Tootfinder

Weather forecast for tonight’s total lunar eclipse: cloudy with a chance of rain 🌕🌧️
#LunarEclipse #TotalLunarEclipse #astronomy

🔭 Photographers Build the World’s Largest Remote Observatory
https://petapixel.com/2025/07/11/photographers-build-the-worlds-largest-remote-observatory/

Photographers Build the World's Largest Remote Observatory
Clear night skies and nearly 500 telescopes.

How about some recent, well, pretty unusual #astronomy papers? Like https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.02162 = Dangerous Questions in Astronomy Education or https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.19984 = Communicating astrobiology and the search for life elsewhere: speculations and promises of a developing scientific field in newspapers, press releases and papers ... or https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.04718 = Quantum panprotopsychism and a consciousness-centered universe

I've a "old #astronomy software" side project and I'm looking for the early Mac software "StarMap" or "Star Map" from Bruce Webster.
So far my searches came up empty, but I'm not a specialist in old Mac software.
Does anyone have a copy of this app?
It's described in detail in a July 1985 BYTE article: #retrocomputing

SPHEREx and JWST reveal what comet 3I/ATLAS is... and isn't - Big Think #astronomy

SPHEREx and JWST reveal what comet 3I/ATLAS is... and isn't
Designed to map galaxies, the SPHEREx mission's first science result is instead about interstellar interloper 3I/ATLAS. No, it's not aliens.

At a tourist trap candy store in Central Indiana with a planetary science theme 🔵
#Astronomy

🍇 The universe's secret harvest: Shedding light on 'the cosmic grapes'
#astronomy

The universe's secret harvest: Shedding light on 'the cosmic grapes'
Astronomers have discovered a remarkably clumpy rotating galaxy that existed just 900 million years after the Big Bang, shedding new light on how galaxies grew and evolved in the early universe. Nicknamed the "Cosmic Grapes," the galaxy appears to be composed of at least 15 massive star-forming clumps—far more than current theoretical models predict could exist within a single rotating disk at this early time.

Astropolitics now at #ag2025goerlitz: Jörn Wilms about the next #Denkschrift for German #astronomy to be published in early 2026 - and for the first time in English because international collaboration is more important than ever.

🛰️ The Milky Way could be teeming with more satellite galaxies than previously thought
https://phys.org/news/2025-07-milky-teeming-satellite-galaxies-previously.html

The Milky Way could be teeming with more satellite galaxies than previously thought
The Milky Way could have many more satellite galaxies than scientists have previously been able to predict or observe, according to new research. Cosmologists at Durham University used a new technique combining the highest-resolution supercomputer simulations that exist, alongside novel mathematical modeling, to predict the existence of missing "orphan" galaxies.

Can anyone recommend good reads on how astronomical #bigdata is being managed, given the massive volumes coming in from, e.g. radio telescopes? Looking for mid-range accessibility, with some technical depth, but not specific to any one telescope or pipeline - more surveys/summaries of the kinds of architectural patterns / platforms, storage & retrieval tools. TIA & please boost for reach!
#astrodon #data #astronomy

🌠 Ryugu asteroid research reveals mineral history predating any on Earth
#astronomy

Ryugu asteroid research reveals mineral history predating any on Earth
In 2020, the Hayabusa2 uncrewed spacecraft successfully returned small fragments from the near-Earth asteroid Ryugu, providing the first pristine samples from a carbonaceous asteroid. Grains from those samples were studied at the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II), revealing new details into the asteroid's composition and origin. This insight could ultimately help answer big questions about how water and organic matter came to exist on early Earth, forming the building blocks of lif…

✴️ Dark dwarfs lurking at the center of our galaxy might hint at the nature of dark matter
#astronomy

Dark dwarfs lurking at the center of our galaxy might hint at the nature of dark matter
Celestial objects known as dark dwarfs may be hiding at the center of our galaxy and could offer key clues to uncover the nature of one of the most mysterious and fundamental phenomena in contemporary cosmology: dark matter.