Just a quick meeting with my editor to see why I've been neglecting to refill my bird-feeder.

I just came back to work after being away from my desk for almost a week. I'm catching up to all my newsfeeds in my RSS reader and it's overwhelming, of course. Except for NASA feeds. They are... sparse. So little research news coming out of NASA.

I wonder if I should answer the doorbell? Pretty skinny bear, hopefully he'll fatten up now that berry season is here.

You were awesome, video is coming next week...

Another clear night of using the Seestar S50. I set this up in Plan mode, picked 4 targets and went to bed. The pictures were waiting for me on the telescope when I got up. Neat.

The enshittification of podcasting is in full effect. I recently changed my podcast hosting provider and it "broke" the feed on both Apple and Spotify. The new feed works fine, and new episodes download on all podcatching apps. But not those two, because... walled gardens.

Finally figuring out how to operate my new Seestar S50. I did a 20 minute exposure of M51 before the clouds rolled in. Nice, it's time for a whole new hobby rabbithole.

Now that Universe Today is totally ad-free, we can do whatever we want. And what we want is a 5-part overview of the new science coming from JWST's Cycle 4. www.universetoday.com/articles/jws...

We're doing a 4 part deep dive into all the science approved with JWST Cycle 4. Here's Part 1 www.universetoday.com/articles/sci...

Firefly released their image of the lunar eclipse from last night, but I'm not sure what I'm looking at. They say that you can see the Sun peeking out from the edge of the Earth reflected in the Solar panel, but the scale looks way off. Need a red glow version. www.flickr.com/photos/firef...

I don't think I'll be livestreaming the eclipse tonight.

A little more behind the scenes of my bad week, and what comes next.

Universe Today is now ad-free. After years of declining ad revenue, caused by AI slop and search engines diverting traffic, we finally cut off all advertising. No ads on the website, email newsletter or podcasts. And our space journalism is better than ever. How? Patrons. www.universetoday.com

NASA's Ingenuity helicopter completed its 72nd and final flight on Mars on Jan. 18, 2024. It crashed, broke its rotors and would never fly again. Engineers at NASA have been studying the flights and terrain and think they know the series of events that led to the crash.

The Pizzable Zone is the region around a star where the temperature is ideal for cooking a pizza (450-500°C). Inner boundary: too hot, pizza burns instantly. Outer boundary: too cool, pizza won't cook properly.

Exoplanets have been found orbiting two stars. While giant exo-jupiters won't be habitable, their moons could be. A new paper looked into the evolution of circumbinary planet moons and found 30-40% of surviving moons migrate into habitable zones. arxiv.org/abs/2412.02847

An explanation for the Fermi Paradox is the "Sustainability Solution." We don't see advanced civilizations because exponential growth and expansion are unsustainable. Any advanced civilization would be indistinguishable from nature. Which makes them hard to find. arxiv.org/abs/2411.08057

A new paper suggests that Venus has been a hellscape for its entire history. No oceans, ever. This result comes from the estimated ratio of water vapor in volcanic outgassing. On Earth, eruptions are mostly steam from interior water, but on Venus, they're 6% at most. www.cam.ac.uk/research/new...

The MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa has confirmed the existence of the gravitational wave background of the Universe, monitoring dozens of millisecond pulsars for just 4.5 years. These are caused by merging supermassive black holes distorting spacetime, sending ripples across the Universe.

Although white dwarfs aren't actively fusing any more, they're still hot and could support life. A new paper calculates white dwarfs could provide a habitable zone for 7 billion years. They're small and dim; easier to study planets for biosignatures. 1 hour of JWST time. arxiv.org/abs/2411.18934

Satellites tracking vegetation in Antarctica have watched as hardy mosses and lichens increase their foothold on the icy continent. Using observations from Landsat 5 through 8, researchers calculated that the area of vegetated land in 1985 was 0.86 km². By 2021, this had grown to 11.95 km².

Okay, I got @universetoday.com automatically posting our new stories. And I was even able to set a custom domain so it's officially verified. There won't be anything but space stories here, but if that's your thing, we've got you covered.

I'm watching people try to speedrun their way to the Clearsky top 5 blocked in 24 hours using AI trollbots. How is this fun for them? I'm suitably impressed with the user response, though, the blocking and blocklisting is very comprehensive. There's a virology paper here somewhere. clearsky.app

It's Friday, that means Space Bites: - what's inside Uranus and Neptune? - Titan Dragonfly gets its ride to Titan - China's new spaceplane - My favorite JWST image of 2024 - Explore the ice under Europa And more... Watch our videos ad-free on Patreon (they're public, it's free)

New paper examines 11 ways to make concrete/cement on Mars, from lime concrete to more exotic materials that might only be possible on a cold, nearly airless, low gravity world. They found sulfur concrete the most promising: strength, quick hardening, no water. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Got a monster next-generation space telescope (LIFE/HWO), but you don't know where to point it to find other Earths? Researchers have narrowed the list to the best 1000 stars and wide binaries, the 100 stars with the best potential, and the ten best-known planetary systems nearby.

Euclid is expected to turn up 170,000 strong gravitational lenses during its mission. But how to identify them? Researchers tested several machine learning algorithms and even the best only got a 1:9 false positive rate. It'll be up to human volunteers to manually confirm them, one by one.

I think @hankgreen.bsky.social nailed it. I'm not especially political, but I really get exhausted by trolls, snarky comments and disrespect. My mute and block buttons are getting used to full effect.

Researchers just completed a simulation of the Universe using the most powerful supercomputer on Earth. It calculated the evolution of the Universe from its earliest times forward, including matter, energy, dark matter, etc. It can perform more than a quintillion calculations per second.

Venus is almost a twin of Earth, yet it has a crushing, boiling atmosphere at the surface and shows little active volcanism. Since Venus is so brutal, a researcher has proposed sending an orbiter/balloon/lander that could work together to track seismic signals rumbling under the planet's surface.

This should keep you warm and toasty during the holidays. Feel the holiday spirit of four RS-25 engines and two solid rocket boosters delivering 39 Meganewtons of thrust, capable of sending even the heaviest fireplace to the Moon. Thanks to @floradine-s.bsky.social for the tip.

This is a very nice picture of the Sun, but it's a mosaic of 25 images taken by ESA's Solar Orbiter when it was half the Earth-Sun distance. Scientists released a zoomable version that gives you insane resolution of the solar surface. Click this link for the insane zooms: codepen.io/Kimtaro88/em...

There's no place on Earth not colonized by bacteria. When researchers examined samples of Ryugu from the Hayabusa2, they realized the little devils had found a new home. The samples were delivered in a hermetically sealed chamber, opened in airtight containers in nitrogen gas. Life found a way.

This JWST image of the Sombrero Galaxy is fantastic. From the clumpy clouds of gas and dust in the outer ring to the bright central core containing an actively feeding supermassive black hole. And peppered with thousands of globular clusters. No notes, chef's kiss. Carry on Universe.

I can see a lot of people subscribing to space photo feeds, but most seem to contain uncredited and AI photos. Spam. Here's the one I'd recommend above all others. @hourlycosmos.bsky.social It's run by @kevinmgill.bsky.social. He knows what's real, what's fake and how to give proper credit.

Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social is one of the best image processors out there, watching the Hubble/JWST data flow for hidden gems.

The upcoming telescope I'm most excited about is now actually taking pictures. I can't wait to see them.

My worst fears have come true. Path of Exile 2 looks really good and will likely devour my time. It was nice knowing you all, but after Dec. 6th, I'll be... busy. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpIb...

Finally, the tides make sense.

It's time for NASA's Moon phase simulation for 2025! The moon seems to get bigger and smaller because it is on an elliptical orbit around the Earth. When it's close and full, that's a supermoon, making it about 30% brighter. That wobbling is called libration, and it lets us see more of its surface.

This looks straight out of a sci-fi movie. But it's real. These are real images of Jupiter and its moons captured by Cassini. @kevinmgill.bsky.social is a wizard.

This is exciting. JWST has been operating long enough that we can see timelapse animations of planets changing from year to year.

So that's why it was so rainy here on Vancouver Island and everybody's power went out. What a monster.

Creative people. Talk to your fans. When people join my Patreon, I ask them to do a personal interview. I genuinely want to hear their feedback, but it's also good for the soul. We usually just see the trolls and not the silent majority that appreciates our work. It puts a smile on my face all day

Our power is back, and our battery backup is back to 100%. Time for the next surprise bomb cyclone to tear up half of Vancouver Island.

Canadians. It's time to vote for the name of our upcoming lunar rover mission. Choose from: Athabasca, Courage, Pol-R, or Glacier.

Here are the power outages on Vancouver Island. Essentially the entire island. I suspect we'll be out of power for quite a while, even beyond the capability of my backup battery. Those numbers are collections of power outages, not homes. It's about 150,000 homes right now. #bombcyclone

I appreciate that there's a TweetDeck cone with deck.blue. Now, does anyone know of a TwitterFall clone? I need to gaze directly into the river of messages.

I had a fascinating conversation with @sciguyspace.bsky.social about the chaotic situation of human space exploration, with NASA, SpaceX, Blue Origin, China, Europe and more. The next few years of space reporting are going to be... challenging.

Since people are sharing pictures of their "death stairs," check out this terrifying stairway my father built. He turned a cedar tree into a spiral staircase with a platform on the top. I could never work up the courage to climb it. Don't worry; I didn't let the kids go any higher. #deathstairs