Tootfinder

AMOC collapse on the front page. If it happens, the effects for the Netherlands can be bad: cold winters, heavy storms, drought, extra sea level rise. Some scientific research now estimates a probability of 50%.
Still, it's hard to get millions of funding for ocean measurements, while billions are being spent on telescopes, scientists complain.

NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory
is a satellite that studies gamma-ray bursts,
the most powerful explosions in the universe,
and other cosmic objects and events.
Swift houses three multiwavelength telescopes, collecting data in visible, ultraviolet, X-ray, and gamma-ray light.
All spacecraft in low Earth orbit experience slight drag from our planet’s atmosphere.
If they don’t have propulsion systems to maintain their orbits,
the drag gradually…

Swift Boost Mission
NASA has awarded Katalyst Space a contract to raise the orbit of its Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory.

If you ignore the fact that everything happens in USA (where else?), that according to the movie somehow only 1 government on earth knew about the fact (USA, obviously, nobody else have telescopes to watch the sky, aliens wouldn't land elsewhere on this planet ever, etc), and also that somehow the movie tries to mix 1 religion (christians) with aliens, then, The Disclosure Day by Steven Spielberg is a fun movie.
BTW, the music was written by John Williams, so it is very good.

The Mother of All Deep Space Radio Telescopes Is Going Up in the Nevada Desert
https://gizmodo.com/the-mother-of-all-deep-space-radio-telescopes-is-going-up-in-the-nevada-desert-2000771731

Metasurface-enabled astronomical #polarimetry: #Telescopes View the #Sun: https://today.ucsd.edu/photo-essays/a-small-metasurface-could-change-how-telescopes-view-the-sun

The ESO VLT has four Unit Telescopes (UT).
Yet at present only one of them, UT4, has an adaptive optics facility, which includes a deformable mirror.
Adaptive mirrors play a crucial role in adaptive optics facilities that correct observations for the atmosphere's blurring effect.
Because of this and its highly demanded instruments,
UT4 is one of the most oversubscribed telescopes on Earth.
Today we signed a contract with AdOptica for the design & produc…

ESO signs contract for next-generation deformable mirror for the VLT
ESO signs contract for next-generation deformable mirror for the VLT

Submillimeter Array Catches a Gamma-Ray Burst Thanks to new Fast-Response System - Universe Today https://www.universetoday.com/articles/submillimeter-array-catches-a-gamma-ray-burst-thanks-to-new-fast-response-system…

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on BBCRadio3's #NightTracks
Celer:
🎵 Rich Telescopes
#Celer
https://open.spotify.com/track/06zHuSUhvDau3V4K3Ow3FL

A Window for Water-hydrogen Demixing on Warm Metal-rich Sub-Neptunes: #exoplanets may be hiding water beyond Webb Telescope's reach, study finds: https://news.uchicago.edu/story/distant-exoplanets-may-be-hiding-water-beyond-webb-telescopes-reach-study-finds - UChicago scientists offer new way to read atmospheric data on a vast class of 'sub-Neptune' worlds.

Why doesn't Project NOVA - a multi-country network of telescopes monitoring for space threats - have a bleedin' website?
https://space.blog.gov.uk/2026/05/05/the-king-visits-site-of-new…

The King visits site of new UK Space Agency project to safeguard satellites in an increasingly crowded space  – UK Space Agency blog
His Majesty visited the site which will be the first of the UK’s new global network of optical telescopes.

More than 10,000 Starlink satellites currently orbit the Earth.
We see them crawling across dark skies, no matter how remote our location, and streaking through images from research telescopes.
SpaceX recently announced that it wants to launch
one million more of these satellites
as orbital data centres for AI computing power.
A few years ago, we wrote a paper predicting what the night sky would look like with 65,000 satellites from four planned megaconstellatio…

A million new SpaceX satellites will destroy the night sky — for everyone on Earth
If SpaceX launches one million new satellites, it will increase atmospheric pollution and risk of falling debris. And we will see more satellites than stars.

This month on All Space Considered, Griffith Observatory welcomed Dr. Joel Leja, Associate Professor of astronomy & astrophysics at The Pennsylvania State University, to discuss his research on the processes of galaxy formation derived from a combination of statistics, machine learning, and deep galaxy surveys with telescopes like the James Webb Space Telescope: #LittleRedDots

Molecular gas hidden in plain sight in the early Universe
Pasquier Noterdaeme, Jens-Kristian Krogager, Sergei Balashev
https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.18974 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2607.18974 https://arxiv.org/html/2607.18974
arXiv:2607.18974v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: We report the discovery of an extreme intervening molecular absorber at zabs = 4.1 towards the z = 4.7 quasar SDSS J080023.02 305101.22 revealed through strong H2 absorption that had remained unnoticed in archival data for about two decades. The system, which we analysed with new VLT/X-shooter observations, has a metallicity of about one-fifth the solar value, in line with the moderate dust reddening AV~0.06 mag. More strikingly, it exhibits the highest molecular fraction, fH2 = 2N(H2)/(2N(H2) N(HI))~=60%, measured at z>0 from direct determinations of both atomic and molecular hydrogen column densities. Notably, this fraction is comparable to the very highest values in the Local Group. The inferred fH2 still represents a conservative lower limit to the local molecular fraction since the H i absorption very likely includes atomic gas unrelated to the actual molecular component, as indicated by the wide (Delta v~500 km/s) multi-component low-ionisation metal profile.
The detection of such a system at early cosmic times is remarkable given the limited number of quasar spectra probing z>4. It suggests an unexpectedly high incidence of H2, with important implications for the evolution of molecular gas. This high incidence may be driven by high average densities and enhanced turbulence at those redshifts. At the same time, our results also highlight possible observational biases, both in quasar selection and in recognising strong H2 absorption, suggesting that a significant fraction of molecular gas may remain undetected, in particular near the peak of star formation. The present system offers a unique benchmark for developing efficient detection algorithms. Further progress will benefit from colour-independent quasar surveys, while constraining the physical conditions and environments of such extreme absorbers will require observations on future extremely large telescopes.
toXiv_bot_toot

A pair of stars spiralling around each other.
That’s the origin of a new source of repeating radio bursts we’ve detected, called ASKAP J1745.
In recent years, astronomers have been puzzling over mysterious bursts of radio signals, known as
"long-period transients" because of how slowly they repeat.
They were first discovered by chance with telescopes scanning large chunks of the sky.
To date, astronomers have only found a dozen of these weird sources, …

ASKAP J1745 and the mysterious signals coming from space
A pair of stars spiralling around each other. That’s the origin of a new source of repeating radio bursts just detected, called ASKAP J1745.

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on #BBC6Music's #6MusicsForeverDark
The Telescopes:
🎵 Revolutionary Blues
#TheTelescopes
#newRelease 🆕 album
https://thetelescopes.bandcamp.com/track/revolutionary-blues
https://open.spotify.com/track/2YuKCa41KIg4UPknqLQEX6