You remember the iconic picture of a black hole from the @ehtelescope? Now there are three - a mini-movie so to speak. The structure of magnetic fields changes, the brightness wobbles, but the ring remains rock solid. That seals the case for it being a black […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

This article has a really nice explanation of how astronomical images that you see get assigned their colors, along with info on some of the choices we make related to this in the Rubin Observatory. https://spie.org/news/photonics-focus/sept-oct-2025/coloring-astronomy

This is the "Ann Plate", a photograph that was taken during the commissioning of the Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) in 1974 as a demonstration of the capabilities of new telescope. The AAT was the first large telescope to be completely computer controlled […] [Original post on aus.social]

This isn't my sub-field of astronomy, but someone needs to give this conference 1000 internet bonus points for the best, most geographically relevant acronym, plus their logo is ADORABLE https://uwaterloo.ca/astrophysics-centre/geese-on-2025 GEESE-ON […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

In the 1900s and 1910s there were a number of Chicago-based record labels that operated a type of premium scheme whereby the phonograph itself was inexpensive but the purchaser was locked-in to purchasing discs made for the player through the use of different […] [Original post on mastodon.world]

@ryanfb and others who work with papyrus: If you find yourself on the island of Ortigia in Syracuse in Sicily, there is a small interesting papyrus museum. It is not really about manuscripts, it is about papyrus itself, how it is made, its history etc […] [Original post on fediscience.org]

RIP Tom Lehrer you will be missed. Gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/27/arts/music/tom-lehrer-dead.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Zk8.YR0c.BmzmY54i-uzY&smid=url-share As a kid, I loved his songs when I found my parent's copy of one of his records. Here is my small connection to one […]

A nice article about my colleague @evevavagiakis.bsky.social 's physics books for children: https://trinity.duke.edu/news/if-you-think-physics-just-grownups-think-again

#arXiv #GoodbyeTo The anomalous magnetic moment of the muon in the Standard Model: an update https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.21476 "this update has resulted in a major upward shift of the total SM prediction. There is no tension between the SM and experiment at the […] [Original post on mathstodon.xyz]

Last night in Toyama Japan, as I left the sushi restaurant where I ate dinner, the scene reminded me of Edward Hopper's painting 'Nighthawks' .

How long will our universe last? Well, it looks like there is a definite end to the most robust pieces of our cosmos: Even the dead remnants of stars, i.e. black holes, neutron stars and white dwarfs will eventually decay. This is based on the realization […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

My latest @newscientist.com cartoon

A quick skim through this year's astro 101 misinformation debunking final project topics: -Faked moon landings -Flat Earth -Supermoons and tsunamis/earthquakes -Nibiru -Black holes "sucking" -15 days of darkness -Hollow moon -Saturn's ring disappeared -Moon phases caused by Earth's shadow -The […]

There's an absolutely wild statement on wikipedia that a base-11 system was "briefly proposed during the French Revolution to settle a dispute between those proposing a shift to duodecimal and those who were content with decimal". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undecimal

If anyone wants a horrible python program that will write integers in cuneiform sexegesimal (base sixty) using unicode so you can paste it all over the place in emails, documents and text messages I have just the thing. Use with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plimpton_322 For maximum amusement. […]

Please share this with any #photographers and #photographic #artists who might be interested in turning their creative eye on a science lab that is 2km (6800ft) underground. Applications are welcome! Please mind the deadline […]

Fun fact: Three out of the eight schools in the Elite Eight of the Women's March Madness are members of the Simons Observatory: Duke, USC, and UT Austin. 🏀 If you want your team to get good, consider convincing your institution to join us! (Of course, there is a relevant xkcd: xkcd.com/1365/)

Amazingly talented fediverse astrophotographers: gorgeous, perfectly exposed and processed telescope images Me, a professional astronomer: accidentally points a 4 meter telescope at Saturn for a series of 5 minute exposures

My colleague Michael Wondrak has conducted an evaporation experiment of Ferrero-Rocher chocolate confection and compared it to our predictions for evaporation via a Hawking-like gravitational pair production, that we published recently […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

We have a brand new website! simonsobservatory.org Go check it out for information on what we do, recent publications, and cool images. 🧪🔭

Getting down to the task Getty Museum Getty Ms. 114; Livre des faits de Jacques de Lalaing; c.1530 CE; Flanders, Belgium; f.10r BL Royal 18 E III, f. 24r

Excited to have been featured by Bluefors for International Women’s Day! #WomenInSTEM bluefors.com/stories/insp...

When you teach computational physics you quickly find out that Gauss basically invented all of it before we even had computers. E.g. the FFT was discovered by Carl Friedrich Gauss in 1805, when he was 28 years old. (Footnotes 7,8).

Good night from the Seven Liberal Arts, may they watch over us and guide us. BL Royal MS 6 E IX; Convenevole da Prato, Carmina regia; c.1335 CE; Italy (Tuscany); f.29r

Gravity anomaly map of the Chicxulub crater in the Yucatán responsible for the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event. Of the dinosaurs, only the avians (birds) survived this time period. The white dots are sinkhole locations which trace the crater's rim. #Science #Geology #PaleoSky #Dinosaurs 🧪🦕🦖

A source of calm in these troubled times: the Seven Liberal Arts BL Royal MS 6 E IX; Convenevole da Prato, Carmina regia; c1335 CE; Italy (Tuscany); f.29r

For no particular reason, here is a drawing of Mars done by Percival Lowell. From the public domain image archive. https://pdimagearchive.org/images/51d3ceb5-14c2-4cec-8eb9-953184c1ce75/ #astronomy

@ryanfb More for your papyrus based Roman procedural TV series. Season two - Judea nights: https://archaeologymag.com/2025/01/papyrus-unveils-roman-era-corruption-and-forgery/

More people should know about/follow @standardebooks. It’s a community, opensource project to make beautifully formatted ebooks from public domain works. https://mastodon.social/@standardebooks/113828483254914837

Today I got to tell BBC R4 Today about the almighty world-record breaking Vera Rubin Observatory🤗 Surprises tho - they made a video! This is from the other site (looking v sleepy - thank goodness I wasn't still in my pyjamas 🤭) 🧪🔭 @vrubinobs.bsky.social @lsstuk.bsky.social ℹ️: rubinobservatory.org

What to do when Einstein makes a 10 minute comment in German on your seminar: 'Dr. Einstein accepted Dr. Tolman’s invitation to interrupt... After the “father of relativity” had commented in German for more than ten minutes, Dr. E. C. Watson suggested that […] [Original post on fediscience.org]

My last view of La Serena and Coquimbo from the plane as I leave Chile to return home after the last year working on commissioning the @VRubinObs. I could see the observatory in the distance as we flew past and thought of all my friends working down there […] [Original post on fediscience.org]

5:00 am on Sunday morning in Chile: Orion and Jupiter hover over the moonlit dome of the @VRubinObs. (If you live in the northern hemisphere, note the orientation of Orion) #Astrodon #observatory

Using GPS in the year 1565 There’s a wonderful web app (“Allmaps Here”) that shows your GPS location on old maps. I love it. https://www.verbeeld.be/2024/11/17/using-gps-in-the-year-1565/ #maps #allmapshere #cartography #georeferencing

An Andean condor is seen flying by the @VRubinObs weather tower this afternoon. #Astrodon #BirdPhotogaphy

Absolute shots fired. From: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0360319924043957 #Science #academia #peerreview #research

The view from the smaller auxiliary calibration telescope of the @VRubinObs on Wed night as we prepared to go on-sky.

If like me you, are an overseas #northcarolina voter this cycle, you can still easily vote since you can likely use the overseas/military ballot portal. https://votebymail.ncsbe.gov/app/uocava It's easy! You request a ballot, and then your county board emails you a ballot in the next day or […]