Happy " International Space Station Is As Big As A Football Field Day" for those who observe and celebrate.

My nomination for today's #SuperbOwl. The Cosmic Owl is two galaxies that crashed into each other, creating overlapping ring-shaped splashes of stars. It measures about 150,000 light years from side to side, or about 10^20 times the size of a Great Grey Owl on Earth. 🧪🔭 arxiv.org/abs/2506.10058

A beautiful panorama of cosmic life & death: These images of the Sculptor Galaxy combine 100 exposures in thousands of colors, 300 gigs of data. They show 500 planetary nebulae (the demise of other Suns) + a central "chimney" caused by a burst of newly formed stars. 🧪🔭 www.eso.org/public/news/...

News from the edge of the visible universe: JWST has confirmed this galaxy, MoM-z14, as the most distant one yet studied. We're seeing it as it was 13.5 billion years ago, 98% of the way back to the beginning of time. (MoM stands for "miracle or mirage.") 🧪🔭 science.nasa.gov/missions/web...

Here's a good use for "AI" (a rebranded neural net, really): sorting through 100 million Hubble images & identifying hundreds of celestial anomalies. The set includes peculiar colliding galaxies, gravitational lenses, planet-forming hamburgers, and true enigmas. 🔭🧪 www.esa.int/Science_Expl...

Intriguing question: is "darkness" a natural resource that could or should be protected? The trend of modern life has been to treat darkness as a threat to be eliminated, but a lot of people are pushing back to preserve dark skies & natural ecosystems. 🧪

This is the most detailed map yet of dark matter in the universe, based on JWST observations of 800,000 galaxies. The background image shows those galaxies in infrared light. Yellow indicates the location of dark matter, inferred from its gravitational pull. 🧪🔭 www.nasa.gov/missions/web...

NASA's Artemis II flight, which will send a crew around the Moon for the first time since 1972, has been delayed due to a hydrogen leak. The flight is tentatively rescheduled for early March. 🧪🔭 arstechnica.com/space/2026/0...

This is what taxpayer-funded open science plus decades of hard-won investment and expertise looks like

In 1859, Richard Carrington observed the 1st solar flare--an eruption so powerful it spawned brilliant auroras & knocked out telegraph lines around the world. We have Carrington's drawings but, amazingly, there was no known picture of the man himself--until now. 🧪🔭 academic.oup.com/astrogeo/art...

On Earth, avalanches are terrifying. On the Sun, they are simply overwhelming. ESA's Solar Orbiter captured this magnetic avalanche on the Sun as it triggered a major solar flare. There's an outline of the Earth at the beginning for scale. www.esa.int/Science_Expl...

NASA's Juno spacecraft detected the largest volcanic hotspot ever seen in our solar system. It appeared on Jupiter's moon Io, it covers 100,000 square kilometers (bigger than Lake Superior), and it radiates 80 trillion watts of heat. 🧪🔭 www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-ju...

After 3 decades, astronomers have found >6000 planets, but nothing quite like our own. The new Terra Hunting Experiment in the Canary Islands is designed to find what we're really looking for: an Earth-size planet in an Earth-like orbit around a Sun-like star. 🧪🔭 www.sciencenews.org/article/eart...

Sometimes astronomers are watching a star and it just...fades away. This star in the Andromeda Galaxy might have collapsed into a black hole. Or it might have merged with another star & kicked a huge cloud of dark dust. Either way, something strange going on. 🧪🔭 arxiv.org/abs/2601.05317

It's been tough posting about science these past few days, but I keep reading about remarkable new findings. I'll be sharing some shortly; it's important to remember all the goodness and constructive curiosity out there.

40 years ago today, Voyager 2 became the first (and, so far, only) spacecraft to visit to Uranus, sending back astonishing images of the planet, its thin rings, and its peculiar set of moons. 🧪🔭 www.nasa.gov/history/35-y...

Comets are cold, but they're full of silicate crystals that form at high temperatures. (This crystal, left, was collected from Comet Wild 2, right.) Now we know how that works! Newborn stars blow fast, crystalline winds away from their hot inner regions. (1/2) 🧪🔭 science.nasa.gov/missions/web...

Just observed a “red rainbow”, a rainbow of atmospherically refracted red/orange light just prior to sunrise. 📸 @stephanieg3.bsky.social

A breathtaking look at a dying star. This new image of the Helix Nebula is just in from JWST. We've never seen this level of detail, as the star's remains stream back out to interstellar space. Our Sun will look something like this 7 billion years from now. 🧪🔭 science.nasa.gov/missions/web...

The universe is full of natural magnifying glasses--gravitational lenses--pointed in random directions. This one points toward a galaxy cluster forming in the early universe, 11 billion years ago. It's a rare peek into how the modern cosmos took shape. 🧪🔭 www.almaobservatory.org/en/press-rel...

The 18th-century, Scottish, engineer and inventor, James Watt was born 19 January 1736 #histsci #histtech thonyc.wordpress.com/2015/06/04/a...

A history of unrest, then rest, then even more unrest happening in deep space. New radio observations show that a supermassive black hole shot out plasma jets at a large fraction of the speed of light, paused for 100 million years, then roared back to life. 🧪🔭 ras.ac.uk/news-and-pre...

🧵 Check out this stunning "Lunar Curve" (not a lunar analemma), by Giorgia Hofer! 🔭 It looks magical, with the #Moon tracing a path 🧪 over the mountains. Actually, it's a beautiful digital composite montage, not something you can actually see in real life. #sciart 1/5

Artemis II: coming soon to Launch Pad 39B! (And by soon, I mean possibly as early as 7am EST tomorrow) 🧪🔭 www.nasa.gov/blogs/missio...

Astronomers may have cracked the mystery of the "Little Red Dots": strangely bright but tiny galaxies found in the most distant reaches of the universe. Giant black holes? Huge bursts of new stars? Neither explanation seemed to make sense. (1/2) 🧪🔭 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

57 ways of looking at a dying star. The Alma Observatory tuned in to 57 different molecules pouring out of the star W Hydrae as it spills its guts into space. That material will later get recycled into the next generation of stars and planets. www.almaobservatory.org/en/press-rel...

In happier news, it's been a great week for learning strange new things about the universe. A few highlights: The Rubin Observatory opened its eyes & immediately discovered 1900 asteroids, including the fastest-spinning large asteroid (once every 1.88 minutes!). 🧪🔭 noirlab.edu/public/news/...

This delicate, alien-looking entity is an actual life form, sharing the planet with us, living right off the coast of Mexico.

New post up, for all the self proclaimed poets & those who proclaim love and beauty - for Renee Good. “If someone smiles or cries, feels less alone or more enthused, when you read your work out aloud you have made something wonderful.” thecosmicshamblesnetwork.substack.com/p/the-world-...

Venezuela is one of the world's top methane emitters, releasing more methane relative to production than any other country. It's a major economic problem as well as an environmental one. 🧪 www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...

Great news for exploration: Schmidt Sciences is funding the Lazuli space telescope, bigger than Hubble, that will include a coronagraph to separate the light of a planet from its nearby star. Schmidt is also supporting 3 innovative ground-based astronomy arrays. 🧪🔭 arstechnica.com/space/2026/0...

What a beautiful visual depiction of the changing balance between night and day over the course of the year, as seen from the Netherlands. (A "keogram," derived from the Inuit word for aurora, is a time-series of sky images intended for monitoring auroral activity.) 🧪🔭

The universe is still full of surprises! This is Cloud-9, a starless blob held together by dark matter--a "failed galaxy." Astronomers have long speculated that such hidden objects formed the building blocks of bright galaxies like our own. Now we've found one. 🧪🔭 esahubble.org/news/heic2601/

In an earlier era of international conflict, 67 years ago this week, the USSR launched the first spacecraft to venture beyond Earth orbit. Luna 1 missed the Moon and went into solar orbit. Soviet authorities promptly renamed it "Artificial Planet 1." 🔭🧪 www.orbitalfocus.uk/Diaries/Luna...

Astronomers have spotted a supermassive black hole fleeing its home galaxy at 900+ kilometers per second, heading off alone into intergalactic space. I feel you, friend. 🧪🔭 www.sciencealert.com/jwst-confirm...

NASA's SPHEREx has completed its first multispectral map of the infrared sky. It sees the sky in 102 infrared "colors," which lets it do things like this: One image highlights mature stars; the other focuses on carbon soot & gas clouds where new stars form. 🧪🔭 www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/pia26...

Highly recommend. Earth shining in the sky...from Mars!

One of my favorite space images from 2025: Forming stars overflow with infalling gas, some of which shoots back out as powerful jets. Here we see a series of eruptions, visible as a set of round shocks. These are the sharp birth cries of a new star. 🧪🔭 public.nrao.edu/news/nsf-vla...

It's happening! ESA & JAXA are teaming up to visit Apophis, the 400-meter (1300-foot) asteroid that will skim close by Earth in April, 2029. The RAMSES mission will study this potentially hazardous object & watch how Earth's gravity reshapes it as it passes. 🧪🔭 cosmos.isas.jaxa.jp/look-up-esa-...

Eclipse preview for 2026. Two lunar eclipses are on the way, along with a partial solar eclipse for much of Europe & North America. And if you really like solar eclipses, you might want to relocate to Spain for the next couple years. 🧪🔭

The visible universe contains about a trillion galaxies, in a dizzying variety of styles. The blue scatter at bottom is Leo P, a nearby dwarf just one-millionth the mass of our Milky Way. It's almost pure hydrogen & helium, much like the galaxies of long ago. 🧪🔭 www.stsci.edu/contents/new...

Did you know that a #rainbow makes a full 360 degree circle? In this photo, an entire rainbow was captured over Cottesloe Beach near Perth by a helicopter. From the ground, typically, only the top portion...⤵️ ➡️ apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap14093... 🔭 🧪 ⚛️ #science #naturephotography #sciart 1/4

Looking for a good science book to give as a gift, or a good science read for yourself? Check out this 2025 reading list from the editors at American Scientist (including me). Not trying to be a formal a best-of--just books that we all enjoyed. 🧪🔭 www.americanscientist.org/blog/science...

Three ways of looking at the iconic Christmas Tree Cluster, 2700 light years from Earth. What the universe looks like depends on how we look at it. These views highlight infrared (left), x-rays (middle), and red emission from hydrogen gas. Beautiful in three different ways. 🧪🔭

Today I saw the glory. I photographed the beautiful, delicate optical phenomenon while flying near Nashville. 🧪 www.atoptics.org.uk/droplets/glo...

People tend to take the Moon for granted, but it can be a source of constant wonder. It shaped life on Earth, it helped validate Einstein's general relativity, and it still flashes with constant meteor strikes. My latest Invisible Universe column: 🧪🔭 invisibleuniverse.substack.com/p/its-strang...

"What is the point of space travel?" Folks out there have questions. I have answers (or some strong thoughts, at least). 🧪 www.quora.com/What-is-the-...

Many stars shine. Some explode. And, in very rare cases, a star can HALF-explode. The nebula Pa 30 is the result of a half-exploded star. Its zombie corpse keeps energizing it, creating a firework shape that closely resembles a high-altitude nuclear explosion (right). 🧪🔭 arxiv.org/abs/2512.03140

Radio engineer, amateur astronomer, and Chicagoan Grote Reber was born #OTD in 1911. After reading about Karl Jansky’s accidental discovery of galactic radio emissions, he built a 9m radio telescope *in his back yard* and carried out the first radio survey of the sky. 🧪 ⚛️ 🔭 📡 Image: NRAO

Phobos hovering over the giant volcanoes of Mars! Fabulous view from ESA's Mars Express orbiters. Phobos is the 25 km (15 mile) wide flying grey rock at center. The volcanoes are (l-r) Arsia Mons, Pavonis Mons, and Ascraeus Mons. Processing by Andrea Luck. 🧪🔭 www.flickr.com/photos/19227...