@ferricoxide I don't think you'll see the RC (release candidate) development versions unless you actively choose to download them, but when you upgrade to the full 3.2 version (when it's released), then yes 🙂👍

p.s. GIMP-3.2RC1 was released a few weeks ago, as noted by @andrealuck, so I'm a bit late getting to let you all know.

But it came to mind as I was installing an older version of GIMP last night, one that was compatible with the most recently compiled G'MIC plugins, available via MacPorts, under macOS Sequoia (yes, I'm behind 🤷‍♂️).

G'MIC contains the brilliant Banding Denoise tool, essential for removing much of the 1/f noise stripes so prevalent in low-background / narrow-band JWST images 👏

And yes, I also designed the GIMP logo & text in the top-right corner of the splash screen.

I've always loved Eurostile & related typefaces, & have used them in projects back to the early 1980s (when that meant rubbing letters from plastic Letraset sheets 😳).

I mean, I can't imagine for a moment why I'm so obsessed with that typeface ... 🤷‍♂️🙂

https://typesetinthefuture.com/2014/01/31/2001-a-space-odyssey/

The image is the NIRCam long-wavelength channel infrared view of the inner Orion Nebula, that I made using some of my Guaranteed Time Observations with Sam Pearson.

https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2023/09/Orion_Nebula_in_NIRCam_long-wavelength_channel

The main splash screen is higher resolution, but it flickered by too quickly for me to screengrab it – besides, this version is a bit more informative & you can get the *really* high-res version above.

I've been using the open source image processing tool, GIMP, as part of my work for many years 👍

So it was an honour to be asked to create a splash screen for the latest version release candidate, GIMP-3.2RC1 🙇‍♂️

Thanks to Jehan, GIMP project maintainer, & David Tschumperlé, project manager for the G'MIC plugins, for the conversations that led to the invitation 👏

And yes, the main release GIMP-3.2 will feature another of my JWST images (you can probably guess which 😉).

https://www.gimp.org/news/2025/11/17/gimp-3-2-RC1-released/

Excellent piece by Alexander Hurst on the strategic & environmental concerns of French Guiana, home to Europe’s spaceport, but also a vast swathe of Amazon rain forest.

It nicely lays out the dichotomy between how France & Europe are tackling “macro” pollution by CO2 & CH4 heating the world, with monitoring from space, & “micro” pollution by mercury from illegal gold mining, damaging local people’s health, monitored by gendarmes & legionnaires in the jungle.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/dec/04/europe-amazon-rockets-gold-foreign-legion-french-guiana

@lo_fye @Crell That would be nice, but it’s not as if it’s either quick or cheap to build Hubble or JWST class observatories. Filling the skies with junk wifi routers, on the other hand, is much more affordable.

@joriki Quite what that is supposed to refer to … 😬✌️

@Photo55 Well, gravity is not stopping us building a 39 metre diameter telescope in Chile, & with some colleagues, we've just submitted an abstract to conference next year exploring how you might manufacture a 100 metre telescope in space. So whether the Moon really helps in this regard, against all of its disadvantages, I don't know.

@Photo55 Dust. Keeping a telescope clean there would be a nightmare. Plus again, what are you hoping to shield an optical telescope from on the lunar farside? Radio, sure, makes more sense.

Long ago there was discussion about making huge optical telescopes with spinning liquid mercury primary mirrors, but those would only look at the zenith & have limited sky coverage.

But again, there are better ways of doing these things, if it wasn't for the dickhead billionaires & wannabe billionaires.

@Photo55 Moving the comsats higher doesn't help either – they want them low for low latency. And by putting them low, they just get Earth's atmosphere to clean up after them – putting them higher would lead to very long / infinite decay times, then requiring later de-orbiting missions to keep space "clean".

As for moving astronomers higher, nope – how am I supposed to put the 39m ELT in space or the Square Kilometre Array?

And there are good reasons HST, Xuntian, etc. are where they are.

@Photo55 Hmm, Earth-Moon L2 isn't useful – it uses the Moon to hide Earth, but that's not the problem.

We need to hide the Sun so that telescopes & instruments can get cold, & SEL2 does that by keeping the Earth & Sun in one direction.

But because the Moon orbits Earth, things at EML2 would be in sunlight half the time.

@Photo55 We're talking competitive capitalism here – they're not going to work with each other. And they'll all be using slightly different technical & operational models to try & be "the winner".

Also, co-orbiting groups of five satellites in LEO isn't trivial – they'd need even more constant adjustment than they already do for collision avoidance.

Moving satellites higher isn't necessarily great – it means they're in sunlight for more of their orbit & thus visible to telescopes for longer.

@Photo55 We have several telescopes at the L2 Lagrange point already, including JWST & Euclid, so this is hardly new to us.

But there are technical, financial, & other practical reasons why we also have telescopes in LEO & many on the ground: the 39 metre diameter ESO ELT isn't going to space any time soon.

As for the lunar farside, it's incredibly dusty, & is only dark two weeks each month. Plus very expensive. Radio astronomy would benefit there shielded from Earth's endless hubbub though.

@AkaSci Another frakking stupid tech bro idea dreamed up as they stared into a mirror to adore themselves.

And then there are those who think it'd be cool (meaning: would make them rich) to have constellations of satellites positioned to make orbital adverts over major cities.

These people truly are ideal representations of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/space-advertising-draws-astronomers-opposition/

@Photo55 In fact it gets worse, because every single LEO constellation has to have large numbers orbiting the whole Earth constantly & thus polluting everyone's sky, even if their market is confined to one country (e.g. China).

This is very different to geostationary satellites that sit over a fixed point on Earth. But latency to GEO (>1/4 sec) is felt to be too long for today's internet needs, i.e. flicking constantly between endless idiotic social media posts.

@Photo55 They can't clump up – the whole operational model relies on spreading them as uniformly as possible over the sky to ensure coverage.

That's made worse by the fact that these satellites are in LEO to reduce latency in signals from ground to space and back. Each one has a fairly small footprint, meaning huge numbers for full coverage.

That's then sold as being a natural way of removing them at end-of-life, but in reality it also means lots of metals injected into the upper atmosphere.

But as others have pointed out, trying to get government regulatory protection of our capacity to study the universe from the ground or LEO works on an altogether more glacial scale than the hectic race to launch new satellites fuelled by venture capital, concentrating ever more money in the hands of a few.

Of course, that's a familiar story in many aspects of the environmental collapse of our home planet, which is why I'm deeply pessimistic about the chances of our saving the skies.

Many astronomers are working to raise the concern at international political & legislative levels, as well as on technical mitigation options, for telescopes, instruments, & the satellites too.

FWIW, this is not just about optical astronomy: radio astronomers are also heavily impacted by crappy sat electronics leaking out of band.

For my part, I'm a member of the Advisory Board of the International Astronomical Union's Centre for the Protection of the Dark & Quiet Sky:

https://cps.iau.org