still most of it is astonishingly empty. 🌌

Saturn. By Cassini.

Kudos to LPL's Head and Director, Dr. Mark Marley, for being awarded the 2026 Lecar Prize! science.arizona.edu/news/lunar-p...

You HAVE to watch this 55 second video. When the muscle of University sports marketing meets the expertise of space science. Features LPL's Ty Robinson and Kris Klein. youtu.be/fhxf4XpescY

If you stood on the Moon, you’d see Earth frozen in one spot in the sky. 🌍🧪 Astrophysicist @erikahamden.bsky.social‬ unpacks how tidal locking, a gravitational effect that causes the Moon to rotate once for every orbit around Earth, keeps one side of the Moon permanently facing us.

What happens when the universe runs out of stars? ⭐️🧪 Astrophysicist @erikahamden.bsky.social walks us through the far future of the cosmos, where expansion pushes galaxies apart and star formation comes to a halt. The stars that do exist will eventually burn out, leaving behind black holes.

Our NASA’s Pandora space telescope is on orbit!! Congrats to the team and NASA, LSP, SpaceX, and everyone who helped to get to this exciting point! What will Pandora do and why is it important for exoplanet science? Read my short article on this: theconversation.com/nasas-pandor...

Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system, but did you know it nearly became a star? ⭐️🧪 Astrophysicist @erikahamden.bsky.social explains that while Jupiter is massive, it would need to be about 80 times more massive to initiate nuclear fusion and become even a small star.

There’s a cloud in space with 140 trillion times more water than Earth 🌧️ Astrophysicist @erikahamden.bsky.social explains how astronomers discovered a massive water vapor cloud near a black hole. The extreme heat from the activity of the black hole keeps it in vapor form, making it easier to spot.

Want to slow down aging? 🕒🧪 Astrophysicist @erikahamden.bsky.social breaks down a mind-bending reality of motion and time: the faster you move through space, especially near the speed of light, the slower you experience time.

NASA revealed they found some of the building blocks of life in a sample brought back from an asteroid (on a University of Arizona-led mission, by the way). It raises some big questions about whether there’s other life somewhere out there in the universe. According to my math, probably.

The stanning of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS in this account continues Image credit: Victor Sabet, Julien De Winter

The main problem is that space telescopes in Low Earth Orbit share the similar orbits as the telecommunication satellites. Here we show a simplified representation of the increased orbital crowding between 1958 (Sputnik) and the projected satellite population at the end of the next decade.

It's that time of year again

From Ansh Gupta: Astronomers have spent decades searching for seeds of the earliest black holes. Did JWST just glimpse the very first ones? ⚛️🔭☄🧪 astrobites.org/2025/11/27/g...

The dinosaur extinction event is my personal unit for getting a sense of astronomical time. For instance, if the local bubble formed 1-2 Myr ago, that’s After Dinos = very recent!!

What does a giant cloud in space smell like? 🍓✨ Astrophysicist @erikahamden.bsky.social explains how a giant cloud called Sagittarius B2 smells like raspberries because it’s full of ethyl formate, the molecule behind the fruit’s sweet scent. Astronomers were searching for amino acids.

How heavy is a teaspoon of neutron star? 🥄💥🧪 Astrophysicist @erikahamden.bsky.social explains how this stellar core remnant weighs more than a mountain because it’s packed with neutrons under crushing gravity. Watch the video here:

i’m excited to announce that i am hiring (again)! i am looking for a postdoc in computational astrophysics that’s excited about models of stellar transients and multi-messenger astronomy to join my group (star stuff @ steward) at @uarizona.bsky.social! apply here ✨💥: aas.org/jobregister/...

This weekend I read that the entire Breaking Bad franchise is estimated to have had $385M in economic impact for the state of NM and this is celebrated by a statue at the ABQ convention center. Meanwhile University of Arizona space science has an economic impact of $560M on our state every year.

Some stars don’t just shine, they steal. 🧛⭐️🧪 @erikahamden.bsky.social ‬dives into how, in close binary star systems, one star nearing the end of its life can expand so much that its outer layers are pulled in by the gravity of its companion.

You might’ve heard the news: SpaceX just passed 10,000 Starlink satellites launched. And that number is already old news, as there’s now a new Starlink batch launched every other day. Here’s what that looks like in a short animation of Comet A6 Lemmon courtesy of Michael Jaeger:

A part of you has existed since almost the moment of creation. 🌌💥🧪 Astrophysicist @erikahamden.bsky.social ‬breaks down how the hydrogen in your body was formed within the first 20 minutes after the Big Bang.

#NASAWebb provides high-resolution details of Herbig-Haro 49/50—an outflow from a nearby still-forming star and background galaxies. Webb reveals the fuzzy object at the tip of the outflow in the Spitzer image is actually a distant spiral galaxy: https://bit.ly/4mXuQHW 🔭 🧪