Aurora color guide! What creates the different shades? Different atoms getting "excited" at different altitudes The bright reds are a sign of a particularly intense event

I had good luck at Magnuson park!

Seattle Aurora 🙄 ... squint for colors that are only visible to cameras and increasingly hidden by clouds! (but it's real, you are not making it up!)

Near the Utah/Wyoming border now

Seeing the Northern Lights! (taken with an iPhone in the Southern Suburbs of St Paul)

If you are blessed with halfway clear skies and a latitude north of, like, 40, go look for Aurorae!!

Hey look it's a @vrubinobs.bsky.social difference imaging zooniverse game! Help us classify real vs bogus detections with REAL RUBIN DATA! www.zooniverse.org/projects/ebe...

You have to send this link to everyone you know who voted I Seattle: info.kingcounty.gov/kcelections/... It takes like 30 seconds to make sure your vote was counted. Folks on here have all seen this probably, but your friends and family might not have!

If you voted in Seattle Are you sure it was counted??? Now would be the time to check on that

Seattle area space nerds! Join me at UW's Space Diplomacy Symposium and help me feel a little less like the only scientist in the room (which was last year's vibe). It's Fri Nov 7 and costs $45 ($20 for students), which I think includes lunch and def includes coffee. www.law.uw.edu/academics/pr...

Just stumbled across an astophotographer's timelapse reel of Comet Lemmon, and it clearly shows what we've done to the sky in the last 5 years A screenshot does not do it justice; the reel is on both fb and insta www.instagram.com/reel/DQcijH0... Credit: Lars Leber Photography, larsleber.com/info

An appropriately terrifying story for Halloween — and why "we need to hire a crossing guard!" cannot fix school traffic safety. Fewer drivers and slower drivers could, but we're pretty awful at that!

Driving tomorrow? SLOW DOWN Kids and pedestrians deserve to live

Some days you take your kid to gymnastics and the next thing you know someone says your name and it turns out to be YOUR HIGH SCHOOL MATH TEACHERS (They're married, now retired, one taught me AP Calc and the other Pre-Calc & AP Stats) They planned this Seattle visit to watch grandkids for the week

Right up there with "Wilson gets help from her parents with childcare because it's otherwise unaffordable" tbh

Hello and happy October 2025 I just registered my kiddo for one week of summer sleepaway camp For August 2026 😵‍💫

(Briefly dons church nerd hat) I encouraged my Diocese to pass a resolution banning AI from pastoral work at our recent convention; a couple folks spoke against banning things we don't understand, so it was punted to Diocesan Council I fear folks are already doing this & not interested to ban it 😫

It's fine, most of my meetings include people from Arizona, and many pertain to one or more telescopes in Chile

Anarcho-Urbanists UNITE You can come if you're in an adjacent square, too, so long as you bike there

These feel so close to reclaiming parking lots for community… yet so far If I had time I'd sign up and bring candy on my cargo bike! The folks who do this are the real heroes we need. (I'd rather have a more walkable alley that trick-or-treaters visited, though, as our front door faces said alley)

Trying to resist AI in everything feels so much like resisting car culture to me. AI and cars can be useful tools, but in extremely limited applications with tight regulation. 1/2

Hey I got this email today, I guess I'm a week or so less exclusive, or just further down the alphabet 😒

Remembered too late that I should have gone and looked for the comet earlier in the evening 😭 Last clear night for a while, Seattle - the Pleiades through binocs is a delight 🔭

take your escooters on the sidewalk hand wringing and shove it up your SUV this isn't my school/city/county/state, but it shouldn't be anyone's!!! so much had to go wrong for 100 kids to be hit by cars in 2 months 🤯 yes fix the infrastructure but also SLOW DOWN and park the battering ram far away

For me it was Venmo - I'm unable to contribute to my kid's soccer coach thank you fund - and Brightwheel - the main form of communication for my other kid's preschool Hope satellites don't just spontaneously start deorbiting 😅

Many parents are now are forgoing minivans for greener alternatives: cargo bikes. They have been around for decades, but the advent of the electric bike motor has made them much more popular. n.pr/3WJyZn9

My feed is half No Kings and half Aurora Borealis and if this isn't the energy 2025 needs I'm not sure what is

Hello Seattle it is election o'clock

Lots of people with money who want to make more are telling you this is a tool you have to learn or you'll be Left Behind but as with all tools, you can use your own brain and experience to decide if it's a thing that helps you do your job better and a thing you think is ethical.

Roohi Dalal used to study the distribution of dark matter. Now, as deputy director of public policy at @aas.org, she interfaces with government officials to ensure that the astronomical community's needs are met. #whatcanphysicistsdo #physics #astronomy

Ethan's piece on Reflect Orbital is today's required reading — he covers ✨every single reason🪩 giant mirrors in space is a bad idea!

Alrighty I'm on a train so gather round for a tale as old as time ♿️ADA curb paint wars: school edition💅 You may recall I formed a committee last year to improve traffic safety near my kid's school. We learned a lot, including that panting curbs can be done by volunteers, like for loading zones 🧵

"So, are mirrored satellites a practical means to produce affordable solar power at night? Probably not. Could they produce devastating light pollution? Absolutely." 10/10 no notes theconversation.com/a-us-startup...

Our plan is to reopen admissions next year. It was just very important to us that we be upfront and ethical with applicants about the current situation. And that meant a break this year. We're committed to supporting the 32 students in our program, and prioritizing them made the decision easier.

Apparently the situation is that nearly twice as many astro grads are joining my department this year as usual. So even before [choose your own 😵‍💫], at most we could support 2 students next year, and we usually get ~400 applicants (who each have to pay some $80 in fees). This sucks and I hate it!

Seems fine www.theregister.com/2025/10/06/s... (That art looks like unrealistic AI slop, but the article is good...)

Some days just start with a curb being painted for the 4th time in 2 months and end with poop in somebody's pants (A Wednesday story)

In this truly terrible time, I would like to acknowledge the terribleness, and also share one important not-terrible thing that drops Friday It is not a TS album It is a Tacolate A dream collab between my favorite ice cream shop and my childhood nostalgia fast food www.axios.com/local/portla...

Failed at this yesterday (Sunday) when my husband was going to transit to the airport... but he missed one D line and the next one wasn't for 28 min Plus, light rail had a generic service alert warning 15-20 min frequency, extent/durstion unclear, so he was worried about the transfer I drove him 😞

And here I thought "not hungry" was the real winning claim Far be it for THAT to be a remotely desirable metric of success in the year of our lord 2025

These door-opening game-changing graduate fellowships were already outrageously oversubscribed and required huge amounts of luck to win 😢

Dear Seattle, It's time to re-waterproof your stuff Love, Next week's weather forecast

Today we biked to the soccer game, biked to the light rail, took the train to the birthday party, and will light rail + bike home Putting a cargo bike on the light rail is the best life hack and all transit should be built for this All parking garages need bike cages that work for cargo bikes too…

"We are told that AI is inevitable, that we must adapt or be left behind. But universities are not tech companies. Our role is to foster critical thinking, not to follow industry trends uncritically." www.ru.nl/en/research/...

Let's look at numbers Scooter injury report counts 2021-46 2022-76 2023-151 Seattle rental average daily trips (peaks) 2021-10.8k 2022-11.8k 2023-15.6k OK injury rate is up, 0.42% ➡️ 0.97% Compare to car crash counts 2021-8k, 44 fatal 2022-8.4k, 39 fatal 2023-8.5k, 34 fatal More scooters plz 🛴

Scheduling pediatric COVID vaccinations should not be more logistically complex than swim lessons The place where we had appts & were going to take the kids after school called to say they are out; no estimate for restock Now I get to do this again AND manage kids this PM who were expecting shots

We pulled off a Play Street on the School Street by Salmon Bay K-8 on Thursday! Huge thanks to all who helped make it possible, and came by, especially @sngreenways.bsky.social @seattledot.bsky.social Love to hear "we should do this more often!" but also I am tired & behind on everything not this 😅

As usual, for my birthday this year, I would like smoke-free air and covid boosters readily available to kids Good thing birthdays are a season in my family, I suppose 🫠 Throw in fewer cars and satellites while we're at it, and more bike paths 🚲 and star parties 🎉

COVID & flu: upgrade complete! 💉 Husband and I both were able to make CVS pharmacy appointments online. Had to click "yes" for high risk condition (this should go away with the new announcement from WA DOH). I had to pay ~$200 because CVS is out of network for UW insurance 🙄 Pediatric shots when??

We took the paywall down on this one. defector.com/how-the-fuck...