Peace and love from planet Mars (Curiosity NavCam imaging from the afternoon of Sol 4623, August 8, 2025)

Would like to point out there's a section in the EO issued yesterday that might outright bar trans people from obtaining federal research grants. www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

Spotted a cool rock on Mars on Wednesday

Today’s moment awe: this actual photograph of Mars. This one particularly moves me. Somehow, the atmosphere and play of light and shadow on the surface make it look *real*. Like a place I could go to. And stand on. Not an abstract concept seen only through the eyes of robots. An actual *place*.

HHS intends to remove trans health care from the Essential Health Benefits of the ACA/Obamacare; insurers will no longer be required to provide coverage. The public comment period ends April 11th; please help by leaving a comment against this change? www.federalregister.gov/documents/20...

The team at ESA mission control has initiated Gaia's final manoeuvre. The spacecraft is now moving away from the second Lagrange point to prevent it interfering with any current or future missions near this scientifically valuable point in space.

#NASA's #Mars #Perseverance rover Mars Perseverance Sol 1457: Left Navigation Camera (Navcam) mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/mul... NASA/JPL-Caltech/j. Roger 🔭

I can never get tired of 3D outcrop models with the amazing MAHLI images onboard Curiosity! 😍 Here a small eroded surface revealing probable climbing ripples. 📸raw @NASAJPL archive skfb.ly/puXww @terrasabaea.bsky.social

The HHS rule banning trans care from many ACA plans is open for public comment now. Only 3 comments so far. Embarrassing how the media is completely ignoring this. There's likely over 200,000 trans people on ACA plans (1% of 24 million) www.federalregister.gov/documents/20...

Sunset on the Moon, from a photo released today in the NASA/Firefly Aerospace press conference. I have color balanced the original to get rid of the green hue near the center, which is a camera artifact. We see the overexposed inner Zodiacal Light looming above the bright horizon 'rim lighting'.

You won’t see this in the nyt… At least 12 peer-reviewed studies that support gender care as safe and beneficial, and support trans inclusion in sports have been ignored by the nyt over the past year

The Cass Review only exists because transphobic politicians were angry that all the actual scientific studies kept on contradicting their ideology and commissioned a report specifically to get the outcome they wanted. Needless to say, that renders it, among other things, invalid as a study.

Had a wonderful time at the orchid exhibition last night! Super vibrant colors everywhere

Hmm, this seems like one of the darker lunar eclipses I've seen

lol sounds like my attempt to present at my poster via livestream got shut down :(

Misson: #HERA 12 March 2025 gravity-assist Target: #DEIMOS #MARS www.esa.int/ESA_Multimed... ESA/JAXA/j. Roger

I couldn't write an #LPSCHaiku I was happy with within the 5/7/5 structure. So I borrowed the related tanka form (5/7/5/7/7) for a little more room to work. In ancient rock slide: // Sulfur, in element form // encases rubble // and spreading atoms yonder, // clothes rocks in myriad forms.

“My ability to feed email text into LLMs is why I earn $6 million a year while adjuncts earn $35,000”

If you need your cloud fix, you can head on over to my #LPSC2025 poster and hear about the newest addition to the Alex family of projects

What would Deimos look like to an astronaut in space around Mars? None of Hera's instruments are equivalent to the naked human eye, but here is the science team's first attempt. The 'saddle' between two peaks of Deimos shows up as a shadow

Ooh, this is a really neat presentation! It's mind-boggling to think there's a population of asteroids that are actually boulders blown off the Moon by impacts!

Interested in elemental sulfur on Mars? Check out my #LPSC2025 poster this evening, where I look at the deposit from scales small to big! I am not actually in person, but with the help of my friend Carlos Gary-Bicas, I'm hoping to have a virtual presence! Stop by and say hi if you get a chance!

Just in! 📸 The first images from yesterday’s #HeraMission flyby of Mars and its moon Deimos. 👇 www.esa.int/Space_Safety...

My #LPSC2025 poster is up! If you're interested in the unusual geology of Umbriel, Uranus' coolest moon that you've never heard of, come on down!

remember how i said self-styled sanctuary states need to be affirmatively passing laws committing step-in funding to trans and immigrant healthcare? surprised we got this before medicaid/medicare but here we go. put up or shut up. www.federalregister.gov/public-inspe...

Just past sunrise on Sol 4476, the Mars Curiosity Rover used MastCam to take a large mosaic of the surroundings. Here’s my favorite part, looking towards the future drive path and boxworks. flic.kr/p/2qRrYD1

Woah, Noam Izenberg showing a really neat flyby video of Venus with Parker Solar Probe's WISPR camera. Camera's bandpass is *just* sensitive to a surface emission window, but overlaps with oxygen airglow - needs processing to see the surface. #LPSC2025

14 years ago today, the M9.1 Tohoku earthquake occurred offshore Sendai, Japan, devastating the region. It was the first great earthquake to occur in a area with a dense GNSS network, which provided an unprecedented view of deformation during the earthquake. (1/3) ⚒️ 🧪 youtu.be/1QCcVqZgNKw

I needed to step outside for a breather and saw Venus setting behind the trees across the street. Reminded me to try for seeing the crescent visually. Astigmatism made it hard, but the trick of closing one eye and hiding part of it behind a tree branch gave me the hint of a crescent's horn.

I for one like calmly being told to "just breathe" while I'm being drowned in the bathtub

Also "we made it through hard times in the past" ignores all the folks who are now no longer part of that "we" And it will be a much smaller we on the other side

I’m glad my friends can gather at #LPSC2025 - again I wish I could join, but I and the rest of our trans colleagues could find themselves made literal felons in the middle of a TX conference. Not attending has not primarily been a boycott on my part, it’s been and remains a matter of safety.

The Moon is trans, this is known

Ok… assuming I did this correctly (!), a feed for LPSC2025 posts: bsky.app/profile/did:...

With #LPSC2025 about to start, it's time to share what I've been working on during the last months and will be presenting at the conference. This is a new high resolution 3D model of the Mont Mercou outcrop in Gale crater, that I made during my recent internship at LPG Nantes. #planetsci 🧵

Sen. Mike Lee has introduced the SCREEN ACT, a bill that applies the "harmful to minors" standard used to ban LGBTQ+ books and resources in schools and libraries... and apply it nationally—to the internet. Under the guise of protecting kids from "pornography" www.lee.senate.gov/2025/2/senat...

The new coronagraph on GOES-19 is pretty neat! The Earth pops in to say hi daily for a couple months around the equinoxes. Here's a partial eclipse from 615 GMT this morning with the Sun peeking over the Antarctic. The 100 km airglow shell, a few South American cities and fishing fleets are visible.

This one is a fun one. Can you figure out the direction the impactor came from?

Rosetta view of Earth's nightside taken on approach during the 2nd Earth flyby. WAC red, green and UV375 filter composite. Green auroral glow visible at the northern latitudes. 2007-11-13 19:23 UTC Distance: 60 000 km Phase ange: 158 deg live.staticflickr.com/7168/6735852...

The anti-trans moral panic is out of control. Seriously cis people. Up your game. Get in their faces. Don’t defend us or try to get them to respect us. Ridicule them for being so deeply insecure over our existence.

It's not totally lost on me that SpaceX boosterism — "Elon says this" reporting, FAA and EPA holdups "blocking progress", prima facie accepting failures as an outcome of experimentation — was a significant contributor to the belief that DOGE would have been anything different than what it is.

The only acceptable royalty in this country are the amazing drag queens and kings who remind us of the social freedoms this country aspires to at its finest.

Between hostile state and Federal actions (ID validity concerns, federal bathroom bans, and an intensely anti-trans legislative session underway in TX), I decided travel to LPSC was too risky this year.

Hey all, if you have a moment, please use it to support non-binary/trans/intersex people by submitting a comment here on the X gender marker changes. Uncertainty around these rule changes, esp. coupled w/ possible capricious enforcement of ID validity, make it especially risky to travel.

The Sol 148 video has a neat view of what looks like a Fujiwara interaction between dust devils, where the air flow around one starts to steer the other, and vice versa. You see the first dust devil suddenly reverse course as the second catches up, then rotate around and merge with it.

This is a mosaic from 11 Lander Vision System Camera images, taken at around 10 km above the ground. I colorized it using RDCAM images and @terrasabaea.bsky.social's Jezero Crater map. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Aster Cowart/Simeon Schmauß CC BY NC SA flic.kr/p/2qMvNak

To those saying "this avoids a major funding loss", the entire point of government interference like this is to drive home to the target population (in this case, trans people) that "everyone" finds them disposable if the incentive is right.

hello cis friends this is what people mean by trans genocide if a type of person does not officially exist, then any harm against them cannot be measured or reported this headline change isn't even being caused by an executive order it's simply the NYT editors deciding we don't deserve to exist

What kind of research do they consider "wasteful DEI"? Reading through the project descriptions (column N) and it's project grants studying: -fentanyl overdose prevention -earthquake disaster preparedness -renewable energy -kidney disease (and other healthcare topics) -disability aid product design

Taking a moment to breathe and watch the pearly clouds go by (on Mars). www.nasa.gov/missions/mar...