astro_jcm

spacelizard, 2 months ago to Astro

Fascinating. It turns out that the secret to the seamless compositing in Mary Poppins was an optical beam splitter just like those used by astronomers today in Sodium laser guide star adaptive optics systems.

H/T @ja2ke via @grumpygamer

https://youtu.be/UQuIVsNzqDk

#Astrodon #Astronomy

gregeganSF, 2 months ago to random

It’s 30 years this month since PERMUTATION CITY was first published. But of course, all the same letters had been present in other books for centuries before, they just hadn’t been read in that order.

Excerpt at:

https://www.gregegan.net/PERMUTATION/Excerpt/PermutationExcerpt.html

coreyspowell, 2 months ago to science

The first-ever view of a solar eclipse from the surface of the Moon. That's the Earth eclipsing the Sun!

Images captured by NASA's Surveyor 3 lunar lander on April 24, 1967.

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140407.html #science #astronomy #space #nasa

The robotic Surveyor 3 mission took thousands of wide angle television images of the Earth in 1967, a few of which captured the Earth moving in front of the Sun. Several of these images have been retrieved from the NASA archives and compiled into this time-lapse video. Although the images are grainy, the Earth's atmosphere clearly refracted sunlight around it and showed a beading effect when some paths were blocked by clouds.

skrishna, 2 months ago to science

Normal day as a space reporter, just watching a video of a spacecraft flying through our sun and looking out at the Milky Way 🤯

(from the WISPR camera on the Parker Solar Probe)

#science #space #womeninstem

ClaireLamman, 2 months ago to Astronomy

Today the DESI Survey announces measurements of the expanding universe - the most precise of their kind! I had to make a cake.

I'm so excited to finally share our first main science results :)
Press release, featuring some non-buttercream graphics I made: https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2024/04/04/desi-first-results-make-most-precise-measurement-of-expanding-universe/

#sciencenews #astronomy #cosmology #space #astrophysics #scicom

video/mp4

ChrisWalter, 2 months ago to Astro

The @VRubinObs as seen at dawn this morning.

#Astrodon #Observatory #Chile

AstronomieNL, 2 months ago to Astronomy Dutch

Dutch Student cleans up archival data and uncovers two stellar cocoons.

News item with link to paper in A&A:
https://www.astronomie.nl/nieuws/en/student-cleans-up-archival-data-and-uncovers-two-stellar-cocoons-4056

Image: ESO/VLT/NACO, De Regt et al.

cc: @universiteitleiden @mattkenworthy @astro_jcm

#astronomie #astronomy #astrodon

gwenbeads, 2 months ago to random

The flexibility of #painting landscapes is quite freeing. I’ve always been challenged by drawing proportions just right, but with a landscape, it doesn’t matter if things are off by a little. So here is another #landscape, number 8, this one with a dog and a patch of snap dragons. The large plant at the right front is an homage to Dr. Seuss, truly an artistic genius. I’m also influenced by Klimt and Van Gogh.

#Gouache on cotton paper, 6” square

astro_jcm, 2 months ago to chile

If you have the chance to see the upcoming solar #SolarEclipse on April 8, go for it! Even if you've seen an annular #eclipse or an almost total one, the difference between that and a fully total one is like night and day –– pun intended!

Here's a shot I snapped of the 2019 eclipse from ESO's La Silla Observatory in #Chile. I vividly remember seeing the #Moon 's shadow crawling towards us from the Pacific Ocean. Unforgettable!

#astrodon #astronomy #astrophotography

vicgrinberg, 2 months ago to random

"There is a time for any fledgling artist where one's taste exceeds one's abilities. The only wat to get through this period is to make things anyway."

-- Gabrielle #Zevin, "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow"

#AboutToday #VicisBooks #2024reads

kevzag, 2 months ago to random

It's a big week for us here at the South Pole as we've begun preparations for this year's Event Horizon Telescope observing run. Recently we installed EHT's secondary and tertiary mirrors on the telescope deck and cooled the receiver "camera" down to just a few degrees above absolute zero. (All in a brisk -100F wind-chill)

image/jpeg

AbandonedAmerica, 2 months ago to random

The remains of an orange sectional sofa in the abandoned WFBR radio station in Baltimore. WFBR, which stood for World's First Broadcasting Regiment, was Baltimore's first broadcast radio station. WFBR helped launch the career of Robin Quivers, who was a consumer reporter on DJ Johnny Walker's show.

See the rest: https://www.abandonedamerica.us/wfbr-radio

generalising, 2 months ago to ChatGPT

I have a preprint out estimating how many scholarly papers are written using chatGPT etc? I estimate upwards of 60k articles (>1% of global output) published in 2023. https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.16887

How can we identify this? Simple: there are certain words that LLMs love, and they suddenly start showing up a lot last year. Twice as many papers call something "intricate", big rises for "commendable" and "meticulous".

#bibliometrics #scholcomm #chatgpt

mcnees, 2 months ago to random

Physicist Caroline Herzenberg was born #OTD in 1932. She is known for pioneering early work in Mössbauer spectroscopy, including an analysis of the first samples returned from the moon by the Apollo astronauts.

Image: Herzenberg as Finalist in the 1949 Science Talent Search

TarkabarkaHolgy, 2 months ago to random

First name: Mom
Last name: MOOOOOM

infobeautiful, 2 months ago to random

It’s our 15th anniversary and we’re hosting a series of rare live events this summer in London, San Francisco, LA, NYC and online. Join us for a funny & unique hyper-visual eve of ‘performance journalism’: https://geni.us/IIB-Live

franco_vazza, 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago) to Astronomy

#paperday : A review article I just produced with Andrea Botteon (IRA/INAF) in today #astroph:

"The seeding of cosmic ray electrons by cluster radio galaxies: a review"

https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.16068

which follows a conference of last year in Tropea, which I have extensively covered with past threads
(e.g.
https://mastodon.social/)

Worth of a small new #AstrophysicsFactlet about the impact of Radio Galaxies in the emergence of the most gigantic radio emissions in the sky.

#astronomy #astrodon

oatmeal, 2 months ago to random

Taking Care, written by Callista Buchen https://theoatmeal.com/comics/taking_care

ionica, 2 months ago to random

This Thursday I will speak at a conference in this spectacular shark venue and I keep thinking this offers great possibilities for dealing with people who say 'This is more of a comment than a question'.

thriveth, 2 months ago to Astronomy

The Oskar Klein Centre in Stockholm has a researcher portrait video out with our former Ph.D. student, current postdoc at University of Minnesota, and my much cherished collaborator, Alexandra. It's a cool video with good science explainers - youse should totes watch it!

#Astronomy #Astrophysics #Astrodon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQ0IV9MIoTA

vicgrinberg, 2 months ago to mastodon

Oooh, is this new? (Rhetorical question - even if it is not new, it seems new to me!)
I really like how mastodon (in the version currently running on mastodon.social) explains how blocks work!

P.S. Obviously not blocking this particular account, used it as an example 😅

#mastodon #fediverse

spacelizard, 2 months ago to Astronomy

I've been getting myself excited about getting the MAVIS instrument (https://mavis-ao.org/) on the telescope, even though that's still ~3 years off.

I was looking at this gorgeous image of Jupiter taken by the Hubble Space Telescope (https://esahubble.org/images/heic2017a/) and realising that MAVIS could do this with significantly higher resolution. Thanks to being on an 8 metre rather than 2.4 metre telescope MAVIS will have 3.3x the resolving power of HST, and the pixel sampling will be 5.4x finer (7.36 mas vs 40 mas).

I'm just looking at this 400% zoom crop and imagining a MAVIS image that's pin-sharp at the same magnification.

#Astronomy #Astrodon #VLT #MAVIS #AdaptiveOptics

400% zoom crop of the previous Hubble Space Telescope image of Jupiter, showing the Great Red Spot.

Kayla, 2 months ago to random

I hate the future.

drskyskull, 2 months ago to random

It's fun reading old 1800s era optics papers where scientists refer to studying a phenomenon "whenever the sun allows."

AkaSci, 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago) to random

A halo Coronal Mass Ejection CME, associated with an X1.1 flare at the Sun, was detected earlier today. A halo CME is one headed for earth.

The CME is expected to arrive at Earth late on 24 Mar through 25 Mar. Periods of G2 (Moderate) storming are likely on 24 Mar and periods of G3 (Strong) storming are likely on 25 Mar.
Keep an eye for strong Auroras Sunday night.
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/
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