Eggplant.place

1y

What are dwarf planets — and how many are there?

https://www.livescience.com/space/astronomy/what-are-dwarf-planets-and-how-many-are-there

Pluto

#astronomy

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1y

🚨 Astronomers have witnessed the dawn of a new solar system!

Using ALMA and JWST they observed the first specks of planet-forming material — hot minerals beginning to solidify around HOPS-315, a baby star 1300 light-years away.

This marks the first time a planetary system has been identified at such an early stage in its formation – a window to the past of our own Solar System.

https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso2512a/

#astrodon #astronomy #astrophysics #space #science

📷 ALMA(ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/M. McClure et al

A telescopic image showing an orange butterfly-shaped nebula with a bright core and fainter wings. A narrow blue jet emerges from the central core and extends into the wings of the bigger nebula.

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1y

New instance, new #introduction !

Hi #fediverse ! We’re the European Southern Observatory, and we design, build and operate ground-based telescopes.

One of them is our Extremely Large Telescope, currently under construction in #Chile. It will have a 39 m mirror, and its rotating enclosure will weigh 6100 tonnes, or about 700 mastodons!

We’re looking forward to chatting with all of you about #astronomy

And many thanks to @sebinthestars for running our former instance!

📷 ESO/G. Vecchia

A drone photograph of a gigantic telescope in the desert, at sunset. The telescope dome is under construction, and partially covered in cladding. The sliding doors of the dome are open, revelaning the telescope inside: a cylindrical structure of white criss-crossed beams. The dome is surrounded by huge cranes, and the entire scene is bathed in the golden light of the setting Sun in the background.

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1y

#Travel #Photography #Cruise #SciFi #BadMovies #RugbyLeague #NFL #Patriots #MST3K #Architecture #Brutalism #ArtDeco #Science #Astronomy #Archaeology #History #Portsmouth

Ignore this post. I need to pin my bio hashtags in a post because the bio links frustratingly break out of the advanced web view in this Mastodon build and they're my shortcut way of browsing posts. Hoping they fix this in a later build.

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265d

Seo mi, ma tha sibh gam aithnicheadh, neo fiù’s mura h-eil,
a’ coimhead oirrbh bho oir an rìan-grèine,
mar gum b’e aonaran a bh’unnam
a’ fuireach a-muigh ràthad na mòintich
le prosbaig aig gach uinneag…

—Pàdraig MacAoidh, “Pluto”

Today, 18 February, is Pluto Day!

https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/pluto/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Gaidhlig #Gaelic #Pluto #PlutoDay #planet #minorplanet #solarsystem #astronomy

Pluto
Pàdraig MacAoidh

(An dèidh Masadonais Katica Kulavkova)

Seo mi, ma tha sibh gam aithnicheadh, neo fiù’s mura h-eil,
a’ coimhead oirrbh bho oir an rìan-grèine,
mar gum b’e aonaran a bh’unnam
a’ fuireach a-muigh ràthad na mòintich
le prosbaig aig gach uinneag.
Can sibh gu bheil mi ‘iomallach’
ach tha mi an teas-mheadhan an neonitheachd agam fhìn,

Seo mi, cho ifrinneach sa shaoileadh tu:
le mo bheanntan ’s mo raointean reòite
’s mo bhrat meatain, naidhtreoidsein ’s CO2.
Tha mi cho puinnseanta ri là shàmhraidh ann an Nis.
Cha tig ur sòlas faisg orm, ’s co-dhìu aon chas agam
ann an dorchadas bith-bhuanta.

Tha mi ag ràdh ‘bith-bhuanta’ ach
Fad’ on robh mi a’ tuigsinnn tìde idr,
agus e air tighinn a-steach orm nach eil
mothaid cudromach ann an dòigh sam bith.
Tha mi nas tana na na Stàitean Aonaichte
ach tha coig gealaich agam ’s mi ag iarraidh tuilleadh baby.
Tha mi a’ gabhail sùil air croit Aonghas Phrionns’.

Seo mi, a’ seinn ‘Teann a-nall ’s thoir dhomh do làmh’
ann an oisean taigh-seinnse àiteigin ann an Glaschu
ach ged a bha mi riamh coimhead orm fhìn mar mheall den òr
chan eil duine a’ toirt suim dhomh.
O tha buannachdan ann a bhith neo-aithnichte,
a bhith beò air crìoch eadar dà ughdarras.
Aig a’ ghairm mu dheireadh thig mi sgrìob leam fhìn.

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Pluto
Peter Mackay

(after the Macedonian of Katica Kulavkova)

Here I am, whether you recognise me or not,
looking at you from the edge of the galaxy,
as if I was a loner
living out the peat-road
with a telescope at each window.
You’ll say that I’m ‘remote’
but I’m in the middle of my own nothing.

Here I am, as hellish as you’d imagine:
with my mountains and frozen plains
and my cloak of methane, nitrogen and CO2.
I’m as poisonous as a summer day in Ness.
Your light won’t come close to me; I’ve at least one foot
in eternal darkness.

I say ‘eternal’ but
it’s ages since I understood time,
and it strikes me that
size doesn’t really matter at all.
I am thinner than the United States
but I have 5 moons, and want more baby.
I have my eye on Aonghas Prince’s croft.

Here I am, singing ‘Teann a-nall ’s thoir dhomh do làmh’
in the corner of a pub somewhere in Glasgow
and though I always thought of myself as a lump of gold
no one pays me any attention.
There are advantages in anonymity,
to living between two authorities.
At last orders I’ll go for a stroll by myself.

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1y

Early visions of Mars: Meet the 19th-century astronomer who used science fiction to imagine the red planet

Parisian astronomer Camille Flammarion brought used science fiction to bring Mars to life

By Matthew Shindell

https://www.space.com/astronomy/mars/early-visions-of-mars-meet-the-19th-century-astronomer-who-used-science-fiction-to-imagine-the-red-planet

Camille Flammarion at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/8763

#Books #Astronomy #Sciencefiction

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1y

CHEOPS discovers exoplanet triggering explosive flares on host star - NASASpaceFlight.com

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1y

Astronomers witness newborn planet sculpting the dust around it

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1y

Astronomers Spot Unusual Magnetic Field Around A Massive Young Protostar

astronomers-spot-unusual-magnetic-field-around-a-massive-young-protostar

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1y

Newly discovered 'cosmic unicorn' is a spinning dead star that defies physics: 'We have a real mystery on our hands'

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1y

Christiaan Huygens and the Scientific Secrets of Saturn

Seventeenth-century science was so competitive that Christiaan Huygens used a cipher to conceal his Saturn observations when sharing them with interlocutors.

By: Danny Robb

https://daily.jstor.org/christiaan-huygens-and-the-scientific-secrets-of-saturn/

Christiaan Huygens at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/5648

#Books #Science #Astronomy

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261d

Rare 'planetary parade' will return to the evening sky this week — but you'll have to look at exactly the right time

By Jamie Carter

Six planets will shine together in the evening sky on Feb. 28. Here's how to get the best view before they disappear.

https://www.livescience.com/space/planets/rare-planetary-parade-will-return-to-the-evening-sky-this-week-but-youll-have-to-look-at-exactly-the-right-time

#astronomy #science

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1y

Maria Mitchell: America’s First Woman Astronomer and Mentor to Women in Science

As Vassar College’s first astronomy professor, Maria Mitchell advanced opportunities for women in science and mentored a generation of students using one of the country’s finest observatories.

By Deb Warner

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/blogs/smithsonian-american-womens-history-museum/2025/08/08/maria-mitchell-americas-first-woman-astronomer-and-mentor-to-women-in-science/?utm_source=smithsoniandaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=editorial&lctg=93133550

Maria Mitchell at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/3377

#Astronomy #womenInStem

$Postcard showing a woman sitting on the observing chair in front of a large refracting telescope. The accompanying text reads, “Prof. Maria Mitchell in the Observatory at Vassar College. June 1878.” The back is divided, with space for the address on the right and space for a message on the left. It is marked “Printed in Germany for Henry S. Wyer, Nantucket, Mass., U.S.A. No. 582” and indicates that a 1¢ stamp is required for domestic use and a 2¢ stamp for foreign use. Maria Mitchell (1818-1889) was America’s first woman astronomer, America’s first woman scientist of note, and the first professor of astronomy at Vassar College. Henry Sherman Wyer (1847-1920) was a photographer from Nantucket who published many of the earliest postcards of that island community. He was also active in the Nantucket Historical Society and the Maria Mitchell Association. While the photograph on this postcard was taken in 1878, the postcard was published between March 1, 1907, (when postcards with a divided back were first permitted in the U.S.) and 1917 (when the domestic postage for a postcard was raised to 2¢). https://www.si.edu/object/postcard:nmah_1372087$

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255d

A Scholar Recognized the Inscriptions in the Margins of This Manuscript. The Scribbles Turned Out to Be Galileo’s Handwritten Notes

Found in a 16th-century copy of an ancient astronomy treatise, the annotations suggest that the trailblazing scientist studied Earth-centric models before lending his support to heliocentrism

by Christian Thorsberg

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/scholar-recognized-the-inscriptions-in-the-margins-of-this-manuscript-the-scribbles-turned-out-to-be-galileos-handwritten-notes-180988269/?utm_source=smithsoniandaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=editorial&lctg=93133550

Galileo at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/subject/6741

#books #astronomy

Galileo's sketches of the moon from en:Sidereus Nuncius, published in March 1610.

Five circular engraved illustrations arranged on a white page — one at the top centre, two in the middle row, and two in the bottom row — each depicting the Moon at a different phase.

The images are rendered in fine crosshatching and stippling, with dense black ink filling the shadowed portions and detailed textural work in the illuminated zones.

Along the terminator — the boundary between light and dark — rugged, jagged edges suggest mountains, craters, and uneven terrain, with small circular formations visible that read clearly as craters.

The uppermost image shows the Moon mostly in shadow with only a crescent of illuminated surface visible at right.

The middle and lower pairs show progressively more of the lit surface, with the terminator cutting diagonally across each disk.

The overall effect is observational and scientific rather than decorative, conveying a three-dimensional, geologically complex surface.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidereus_Nuncius#/media/File:Galileo's_sketches_of_the_moon.png

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223d

Hubble telescope still delivering the goods. So cool! 🔭 #astronomy
https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/The_Crab_Nebula_largest_Hubble_mosaic_ever_made

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238d

Astronomers discover long-period radio transient of unknown origin

2026-03-astronomers-period-radio-transient-unknown.html

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238d

Astronomers have spotted a planet covered with a perpetual ocean of magma and enveloped by a noxious and fiercely hot sulfur-rich atmosphere

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239d

Dry ice detected in a planetary nebula for the first time

2026-03-dry-ice-planetary-nebula.html

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146d

What Would Happen if the Sun Stopped? Part 2: Kelvin and Helmholtz at the Ready

By Paul Sutter

https://www.universetoday.com/articles/what-would-happen-if-the-sun-stopped-part-2-kelvin-and-helmholtz-at-the-ready

About Kelvin-Helmholtz mechanism:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelvin%E2%80%93Helmholtz_mechanism

Books by Baron Kevin and Helmholtz at PG
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/48139
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/59039

#Books #science #astronomy

William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, whose famously wrong answer for the Sun's age turns out to be exactly the calculation we need.

A black-and-white studio portrait of Lord Kelvin with white hair and a full white beard, wearing a formal suit, waistcoat, tie, and watch chain. He has a serious expression and is looking slightly away from the camera.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/db/Kelvin-1200-scale1000.jpg

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201d

Why ‘little red dots’ pose a big mystery about the Universe

by Jenny Greene

https://aeon.co/essays/why-little-red-dots-pose-a-big-mystery-about-the-universe?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=0315165529-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2026_04_18&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-4ef8a26106-72664972

Original paper here:
https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.07320

Astronomy at PG:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/bookshelf/101

#books #science #astronomy

Hubble Ultra-Deep Field image of a region of the observable universe (equivalent sky area size shown in bottom left corner), near the constellation Fornax. Each spot is a galaxy, consisting of billions of stars. The light from the smallest, most redshifted galaxies originated around 12.6 billion years ago, close to the age of the universe.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HubbleUltraDeepFieldwithScaleComparison.jpg

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198d

‪This is a piece of art done by Sean Keating in 2022, then a PhD student at the University of Queensland. Neurons and stars, my two favorite things!

#neuroscience #art #science #astronomy

Van Gogh's Starry Night with the stars and landscape formed by neurons and hippocampal neuron staining to look like stars.

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199d

This week's #NewBooks at the library: A toss-up of three different titles
- Having reviewed a biography about Edgar Allan Poe, I determined that Thomas Olive Mabbott's version, originally published by Belknap Press, is probably one of the more authoritative collections of Poe's work. I managed to find a 1979 hardback original of the first volume via eBay.
- I found a very affordable second-hand version of Cambridge University Press's Meteoroids: Sources of Meteors on Earth and Beyond in their Cambridge Planetary Science series.
- One more book from my employer's January clearance sale is Muhammad H. Zaman's Biography of Resistance: The Epic Battle Between People and Pathogens, published by Harper Wave.

#Books #Bookstodon #Scicomm #Gothic #Poetry #Astronomy #Astrodon #Microbiology #Disease @bookstodon

A photo of three books standing on a small, brown, wooden table. The out-of-focus background shows black shelves full of books and part of the beech-coloured laminate floor.

On the left, The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Volume 1: Poems, showing a hardback with a faded red dust jacket with a drawing of a black crow with wings outstretched.

In the middle, Meteoroids: Sources of Meteors on Earth and Beyond, showing a casebound hardback showing an aerial photo of a cloud-covered pine forest with a meteor streaking across the sky.

On the right, Biography of Resistance, showing a hardback with a slate-grey dust jacket with a stylised drawing of a bacterium. Numerous yellow dots are encircling a red globular structure that has many spiky arms sticking out in all directions. A circle drawn in a dashed line is all that is keeping the two apart.

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217d

The Moon isn’t just a natural object—it’s a cultural one.

Only about 2% of named lunar craters honor women, revealing how even our maps of space reflect historical bias.

As Artemis missions mark a new era of exploration, this is a chance to rethink representation beyond Earth.

🔗 https://www.seti.org/news/women-with-impact-reclaiming-the-moons-missing-half/

#WomenInSTEM #Astronomy #SpaceExploration

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211d

God said: Let the dark be dark.
Let the stars shine properly.
And let darkness with no stars
heal the damage caused by light…

—Robin Fulton Macpherson, “In the Dark”

Today, 13 April, is the start of International Dark Sky Week

https://idsw.darksky.org

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #DarkSkies #DarkSky #astronomy #InternationalDarkSkyWeek

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211d

We’re going live in 1 hour.

Join Lauren Sgro and Franck Marchis for a live demonstration of SkyMapper, a newly launched global network connecting telescopes, observatories, and citizen scientists.

This session will explore how decentralized, real-time access to astronomical data is opening new pathways for research, education, and public engagement.

🔴 5pm PDT

WATCH LIVE: https://youtube.com/live/czTy4wDGpFg

#SETILive #SpaceTech #Astronomy #CitizenScience #STEM

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