In case you missed it, we put out an amazing new Hubble image of the Egg Nebula (release led by our colleagues at #ESAHubble): science.nasa.gov/missions/hub...

Happy Valentine's Day!

Read Bob Altemeyer’s /The Authoritarians/ (2006) last week and learned it’s very hard to change their minds about anything except: • When they see official forces beating up / killing nonviolent protesters, they rebel a bit; • When their prejudice causes them to be spurned, they *hate* that.

The aurora last night in Beaver, Alaska was just incredible. This is a real-time video (not sped up) of the crazy motion I saw. Also, look how BRIGHT it is, wow!

So far this weekend, the only things that have gotten me out of the house are feeding birds and looking to see if anything got ripped off our house.

1. It was not an accident. 2. It was not a staffer. 3. While the president may have dementia his racism is not due to dementia. 4. He isn’t sorry. He means every racist thought he shares. 5. His base agrees with him. 6. He will do it again. 7. No one in power will hold him accountable.

If you don't routinely watch the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, I recommend that you look up this week's episode with Sir Ian McKellen. Particularly the last segment where McKellen performs a Shakespeare character. It brought tears to my eyes. It's interesting how little things change in 400 years.

A dove and a squirrel decided to share our bird feeder.

TFW you think to yourself “ this has been a week,” and it’s only Tuesday

BREAKING: The two federal immigration agents who fired on Minneapolis protester Alex Pretti are identified in government records as Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa and Customs and Border Protection officer Raymundo Gutierrez.

This thread is worth a read for the lolz!

Here's some more neat astronomy news for you! It's going to be quiet on my end while NASA focuses on Artemis, so enjoy it while you can.

Hubble has a massive, 35-year archive. A team used AI to mine that archive for anomalous objects and found more than 1,300: www.stsci.edu/contents/new...

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.

Hey Democrats! Want a winning campaign message? How about: I will defund the federal agency that is executing innocent Americans in the street, and hold everyone responsible accountable.

The biggest risk in this moment is something sociologists call “symbolic compliance.” That’s when an institution that is violating civil rights gives the public just enough symbolic victories that accountability efforts lose steam before there has been any meaningful change.

If Democrats cared about literally anything, this is what their leaders would say.

Furry friends at BARCS are looking for temporary homes during the snowstorm

As a person with family in Texas, I get this.

As promised, here's a beautiful new Webb image! I love how organic it looks.

It says a lot about MAGA-ites that they can't understand why a person would stand up and defend their neighbors if there's nothing in it for them.

And following up on my last post, stay tuned for some really neat JWST news coming out this week! It'll be perfect to view while curled up by a warm fire. (There's a pun/hint in there.)

I've been posting a lot of politics lately (for good reason), so I'm excited to get to share a cool science story with you! WBAL did a really excellent job with this report on one of our Hubble news items from the AAS conference:

For @msnownews.bsky.social, I wrote an article about how ICE Watch is grounded in sociological theories of violence prevention. The reality is that most men will only commit public violence in extremely specific scenarios and ICE Watch disrupts the conditions necessary for escalation.

We recently tested ~ a dozen public statements from a diverse set of Democratic elected officials on the murder of Renee Good and this was the top testing one

I was hoping the Capital Weather Gang would share someone's photo of this morning's gorgeous sunrise!

"It'll take an hour, but I'll do it in 5 minutes."

And now there's a GoFundMe for the murderous ICE agent. I spent 10 minutes trying to report it for violating their terms of service (you can't fundraise for legal expenses to defend against murder charges) but it kept timing out. I'm sure it would have gone right through if I'd been a donor.

If there are *any* Democrats in Congress who will still vote to keep funding this administration when it is using that money to terrorize our cities and refusing to allow congressional representatives their clear right to observe their activities, then those reps need to be primaried into retirement

It's time to state clearly that if MAGA and Republicans can't condemn any part of this shooting, continue to blame the victim for it, and even hint that it's a just outcome that others "deserve," that's a crossing of the line that the rest of us won't ever be able to forget.

DHS Warns Any Action By Americans Will Be Treated As Domestic Terrorism https://theonion.com/dhs-warns-any-action-by-americans-will-be-treated-as-domestic-terrorism/

This is why you need robust local newsrooms.

It is past time for Democrats to take decisive action. No more strongly worded social media posts. Put your votes where your mouths are. No one will ever vote for you again if you do not fight against state-sanctioned murder.

Scientists have identified "astronomy's platypus" - and I got to put out the press release about it. My career is complete. science.nasa.gov/missions/web...

Job alert #2: the National Solar Observatory is hiring a head of education & public outreach. Based in Boulder, CO: recruiting2.ultipro.com/SPA1004AURA/...

Come work with me! STScI is hiring a new head of the Office of Public Outreach. It's a great opportunity for scicomm for NASA's flagship missions: recruiting2.ultipro.com/SPA1004AURA/...

In what is surely a metaphor for 2025, we had to get rid of our tree on Christmas Day due to an out-of-control aphid infestation. Here’s hoping next year is better.

It’s a small thing in the grand scheme of things, but I really enjoy how our local fire department brings Santa through the neighborhood every year on Christmas Eve. ❤️🎄

Please enjoy this last Hubble news item of 2025. Happy holidays!

I predict that before this administration is over, the Museum of African American History and Culture will be shut down, and quite possibly bulldozed. Because how dare you portray slavery as a bad thing? It built our great country! www.cnn.com/2025/12/21/p...

That’s what these ‘debates’ are really about: framing old fashioned oppression as some kind of high-brow concern for women’s happiness. You know what makes us happy? Bank accounts. Voting rights. The ability to leave a bad marriage and not have a miscarriage kill us.

Why decline all these chances to defend feminism? Because to participate would be accepting the premise that our rights and humanity are up for debate in the first place. Once you’ve conceded that it’s reasonable to ask whether women’s equality was a mistake, you’ve already lost.

This is a fascinating story, but the real “star” is the amazing animation that our team created. You should really click through and check it out on a big screen!

Home town pride!

They’re killing people as a twitter joke. It’s depraved. Can’t let yourself lose the capacity to be appalled and disgusted and outraged by this.

Happy Thanksgiving! 🥧 What's your favorite pie? #Thanksgiving #Pie Credit: STScI.

This thread brought me a lot of joy!

This is the future of our world.

We’re back, baby! Feast your eyes on this new Webb image and visualization:

NASA will host a live event at 3 p.m. EST, Wednesday, Nov. 19, to share imagery of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS collected by a number of the agency’s missions. The event will take place at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. www.nasa.gov/news-release... ☄️🔭