@sundogplanets@mastodon.social
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sundogplanets

@sundogplanets@mastodon.social

Professor of astronomy, farmer of goats. Asteroid (42910). She/her.

Has mostly lived in warmer places, now learning to live respectfully on Treaty 4 lands (Saskatchewan, Canada)

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sundogplanets, to random
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I'm in @startswithabang's podcast this week! Have a listen, I think it came out great - lots of discussion of whether or not I think Planet 9 exists, and why satellites (mostly Starlink) are probably going to make it impossible for us to ever find out for sure: https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/starts-with-a-bang-podcast-106-the-troublesome-hunt-for-planet-nine/

sundogplanets, to random
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Well, this "Environmental Justice in Space Workshop" looks completely amazing (and it's free! and fully online!)

I just registered!

https://whova.com/web/8YIH2KbK39nku47Vy9xe8EzribxFX0Qp6sQ0Tuw8q9Q=/

sundogplanets, to random
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Farmy morning before I sit down to (please please please) finish this (stupid awful) referee response to a paper (that I hate so much).

I tried a cheddar-ish cheese yesterday, but maybe I did the cheddaring part for too long? Or maybe my improvised press setup isn't good enough - still loads of holes, not knitting together well.

Just took down electronet, set up a small area near the pen, and later today I'll set up the rest on our front lawn. Don't need a lawnmower when you have goats!

sundogplanets,
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@Ppampolim Oh yeah, but you can only eat so much cheese! So I'm trying to make a few aged ones to save for later.

sundogplanets, to random
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I was listening to a classical music stream while working and Sabre Dance came on. I just learned that it is maybe the worst music ever for helping you write code.

Type faster! FASTER! BANG IT OUT!!! RUN IT!! NOW now now

sundogplanets, to random
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The only feeling I have about starship is dread.

They want to use that to launch batches of HUNDREDS of Starlinks at once. And guess where all those Starlinks will end up? The pieces that don't make it to the ground will end up in our upper atmosphere, screwing up the stratosphere, the ozone layer, who knows what else because SpaceX isn't required to do any environmental assessments of this.

Shit. Maybe a good time to post this essay I wrote yet again: https://theconversation.com/an-astronomers-lament-satellite-megaconstellations-are-ruining-space-exploration-215653

sundogplanets,
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Muting this thread now because the mansplaining ratio has gotten way too high!

sundogplanets, to random
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Gosh I love the sky here (even when it's trying to blow everything off the surface of the Earth, it's gorgeous!)

A barnyard covered with green grass, with a tall wooden fence on one side and an old yellow barn on the other. There are a bunch of goats eating grass, and the whole foreground is very brightly sunlit. In the background is incredibly dark clouds, making the sunlit closer part of the scene extra high contrast

cstross, to random
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We are going to end up with half a million low-orbit comsats turning the night sky into a streaky blur because everyone uses Starlink or similar for broadband because the telcos have allowed their terrestrial cable infrastructure to decay, in the interests of maximizing profit. And of course the satellite broadband will be slow and buggy because overloaded.
https://mastodon.social/@verge/112565885370238705

sundogplanets,
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@cstross Don't worry, they'll start crashing into each other and completely destroy our ability to use Earth's orbit or leave the planet way before we get to 500,000 sats

😭

sundogplanets, to random
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May you all sleep as comfortably as this pile of baby goats.

sundogplanets, to random
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I am talking o a reporter about this in a couple hours: https://regina.ctvnews.ca/from-outer-space-sask-farmers-baffled-after-discovering-strange-wreckage-in-field-1.6880353

This is about an hour away from my farm, so this'll be a fun conversation, and yet another great opportunity to tell a lot of people about what a huge problem we have with unregulated commercialization of orbit. (Also I just redid my slides for my public talk next week, this is going in!)

sundogplanets,
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Anybody remember that documentary filmmaker who brought a crew out here back in Feb? His whole film "Shifting Baselines" is effectively about how recklessly dangerous SpaceX is.

The Sask space junk fell about 30 km away from where the film crew and I went to access Bortle 2 dark skies, only a couple weeks later.

So, I just chatted with him again! Editing is almost done on his documentary, but he thought he could squeeze in a bit of a recording of me talking about space junk for an epilogue.

sundogplanets,
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I talked to the farmer again and apparently SpaceX is coming on Thursday to pick up the space junk. He said he'd be happy to host some journalists at his farm to record the hand-off and keep SpaceX honest.

So, I just emailed a large fraction of the local journalists who have interviewed me about this to give them a heads-up 😈

sundogplanets,
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@otte_homan Oh my gosh that is a HILARIOUS idea

sundogplanets,
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Wait wait wait wait... a piece of the SpaceX Crew Dragon trunk that landed in North Carolina last week actually hit someone's house?! https://abcnews.go.com/US/north-carolina-men-find-suspected-space-debris-same/story?id=110809039

sundogplanets,
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@markmccaughrean @ranx Wow...what a crazy story! Thanks for sharing

sundogplanets,
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@jmcrookston This is why it's suddenly a problem: https://planet4589.org/space/stats/active.html

Thanks, Starlink

sundogplanets,
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@michael_w_busch @andy Really?? Meteorites are covered?! Wow I never thought to check that in mine... guess I should!

sundogplanets,
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@megsouth Yeah, there are probably dozens.

sundogplanets,
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@carlysagan Did you see in the article the guy who found it thought it was a dead crow at first?!

sundogplanets,
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The farmer called me earlier today to let me know SpaceX won't be coming up until next week (exact date unknown).

Again... I cannot even imagine what a bureaucratic disaster it must be to take pieces of an American private company's spacecraft (which I recently learned are legally considered to be "munitions" by the US gov't) that fell in another country across an international land border.

HA HA HA HA good luck to whichever poor SpaceX employee drew the short straw on that job.

sundogplanets,
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@WTL They don't communicate or listen to reporters at all, as far as I can tell.

sundogplanets,
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Most hilariously absurd email I've received related to space junk so far:

Apparently I should pay some enterprising web-scraping company $200 for a plaque commemorating the incredible moment that an article from the Canadian Press with quotes from me was reprinted by the Hamilton Spectator.

Truly a historic moment worthy of a plaque.

sundogplanets,
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@timdesuyo Yeah, that's a really good point! And I can do that myself for a whole lot less than $200 :)

sundogplanets,
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I just got to chat with Josh Sokol about space junk and all other aspects of satellite pollution. He's an amazing writer and currently working on a book about how we're collectively losing the night sky. He talked to my astro 101 class years ago about being a science writer, and we've chatted a lot about satellite pollution.

Everything he writes is totally amazing, I'm really excited about his book (seriously, his articles are fantastic, read some of his writing here: https://www.joshuasokol.com/)

sundogplanets,
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@JohnBarentine He is wonderful! I'm so glad he's writing a book

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