Lmst

Thomas Connor boosted:

Unfortunately, I can't find a good "Burning the Library of Alexandria" emoji for Slack...

@franco_vazza Excellent use of the left foot

@franco_vazza My only MDPI publication -- Universe -- was a joke of a referee process. Two reviewers, and I had to justify every citation I included that had me a co-author of the submitted paper as a co-author of the cited paper ... but I was not impressed by the caliber of the reviewing done.

They're only Solar if they come from the Day Star region of France; otherwise, they're just sparkling relative units.

On the one hand, as an X-ray astronomer who does not work on bright objects, I'm happy to go along with dunking on the Crab as a nonsense unit.

Conversely, as an X-ray astronomer (and one employed by a flagship X-ray observatory) who has to talk to low-energy folks, I feel like I need to stand up for what is, in effect, just sparkling Solar Luminosities.

#Astrodon

@dburke I thought I could still get to the AI when I tried to, but either I can't or Google stopped letting people find meaning in their lives/searches.

@dburke Your lips to Joel and Bob's ears.

@dburke @vlk Ours is a long-standing astronomy program. It's only normal that many of our esteemed scientists are now corporeal emeritus.

Thomas Connor boosted:

It's a day early (Hubble's birthday is April 25, 1990), but it's still a good day to celebrate Ole Aluminumsides. This mug is already 10 years old! Hubble had three servicing missions at that age. #Hubble35 #Hubble25 #HubbleSpaceTelescope #ScienceMugs

Close-in photo of a white mug filled with coffee. The mug has a decal reading "Hubble 25," with an icon of the Hubble Space Telescope.

@vlk @dburke Maybe we should get some urns for HEAD lunches?

@dburke You should get the second sign, encouraging everyone to go spend money at Sarah's...

@AstroDave Not to be too much of a drive-by nitpicker, but the CXC is a part of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (or simply the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory), not MSFC.

@cadair Inkscape

Welp. Fuck.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2025/04/11/nasa-science-budget-cuts-trump/

#NASA #Astrodon #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Science

Screenshot of a portion of a news article, reading: "NASA’s astrophysics budget would take a huge hit, dropping from about $1.5 billion to $487 million. Planetary science would see a drop from $2.7 billion to $1.9 billion.

The Hubble and Webb space telescopes — which have been beaming views of deep space back to Earth — would remain supported under the proposal. However, no other telescope would be funded. That includes the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which has been designed to study distant galaxies and faraway planets from an orbital outpost about a million miles from Earth. The hardware of the Roman is in place and being integrated and tested at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The Roman is scheduled to launch as early as September 2026."

Two first quintiles rejected so far.

#JWST rejections going out. I'm beginning to think we might need another one of these to help lower the oversubscription!

#Astrodon

@dburke WSL? Are you'uns finally doing it?

@sundogplanets I had a chat with a guy at the 2022 IAU GA, who wanted my help as (I guess?) a Yank with pronouncing asteroid names -- he had a big binder, and I read a page how I thought each would be pronounced, while he noted where he needed to fix his own pronunciation.

Anyway, this is all to say that there's a lot of folks with asteroids named after them, but no one has named one after me...

Thomas Connor boosted:

@vbuendiar The link to the poll without paywall: https://static-enhanced-content-live.storage.googleapis.com/interactive/2025/bluesky-poll/index.html

Exciting times at #AAS245, as Lea Marcotulli prepares to present at a press conference on some super-exciting #NuSTAR + @ChandraScience results on the early universe

(I'm co-corresponding author on the paper, so I may be a little biased...)

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