Tootfinder

Quite a #sunspot group is crossing the disk right now, AR (1)3576: a full-disk and detail image from https://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/assets/img/latest/latest_4096_HMII.jpg right now and the Mars-sized group - described in https://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/assets/img/latest/latest_4096_HMII.jpg - 24 1/2 hours earlier.

World Health Org air quality mismatch/hypocrisy
It's now come out that when the World Health Org did its own "return to office" in May 2020, they upgraded air quality! while telling _us_ "covid isn't airborne, that's a myth"!
Maaaybe the department talking to the world wasn't the same department as sorted out the precautions and wrote that document.
But still extremely "do as I say, not as I do".
Info & image via Maarten De Cock on Twitter.
#CovidIsAirborne #WHO

Weak-Lensing Detection of #Intracluster Filaments in the Coma Cluster: #DarkMatter Web Detected in #ComaCluster: https://subarutelescope.org/en/results/2024/02/07/3367.html

Downcast to hear that 9 of Nottingham's 12 libraries are now under threat of closure to "save money". When you take into account well-being and education, closing libraries is such a false economy. The council did lose a chunk of money with their ill-fated Robin Hood Energy enterprise some years ago, but I mostly blame the government for the cuts to local areas. Nottingham isn't the only council in this kind of predicament. :-(
#Nottingham #libraries #ToriesOut

Discovery of a #nova super-remnant cavity surrounding RS Ophiuchi: #archival data from the #IRAS satellite were used for this discovery, i.e. from the great great grand daddy or so of Webb!

Astronomical Image Processing Benchmark Study for Various #Telescope Aperture Shapes: #JWST), and obstructed circular (#HST)."

H5N1 flu research
Suspected H5N1 human-to-human transmission already reported in 2005 - an 11-year-old thought to have infected her mother & aunt.
"... the mother lived in a distant city, where she had no exposure to poultry, and traveled to the affected province only to care for her daughter [in hospital]. She had prolonged, direct, unprotected exposure to her critically ill daughter and had not had known exposure to poultry or poultry products."
#flu #H5N1

The activity region (1)3664 currently on the #Sun - an SDO HMI image https://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/assets/img/latest/latest_4096_HMII.jpg of 23:41 UTC - is huge: https://spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=08&month=05&year=2024. And it has been generating X-class flares galore: https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en/news/view/531/20240508-sunspot-region-3664-major-flares-and-cmes.html and https://twitter.com/Wicky_dubs_WX/status/1788339063595913628 and https://twitter.com/_SpaceWeather_/status/1788328068555112685

CW possible suicide 2/n
Some indication that Somerton is still alive: his ex-collaborator Nick said "to my knowledge, there's nothing to worry about".
I don't suppose he's in great shape though.
"somerton writing and posting a suicide note is a sign of significant mental distress and being a danger to himself, whether or not he acted on it." - @/bikenesmith_ on Twitter.
#JamesSomerton

250 years ago today, on 8 May 1774, there was a massing of planets (three plus the Moon with Venus further away) super-low and invisible in the morning sky which according to some - mostly secondary! - historical literature caused substantial worries in the Netherlands as an apocalyptic booklet about it was widely read. And it was believed until recently that the #Eisinga planetarium was a direct consequence of all this but this is probably not true: see https://www.facebook.com/dan.fischer.393/posts/pfbid0tDsLgDP9b6JVGPoSwKh2W46csqACaq9xhALbpZSHcGojwRB16ysnKu8ASB6xvxhGl for new context!

CW possible suicide 3/n
It's sort of fascinating to me. How can someone get help when their own behaviour is so self-defeating? I want him treated fairly and I want him to have access to support, but I wouldn't pick him as a friend. What does society owe him, what's my responsibility.
He did have quite a good income from his plagiarism-supported career, and I suspect he still has enough money to pay for therapy, but I don't feel sure that's a path he actually would take.
#JamesSomerton

Star clusters in #TidalDebris: https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/526/2/2341/7286662?login=false -> Hubble detects celestial 'String of Pearls' star clusters in galaxy collisions: https://hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2024/news-2024-004 and https://news.asu.edu/20240208-science-and-technology-hubble-detects-celestial-string-pearls-star-clusters-galaxy

Techie question about routers/connections - insight requested
We've had intermittent internet problems for a while now. I'll be on Zoom and my camera freezes and my audio goes choppy. Or uploads fail.
The ISP person is suggesting it could be due to radar interference. I understand _wifi_ glitching because of radar interference (see article), but it's happening over ethernet as well. Could radar somehow make the whole router reset itself? Is that a thing?
#tech

Western Australia's role in Global #Meteor Network expands with 16 new cameras installed: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-09/new-global-meteor-network-cameras-in-western-australia/103433704 - the network features more than 1000 cameras across the world. See https://www.meteornews.net/2024/02/06/global-meteor-network-report-2023/ for the GMN annual report for 2023.

Low Traffic Neighbourhood surveys, England
"... overall, twice as many local people supported them as opposed them. ...
"Surveys of 1,800-plus residents in four sample schemes, in London, Birmingham, Wigan and York, found an average of 45% support and 21% opposition. ...
"In a sign that the controversy about the schemes might be largely generated by politicians and the media, 58% of people did not even know they lived in an LTN."
Haha!
#LTN

300 years of sclerosponge thermometry shows #GlobalWarming has exceeded 1.5°C: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-023-01919-7.epdf?sharing_token=-tSDv0EvaMsx364dVzdPs9RgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0MOX3HbU322Il-5TcvT6m1oXRpbJt3VNEJfSrnQ-ZkTuO7-7qLuiKxA3VdhtFlhsWcqnWWJkmqLkv1n4I__p4tPpZQp95mHV2ibOJCnfmCZINug-GeRrH0v-D3kLZ4yaok= -> The world has warmed 1.5 °C, according to 300-year-old sponges: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00281-8 - by the time that official temperature records began, global temperatures had already risen by half a degree.

A Measurement of Gravitational Lensing of the #CosmicMicrowaveBackground Using SPT-3G 2018 Data: https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.11608 -> Results from South Pole Telescope’s new camera emerge: https://www.anl.gov/article/results-from-south-pole-telescopes-new-camera-emerge - gravitational lensing maps from initial data promise even more detail.

NASA’s #TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) returned to science operations May 3 and is once again making observations: https://science.nasa.gov/missions/tess/nasas-tess-temporarily-pauses-science-observations/ - the satellite went into safe mode April 23 following a separate period of down time earlier that month.

Or as I put it in my song that came out the other day... "One rule for us, one rule for you"
https://musicians.today/@SingleBass/112404967453798809

The webcast #Axiom3 should begin at 12:25 UTC (7:25 a.m. EST) today, with the splash-down off the Florida coast around 13.30 UTC.

To be more precise the #reentry of the ISS batteries happened between Mexico and Cuba - the German Air Force explains the process and has a map: https://twitter.com/Team_Luftwaffe/status/1766225365066784805. And the whole story in once piece now at https://skyweek.wordpress.com/2024/03/09/allgemeines-live-blog-ab-dem-9-marz-2024/#Mar09

In five years' time, asteroid #Apophis will fly very close to Earth, a unique opportunity to study it - concepts for a national German small satellite mission are now being examined at the University of Würzburg: https://www.uni-wuerzburg.de/en/news-and-events/news/detail/news/nealight-concepts/

The Discovery of the Faintest Known #MilkyWay Satellite Using UNIONS: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ad0d9f -> Astronomers discover ancient star system orbiting around Milky Way using telescopes atop Mauna Kea: https://bigislandnow.com/2024/04/08/astronomers-discover-ancient-star-system-orbiting-around-milky-way-using-telescopes-atop-mauna-kea/

A secondary atmosphere on the rocky #Exoplanet 55 Cancri e: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07432-x.epdf?sharing_token=UtaZKMzloML5yPKWhqHP1dRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0OG68gPTxoS1te7YdJNwKp1FuRmnk41LnSxfpLtYiu1N3oJBpHVGIg4U7MtxnF-cKFodPaiMCa75xzE9nj_guodxfdIEEjwqT7Tbz6rfCTnypM1Hy5zXcCMEjuhhKq9Ixg= -> NASA's Webb Hints at Possible Atmosphere Surrounding Rocky Exoplanet: https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2024/news-2024-102 and https://science.nasa.gov/missions/webb/nasas-webb-hints-at-possible-atmosphere-surrounding-rocky-exoplanet/

We are now in the uncertainty range of the #reentry of a 2.6 ton battery pack thrown away from the ISS three years ago: in https://twitter.com/PlanetariumBO/status/1766112648574194034 I've collected the most recent predictions (times in CET = UTC 1 hour) with central times between 18:00 and 19:30 UTC and stated error bars of 2 to 3.5 hours. Things have become interesting for Europe, with low overflights at 18:19 and perhaps 19:50 UTC - and a (slim) chance of falling battery parts ...

New black hole spin values for Sagittarius A* obtained with the outflow method: #BlackHole is Ready for a Kick: https://chandra.si.edu/press/24_releases/press_020824.html -> https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/telescopes-show-the-milky-ways-black-hole-is-ready-for-a-kick/

Reminder that alt text should aspire to give the same info as is conveyed by the graphic - as if you were on the phone to a friend, describing the picture or reading out text.
What you're aiming for is that the people who _can't_ see the graphic are then on the same footing as the ones who _did_ see it - able to appreciate the joke firsthand, or participate in the ensuing conversation.
(If there's text, most times that means copying the text.)
#access #inclusion

The end of the ISS battery pack came at 19:29 UTC at 22.0°N 85.5°W over the Atlantc Ocean we now hear - so there goes another #reentry over water which probably nobody saw (except for an American early warning satellite, the most likely source for time and coordinates).

Rogue worlds meet the dark side - revealing terrestrial-mass primordial black holes with the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope: #PrimordialBlackHoles: https://www.nasa.gov/missions/roman-space-telescope/how-nasas-roman-mission-will-hunt-for-primordial-black-holes/

Gaza / thoughts
The cruelty of how people in Gaza are being treated is hard to get my head around.
At one level I do understand it. Humans are able to think of other humans as not mattering & different from them. And a lot of people in Israel are _intentionally_ brought up to think of Palestinians as different from them & not mattering. Plus Israeli news doesn't show them the same things we're seeing. But still.
Dreading what's going to happen next in Rafah.
#Gaza

INTERSTELLAR SIGNAL LINKED TO ALIENS WAS ACTUALLY JUST A TRUCK: https://hub.jhu.edu/2024/03/07/alien-meteor-truck/ - the findings from a Johns Hopkins University-led team raise doubts that materials pulled last year from the ocean are alien materials from a 2014 meteor fireball (the most hilarious press release I've seen in years).

CW possible suicide
So apparently James Somerton, slightly famous for extensive plagiarism as explained in that long vid by Hbomberguy, has put a post on Twitter which looks like a suicide note.
Twitter's been roiling with "it's not Hbomb's fault / yes it is / don't do it James". Nobody knows if he's actually dead or not. Some people posted that he was, then backtracked.
I'm thinking: if he _isn't_ dead, what an even worse level of social awkwardness to come back to. Aieee.
#JamesSomerton

From 12 March and only for a few weeks some of the #2024BX1 meteorites are on public display in a museum in Berlin: #Ribbeck pieces could already be seen at several #meteorite fairs in various countries, though.

good rant on public health
From Julia Doubleday back in January:
"... demanding clean air and clean water is not “living in fear” but simply expecting the bare minimum of a democratic society to which we pay taxes...
"Zero public health projects in the history of ever have had a stated goal of “ignore it because we have to live life.” It’s fundamentally antithetical to the very concept of public health."
#covid #health #AirQuality

Recommendations for accelerating open #preprint #PeerReview to improve the culture of #science: https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3002502 - "Preprints are enabling new forms of peer review that have the potential to be more thorough, inclusive, and collegial than traditional journal peer review, and to thus fundamentally shift the culture of peer review toward constructive collaboration."

Oriented Bedrock Samples Drilled by the #Perseverance #Rover on Mars: #Mars’ ancient magnetic field.

EIGER - Characterizing the Host #Galaxies of Luminous #Quasars at z ≳ 6: #JWST ... that telescope has already become a kinda unexciting normal thing for astronomy.)

In 15 minutes (at 2:30 UTC) NASA, Boeing, and United Launch Alliance will host a news conference to discuss Monday’s scrubbed launch attempt of the agency’s Crew Flight Test due a faulty oxygen relief valve observation on the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket Centaur second stage: https://blogs.nasa.gov/boeing-crew-flight-test/2024/05/06/nasa-boeing-to-update-media-on-starliner-crew-flight-test-tonight/

And another movie about the #SolarEclipse a month ago - this time with German narration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSXX5IQnrsc

Signatures of Open Magnetic Flux in #Jupiter's Dawnside Magnetotail: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2023AV001111 -> UAF scientist’s research answers big question about our system’s largest planet: https://www.gi.alaska.edu/news/uaf-scientists-research-answers-big-question-about-our-systems-largest-planet

good overview of UK health stats
... inc health service stats, like how many doctors or how many scanners, and people stats, like how many people off sick.
"The number of people economically inactive due to long-term sickness is at a record high of 2.8 million in the UK."
From Bob Hawkins.
#UK #health #stats #covid #economics #NHS

CBS 60 Minutes - well, actually 13 minutes - about the challenges the #Artemis program is facing ... and how #BlueOrigin might save the day in case #SpaceX doesn't deliver: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nasa-artemis-moon-mission-faces-delays-space-agency-pushes-ahead-60-minutes/ with a transcript in https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nasa-working-with-spacex-and-blue-origin-to-land-us-astronauts-back-on-the-moon-60-minutes-transcript/ and a Chinese reaction via a cartoon to the Nelson statement in https://twitter.com/globaltimesnews/status/176452436693370493

Yay, new visuals from #Odysseus! Namely from the small astronomy camera ILO-X from which many thumbnaiils and a few hi-res images taken during descent made it to Earth: see https://iloa.org/ilo-x-precursor/ and https://twitter.com/ILOA_Hawaii/status/1765135232221802734 for an animation of all good and bad pictures and https://skyweek.wordpress.com/2024/03/03/crew-8-vor-start-nachster-schichtwechsel-der-iss/ (scroll down) for five of the hi-res frames retrieved from it!

elections, East Midlands
Just seen that turnout for the East Midlands Mayor vote was only 24.93%! That doesn't seem like much.
#EastMidlands #election

election results, Notts / E Mids, comments
I'm pleased to see the Greens coming up.
And I'm relieved that the Green vote didn't accidentally give us a Tory mayor! Would've preferred Single Transferable Vote.
#Nottingham
#EastMidlands

election results, Notts / E Mids
So it's a Labour East Midlands Mayor, and a Labour Police Commissioner for Notts.
Frank A-S, the Green candidate for mayor, got 11% of the votes, coming in third after Labour & Tories. Reform were close behind, then the Independent, then Lib Dems trailing.
I don't know if there's the same deposit system in Mayor elections, but if this had been a general election, Lib Dems would've lost their deposit.
#Nottingham
#EastMidlands

JWST Directly Images Giant Planet Candidates Around Two Metal-polluted #WhiteDwarf Stars: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ad2348 -> JWST Photographs Possible Giant Planets Around White Dwarfs: https://aasnova.org/2024/02/15/jwst-photographs-possible-giant-planets-around-white-dwarfs/

A scientific paper about the asteroid turned fireball turned meteorite shower - "Atmospheric entry and fragmentation of small asteroid #2024BX1: Bolide trajectory, orbit, dynamics, light curve, and spectrum": https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.00634

Primordial Orbital Alignment of Sednoids: #Sednoids: Echoes of a Rogue Planet in the Early Solar System? https://aasnova.org/2024/03/05/sednoids-echoes-of-a-rogue-planet-in-the-early-solar-system/

Encounter circumstances of asteroid 99942 Apophis with the catalogue of known asteroids: #Apophis collides with another asteroid, redirects to Earth: https://news.westernu.ca/2024/03/apophis-miss/ - Western astronomer calculates paths of all known asteroids to rule out planetary impact.

Israeli murders (no graphic pix, just sad news)
Killing people who were very clearly only there to deliver food. The disregard of law doesn't get much more blatant than this.
Respect to all the people risking their lives to help others.
#Gaza #Israel

Oxygen production from dissociation of #Europa’s water-ice surface: #Juno Mission Measures #Oxygen Production at Europa: https://www.nasa.gov/missions/juno/nasas-juno-mission-measures-oxygen-production-at-europa/

Possible #PopulationIII signatures at z=10.6 in the halo of GN-z11 / A small and vigorous black hole in the early Universe: #Webb Unlocks Secrets of One of the Most Distant #Galaxies Ever Seen: https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2024/news-2024-106 and https://science.nasa.gov/missions/webb/webb-unlocks-secrets-of-one-of-the-most-distant-galaxies-ever-seen/

New media company from Mehdi Hasan:
#MehdiHasan #media #journalism

O.k., here is what #comet #12P #PonsBrooks looks like these days with *advanced* astrophotography gear ... worlds apart from what small cameras, let alone binoculars under poor skies, reveal. Sources (with technical detail): https://twitter.com/Komet123Jager/status/1764214049468727358 and https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=7260774970704780

when "masks don't work"
What I was thinking about this morning:
Any intervention depends on both
• the tech itself
and
• people understanding how to use it.
If you don't know that covid is airborne and floats in the air like smoke... then you aren't going to know at what points a respi mask would be protective.
This explains a lot of the research where masks allegedly "don't work" against covid.
#masks #covid #stats

Having just somehow made it through the completely derivative "Spaceman" - https://apnews.com/article/movie-review-spaceman-adam-sandler-c27c3cf28f53e88a1244cad17c67633f - on Netflix (that put "2001", "Solaris" and a dozen lonely astronaut in deep space movies into a blender ... and then added a cute interstellar spider, o.k. *that* was kinda new) I can only state once again: if you want to see a space movie with deep thoughts that is *also* highly entertaining, turn to John Carpenter's "Dark Star", getting 50 (!) years old in a few weeks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Star_(film)

CDC guideline foolishness
"CDC Director Dr. Mandy Cohen said the agency is changing its guidance because most of the US population has some immunity against Covid and, as a result, the country is no longer seeing large waves of infections, hospitalizations and deaths from the coronavirus. ... the nation reaches a kind of steady state with the virus."
"Steady state" of decay, maybe.
Respect to Dr Eric Topol for saying the words "Long Covid" in this article.
#CDC #covid

A Medieval Islamic #Astrolabe with Hebrew Inscriptions in Verona: https://brill.com/view/journals/nun/39/1/article-p163_9.xml -> This rare 11th century Islamic astrolabe is one of the oldest yet discovered / 1,000-Year-Old Astrolabe Illuminates Scientific Exchange Between Muslims, Jews, And Christians: https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/03/this-rare-11th-century-islamic-astrolabe-is-one-of-the-oldest-yet-discovered/ / https://www.iflscience.com/1000-year-old-astrolabe-illuminates-scientific-exchange-between-muslims-jews-and-christians-73220

Metals from spacecraft #reentry in stratospheric aerosol particles: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2313374120 -> Satellites burning up in our atmosphere may not be as harmless as first thought: https://www.businessinsider.com/satellites-burn-atmosphere-particles-stratosphere-climate-ozone-2024-2 - spacecraft burning up in the atmosphere are leaving behind metal particles, scientists are racing to understand if that affects the climate, and one risk is that these particles may spark rainbow-colored clouds that damage the ozone layer.

Ultralight Primordial Black Holes: #BlackHoles That Can't Die: https://www.universetoday.com/166866/the-universe-could-be-filled-with-ultralight-black-holes-that-cant-die/ (yes, PBHs are pretty controversial and pure speculation at this point ... but I know one eminent - is that the right word? - astrophysicist who is convinced that they'd solve numerous current problems in astrophysics all at once. And gravitational waves of black hole mergers - seeing light participants - could prove the PBH hypothesis).

JWST MIRI MRS Observations of T Cha - Discovery of a Spatially Resolved Disk Wind: #Planet Formation: https://www.seti.org/press-release/jwst-captures-end-planet-formation

Zšzrak ve stínu Měsíce (dokumentšrní film, 2024): #SolarEclipse which premiered an hour ago (Czech audio only so far).

The 17 April 2021 widespread solar energetic particle event: #SolarStorm: https://science.nasa.gov/science-research/heliophysics/multiple-spacecraft-tell-the-story-of-one-giant-solar-storm/

The #Crew8 launch from some distance but with interesting details: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2vGqswkBgg - in https://www.facebook.com/groups/SpaceLaunchSchedule/posts/1082906036083186/ some stills (and in https://skyweek.wordpress.com/2024/03/03/crew-8-vor-start-nachster-schichtwechsel-der-iss links to many more visuals around the launch which also generated a fine sky show).

The #Change6 mission is underway, with the trans-lunar injection coming up: https://www.youtube.com/live/vB0vlVm1PkU with English commentary.

The NASA SpaceX #Crew8 Postlaunch News Conference, discussing in particular the close-out issue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZsV8hsTlUI - also https://twitter.com/SpaceflightNow/status/1764520304984948966 with a thread about it and a NASA press release at https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasas-spacex-crew-8-launches-to-international-space-station/

Biogenic Sulfur Gases as #Biosignatures on Temperate Sub-Neptune Waterworlds: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ad3801 -> Webb telescope probably didn’t find life on an exoplanet ... yet: https://news.ucr.edu/articles/2024/05/02/webb-telescope-probably-didnt-find-life-exoplanet-yet - claims of biosignature gas detection were premature.

2 1/4 hours til launch of the #Crew8 which is on board the Dragon already, the chances for good weather are 85% now, and the new webcast is on at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qe_1qo6teZs

The Optically Thick Rotating Magnetic Wind from a Massive #WhiteDwarf Merger Product - Axisymmetric Magnetohydrodynamic Simulations: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ad1f5c -> Winds of Merged White Dwarfs: https://aasnova.org/2024/05/03/winds-of-merged-white-dwarfs/

The recent surprisingly bad attempt by John Oliver to tackle #UFOs set straight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3-TYAxQD0c - see also https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/john-oliver-abandons-evidence-to-promote-the-ufo-mystery and https://theness.com/neurologicablog/ufos-and-sgu-on-john-oliver/

Aperture photometry on asteroid trails - detection of the fastest rotating near-Earth object (namely #2024BX1 which then exploded and dropped meteorites in Germany): https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.04142 -> Asteroid that broke up over Berlin was fastest-spinning one ever seen: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2428473-asteroid-that-broke-up-over-berlin-was-fastest-spinning-one-ever-seen/ - before it shattered over Germany, the asteroid 2024 BX1 was clocked rotating once every 2.6 seconds, the fastest spin we have observed.

The Central Kinematics and Black Hole Mass of 4C 37.11: #BlackHole Pair Ever Found: https://noirlab.edu/public/news/noirlab2405/?lang - data from Gemini North provide possible explanation for supermassive binary black hole’s halted merger.

Animations of the #Change6 spacecraft and instruments (short) and its complete mission to the Moon and back (long): https://twitter.com/wulei2020/status/1786200646783471899 and https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=809209764597239. And mission previews: https://edition.cnn.com/2024/05/02/china/china-change-6-moon-probe-launch-intl-hnk-scn/ and https://pakobserver.net/chinas-change-6-to-carry-pakistan-payload-to-moon/ (don't forget the small Pakistani Moon orbiter coming along!) and https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01056-x and https://www.planetary.org/articles/change-6-launch-what-to-expect and https://spacenews.com/china-ready-to-launch-lunar-far-side-sample-return-mission/

A cosmic glitch in #gravity: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1475-7516/2024/03/045 -> Moving one step closer to understanding mysteries at the edge of the universe: https://uwaterloo.ca/news/media/cosmic-glitch-gravity

Live video from the #Change6 launch site: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Hu2x_q97eM - dunno if they'll stay on air until the launch at this URL; the similar feed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yd5LbWtVihQ 1/2 day ago lasted two hours.

The galaxy group merger origin of the Cloverleaf #OddRadioCircle system: https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2024/05/aa49900-24/aa49900-24.html -> X-ray Satellite XMM-Newton Sees ‘Space Clover’ in a New Light: https://www.nasa.gov/missions/xmm-newton/x-ray-satellite-xmm-newton-sees-space-clover-in-a-new-light/

Watch live with us as a crew of four launch on NASA's SpaceX #Crew8 mission to the International Space Station. Liftoff is targeted at 4:16 UTC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgQKipH2g9I

According to #Change6 to the Moon (and back) is now planned for 9:27 UTC today (Friday).

Is #Betelgeuse Really Rotating? Synthetic #ALMA Observations of Large-scale Convection in 3D Simulations of Red #Supergiants: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ad24fd -> A new spin on Betelgeuse’s boiling surface: https://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/1094283/hl202403

Horizontal running inside circular walls of Moon settlements: a comprehensive countermeasure for low-gravity deconditioning? #gravity environment.

Communications with #Odysseus have now ceased but among the last images downloaded before the lunar lander was sent to (temporary?) sleep was this great fisheye view from 22 February - it shows the Earth crescent next to the blazing Sun: https://twitter.com/Int_Machines/status/1763336637432385813 -> https://twitter.com/JPMajor/status/1763338923806543919

The first pictures from the #Odysseus astronomy camera ILO-X are in! This one was taken with the wide field-of-view imager on 22 February 2024 about 4.2 minutes prior to touchdown which occurred 23:24 UTC: It shows craters in the Moon South Pole region as well as the IM-1 Odysseus lunar lander. See https://iloa.org/ilo-x-precursor/ for more: "To date, ILOA has received 9 high-resolution and 105 thumbnail images from the ILO-X imagers which will be shared as soon as the data has been processed internally."

Nightside clouds and disequilibrium chemistry on the hot Jupiter WASP-43b / Two-Dimensional Eclipse Mapping of the Hot Jupiter WASP-43b with JWST MIRI/LRS: #exoplanet WASP-43b - high temperatures and extreme wind speeds influence the chemistry inside the planet’s atmosphere: https://www.mpia.de/news/science/2024-07-jwst-wasp43b and https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2024/news-2024-117 and https://science.nasa.gov/missions/webb/nasas-webb-maps-weather-on-planet-280-light-years-away/

Lithium-rich #Cepheid V470 Cas: https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2024/03/aa49022-23/aa49022-23.html -> UH Hilo astronomer leads discovery of extremely rare property in star: https://www.hawaii.edu/news/2024/04/30/discovery-of-extremely-rare-property-in-star/

The webinar "Photographing the April 8 Total #SolarEclipse" last week was quite informative - and now there is a recording at https://vimeo.com/918392846 while the slides are at https://assets.photoephemeris.com/240224_Photographing_the_April_8_Total_Solar_Eclipse_474b37b32e.pdf

An environmental analysis of public #UAP sightings and #sky view potential: #UFOs: https://www.newswise.com/articles/the-west-is-best-to-spot-ufos - researchers identified environmental factors that explain why reports of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena are more common in certain regions of the country.

The new #SLIM navigation camera image from the Moon https://twitter.com/SLIM_JAXA/status/1762671786775490715 shows the rock shadows already longer than in the first one after the lunar night: https://twitter.com/SLIM_JAXA/status/1762094730324902120 - it's not clear yet how the precious hours till the second sunset for the lander will be used.

The next steps for the #Euclid mission as just explained by Knud Jahnke in the online talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJK7746TRFQ - May 23 will bring many (mostly technical I reckon) papers but also a few more 'pretty pictures'. But no cosmology this year or next: the big sky survey has just begun and the science is hard to extract.

More press releases about early results from China's #EinsteinProbe (EP) astronomical satellite: https://ep.bao.ac.cn/ep/cms/article/view?id=166 and https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Einstein_Probe_opens_its_wide_eyes_to_the_X-ray_sky and https://www.mpe.mpg.de/8007188/news20240427

How Intuitive Machines came to the assessment that the mission of #Odysseus was an "unqualified success" in the end: in https://skyweek.wordpress.com/2024/02/26/allgemeines-live-blog-ab-dem-26-2-2024/#Feb28 a detailled summary - in German - of today's press conference. New pictures in https://www.intuitivemachines.com/_files/ugd/7c27f7_90794d5877434b46a9ba1dffea3307aa.pdf and the thread https://twitter.com/Int_Machines/status/1762919213155381756. 350 MB telemetry and data were sent to Earth, all through the Low Gain Antenna. The battery will be down in a few hours, Odysseus wlll be sent to sleep - and in 2 to 3 weeks attempts will be made to revive it.

World’s highest observatory explores the universe: #TAO telescope in Chile aims to reveal origins of planets, galaxies and more.

The Dimorphos ejecta plume properties revealed by LICIACube / Physical properties of asteroid Dimorphos as derived from the DART impact / Characterization of the DART Impact Ejecta Plume on #Dimorphos from #LICIACube Observations: #DART’s asteroid smashup reveal complex debris: https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/02/analyzing-images-from-a-close-flyby-of-darts-asteroid-impact/ - a CubeSat trailed the DART asteroid impactor, capturing images of debris set loose.

The Hunt for Perpendicular #MagneticField Measurements in #Plasma: #Ionosphere: https://www.psi.edu/blog/study-offers-improved-look-at-earths-ionosphere/

A serendipitous discovery of H I-rich #GalaxyGroups with #MeerKAT: #galaxies in under three hours: https://www.sarao.ac.za/news/astronomers-discover-49-new-galaxies-in-under-three-hours/

China's #EinsteinProbe (EP) astronomical satellite, sent into space in January this year, has captured its first in-orbit detection images: https://english.news.cn/20240427/c635065fbeed4836a559a12493e83411/c.html - inspired by the functions of lobster eyes, EP uses new X-ray detection technology to observe mysterious transient phenomena in the universe that flicker like fireworks.

50 years ago #Mercury was visited by a human spacecraft - Mariner 10 - for the first time: https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=8378555762160123

A few images of #Odysseus at 30 meters altitude have just been published in https://twitter.com/Int_Machines/status/1762490074048958522 and https://twitter.com/Int_Machines/status/1762490076741644689 together with this update: "Flight Controllers continue to communicate with Odysseus. This morning, Odysseus efficiently sent payload science data and imagery in furtherance of the Company’s mission objectives. Flight controllers are working on final determination of battery life on the lander, which may continue up to an additional 10-20 hours."

Galactic Structure From Binary #Pulsar Accelerations - Beyond Smooth Models: #DarkMatter find #MilkyWay galaxy is highly dynamic: https://www.uah.edu/news/items/uah-researchers-using-pulsar-measure-ments-to-probe-dark-matter-find-milky-way-galaxy-is-highly-dynamic

42 ... is not the answer to everything but the hours that have passed since the last (and only moderately detailled) update on the status of and crucial communications effort with #Odysseus on the Moon - not good given the total lifetime of the lander of one week in the best case: almost three of these days have now passed. To ease our nerves here are some #snowdrop (Galanthus nivalis) pictures I just took in my neighborhood in #Bochum, Germany ...