Ever since 'Scavengers Reign' moved to #Netflix I keep seeing everywhere posts raving about how mind-bendingly awesome it is, and I couldn't be happier. I really hope Netflix takes note and treats this fantastic #scifi show better than HBO did.
The Atacama Desert in #Chile has some of the darkest night skies in the world, perfect for #astronomy. But it's also a very seismic area. When an #earthquake hits, how do we keep our telescopes safe? We tell you all about it in this new video: https://youtu.be/y_nfFwKwmmM
The more I use @phanpy the more I love it. One of my favourite features is the catch-up tool, which allows you to fetch all posts within the last X hours and rank them however you want.
Oldest first is particularly useful to catch up with folks in very different timezones. You can also rank by number of replies, boosts... even by "density" of information (denser posts: longer ones or those with multimedia content). You can even group posts by author.
1/4 "All those protoplanetary discs will be lost, like tears in a rain of ultraviolet photons."
Ok, it doesn't sound as cool as the actual quote, but still 😉
This tear-shaped object is a protoplanetary disc –the birthplace of planets around another star– observed with ESO's Very Large Telescope. Material from the disc is being stripped away by a bright star beyond the upper-right corner, outside of the field of view, hence this cometary shape.
Soon the telescope platform at ESO's Paranal Observatory in #Chile will look very different at night: all four of the 8.2 m telescopes of the VLT will be equipped with lasers! This is one of the ongoing upgrades of the GRAVITY+ instrument, which will allow us to study black holes, stars and planets like never before.
@astro_jcm I managed to see a guide star operating at Lick Observatory once. Photos show a bright yellow beam, but I was only able to see it in my peripheral vision. Very cool to see this perfectly straight yellow beam projecting upward from the dome!
1/2 I still struggle getting used to the fact that the smallest mirrors of the Extremely Large Telescope are similar in size to the primary mirrors of many current telescopes!
The M5 – the fifth mirror in the optical path – has reached a key milestone: its blank, the piece that will be later polished, has been finalised.
2/2 This flat elliptical mirror measures 2.7 by 2.2 metres. It's the largest tip-tilt mirror in the world: it will move without bending about 10 times per second.
It will work together with the M4, a very fast deformable mirror, to correct perturbations caused by the telescope mechanisms, the wind and atmospheric turbulence.
@tehstu Likewise! I really like chatting with the engineers here when I have the chance. Sometimes I feel that the engineering problems they have to solve are more bonkers than the astrophysical problems we want to solve with the things they build 😅
This image perfectly conveys just how huge the 100-m dish of the Green Bank Telescope is. I had the chance to visit it a few years ago, back when I lived in the US, and the view from the receiver room is stunning. Although I must admit that looking down through the mesh floor was... "an experience" 😵💫 😅
Started boiling some Weißwurst without realising I'm all out of sweet mustard, and stores are closed today. Should I...
(a) Go out and buy mustard in a gas station.
(b) Use sriracha, the only other sauce I happen to have at home right now, and risk being deported from Germany.
@astro_jcm 🤣
When I lived in Germany, I used the very strong French Dijon mustard (because the Weißwurst was too sweet for me). They didn't deport me but meanwhile, as a German, I live in the country of the best mustard. Dijon mustard in every supermarket. 😁