Splendid. No notes.

Our baby finches are starting to come out of the nest!

Swedish astronomer @eggstronomer.bsky.social was my guest on the *first episode* of my #StarRiver Podcast! Hear what she has to say about the limits of our understanding of the universe, and then come back in a few weeks to listen to the entire episode! Coming soon at astropotamus.com/star-river 🐸🔭🦛

Works for all other metals too

As an astronomer, I confirm the dating is correct.

Fun map and project. I'm in the professional Astronomers cluster, which is appropriate but also surprising, since I don't post much about my work here - maybe that's why I am at the edge. Also surprising is that I am edging towards the Australian Agricultural cluster :-D

I'm going to play Homeworld, today. I'm going to play Homeworld and I'm not gonna do anything else, no matter how much my anxiety says I should be stressing over work.

🧵 Elon Musk owns X and Grok. Mark Zuckerberg runs Meta — Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Meta AI. Sam Altman runs OpenAI and ChatGPT. Alphabet runs Google, YouTube, and Gemini. The Murdochs control Fox, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post. 1/11

I'll be doing a podcast episode from the #VLA in April! Looking forward to talking to @thenrao.bsky.social staff about this new development!! 📡🔭🦛

arxiv.org/abs/2602.02705 Hey! I helped with this (very little, but still)! A few years ago, during my first postdoc at IAC in Canarias, we probed the MUSE-WIDE fields looking for Ha emission from gas structures in the vicinity of galaxies. (1/4)

The pleasure was all mine, @astropotamus.com! Everyone – make sure that you'll listen to and follow this new podcast once it's out because the very idea behind it is well thought out, refreshing and fun! Also follow @astropotamus.com if you aren't already! 🐸🔭🎙️🦛✨

Thank you to the awesome @eggstronomer.bsky.social Katja for joining me as my guest on my first Star River Podcast episode! If you're not following her, you should be! Episode will be released once I have a few more finished, so stay tuned! astropotamus.com/star-river 🐸🎙️🔭🦛

Day 93 & 94/273. Today is my rest day. The donations have stalled unfortunately - can YOU help? I only need to raise an average of £3 a day between now and the Gower Peninsula Ultra to hit my £500. Any and all contributions are most appreciated, thank you all in advance!

Enquanto não se promover a redução do consumo energético, enquanto continuar a produzir-se energia para desperdiçar, enquanto não se promover e financiar o autoconsumo, enquanto não se trouxer a produção de energia para os locais próximos do consumo/consumidor, não há fim à vista para a destruição.

"Abate seria sempre necessário, diz empresa”. Sendo assim, pronto, está tudo bem. Medidas óptimas para, mais cedo do que tarde, vivermos num fabuloso deserto – mas sem falta de energia. Entretanto, os promotores e decisores fazem, possivelmente, férias no estrangeiro. www.publico.pt/2026/01/27/a...

Use Real Time! Permanent Standard Time approximates natural solar time, for best sleep and circadian health. Ditch Daylight Saving Time!

Share a television show that raised you. That one is so nice there's not even a gif.

We used to do real science

AstroBin's Image of the Day: "Cygnus Loop - Mosaic x2 SHO RGB stars" by Nicolas Puig www.astrobin.com/dbqxxt/ #astrophotography

Press release by Kavli-IPMU on our work winning the Buchalter prize 🥲 I am not good with press releases but let me say here, this was an incredible team effort! www.ipmu.jp/en/20260115-...

I have participated in a previous instance of LEAPS. I wasn't very good at it, but it remains a highlight of my student years. Definitely recommend, plenty of good people to guide you on interesting projects and, of course, good for your career too!

"Shifu... taught me well."

Heavily armed ICE thugs are rampaging without accountability through the streets of this country with a rhetoric of protection and safety while terrorizing everyone around them. So extreme, so dishonest that even the NYT had to run an honest headline.

To sum up, a US president is going to war without congressional authorization against a sovereign nation that has not attacked or threatened it, and is doing so like a thief in the night, with no explanation for the American people or the world. It is all so unimaginable that it strains credulity.

1. Headlines everywhere today read "Grok apologizes." This is bullshit. A chatbot is not something that can apologize. Pretending otherwise is simple laundering these companies' bullshit about what AI is, while diffusing blame away from the human beings that developed and released this system.

Well, this was for the followers only. :D The ones needing an introduction can read this: www.patreon.com/posts/still-... Regarding Reyes, it was about protecting a sense of home PLUS the fact that the pig did NOT need to be killed. It was just the captain's idea that it _should_ be dinner

Remember: When Tylenol was poisoned *by an outsider* and killed people, the company recalled all their products & redesigned them. When Intel’s Pentium had a bug so obscure it affected 1 in _9 billion_ long division calculations, they recalled their chips. ChatGPT was made deadly *by its team*.

A while ago I set up a humble poll asking whether anyone would be interested in a full short story about the Kepler crew. All 8 people who replied said yes, so here it is! patreon.com/posts/good-i... If you're new to this nonsense read this first: patreon.com/posts/still-... #SciFiSat

Last night wasn't very good. Despite prediction of a fully clear sky, constant layers of high, thin clouds made imaging a challenge. It was also VERY cold: by the time I ended the night, the cables in my setup were frozen due to dew. But I still managed to add two hours to NGC2237 (1/2).

Tonight I decided to try something new. I managed to detect Exoplanet TOI 3714b transiting its host star using my 190MN scope and 2600MM camera. Totally blown away that this is possble from my back yard here in the UK. Transit took 1H 38mins and was about 5% in depth 🤯. #Astrophotography #exoplanet

Against my better judgement, I've assembled the team in the backyard again, for it is supposed to be clear tonight too and it will be the last clear night before full moon and returning to work. Maybe I'll manage to add another hour or two to the Rosette.

Also, something's weird with Deep Sky Stacker, lately: "intersection" stacking method does not crop the image at all and the whole stack result appears as an overblown negative-blue image. It's fine after saving but makes me doubt the whole process. I need to figure out SiriL's multi-night stacking.

So last night was a clear...ish night, so I set up my smol refractor on top of my cat and went to business. First order of said business: try M42. It was, in my opinion, a disaster, satellites everywhere and as a consequence I hate everything and everyone now. (1/5)

The only night in the past month where I have been able to set up my gear and snap photos, between work and weather. Targetting M42, hoping against hope that I can get a few clean frames. It is impossible.

In Sweden we're already done with the main Christmas festivities but as there, however, are a lot of countries celebrating on the 25th, I hereby present you with the part of NGC 2264 that is also known as the Christmas Tree Cluster. Happy holidays! 🎄

There is one thing I missed from Twitter. And that was Larry the Cat - the true leader of the United Kingdom. Today, thanks to a repost from one of the people I follow, I discovered he also has a Bluesky account. A Good Christmas day.

On this darkest solstice day of the year, my heart has dimmed, waking up to learn of the loss of dear colleague and mentor, Yannick Mellier. Yannick will be known to most as the lead of the amazing Euclid Space Telescope which will revolutionise our understanding of the Dark Universe 🧵🔭

Jupiter 90 minute time lapse using IR720 pass filter. C6 - ASI585MC #astronomy #astrophotography

former BiGCaT colleague Serena Bonaretti has written the #openaccess book about #python: "Learn Python with Jupyter", now available from various stores and online at https://www.learnpythonwithjupyter.com/

Nothing has thought me more humility than to compare the number of citations my PhD papers got in relation to others. Actually, "teaching humility" might not be the right term; "Devastating one's self worth" is more appropriate 🥲 (I am NOT saying those papers deserve more citations, btw)

Except, sadly, it is believable. Today I offer you a spinach-based insight from the research / writing / academia meme stash. #highered #academicchatter #academicsky #PhDchat #resdev #resdevmemes

"Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational battlestation." - FIFA

best package warning graphic i've ever seen 🪶

Played around half an hour of Dispatch, yesterday (game was running for a lot longer but I left it in the background while I did other stuff) Seems a fun little game in "This is the Police" style, but with much better writing. Also done in collab with @criticalrole.bsky.social which I did not know.

Some indie developer is going to come along and make it out of sheer passion for the genre and gameplay and we're all going to buy it and play it because we want those kind of games and because it is good. And the "triple-A" industry will whine and complain about it. That's fine by me.

Las megaconstelaciones de satélites de internet contaminarán el 40% de las imágenes del telescopio espacial Hubble y más del 96% de las observaciones de los telescopios SPHEREx, Xuntian, y ARRAKIHS. Link a nuestro nuevo artículo en la revista Nature 👇: nature.com/articles/s4158…

At the Madrid airport, waiting to return to Portugal. By 9 pm I will be home.

Month of December be like.. (Nod to Dr. Pamela Gay for doing this one) #astronomy #astrophotography

Leaving at 4 am (again), for a workshop in Madrid. I hate travelling.