Next #SETILive: Birth of Planets: Caught!
TODAY, 9 October, 11:00 am PDT / 2:00 pm PDT
How do planets start? Host Simon Steel (SETI Institute) speaks with Melissa McClure (Leiden University), lead author of a new study that caught the earliest spark of planet formation.
WATCH LIVE: https://youtube.com/live/dtoULXg_nfg
Every once in a while, our solar system receives a fleeting visitor from the depths of our galaxy. On July 1, 2025, NASA’s ATLAS telescope in Chile discovered Comet 3I/ATLAS, the third known interstellar object ever detected, following ʻOumuamua in 2017 and 2I/Borisov in 2019. What makes it interstellar? Its orbit is hyperbolic, meaning it doesn’t loop back around the Sun but instead cuts straight through the solar system on a one-way journey.
Learn more: https://www.seti.org/news/visitors-from-the-stars-understanding-comet-atlas-without-the-hype/
Astronaut Alan Bean enjoying weightlessness in the open space of the orbital workshop on the Skylab space station in 1973.
Earth has a new friend, it turns out. Astronomers have discovered a peculiar “moon” shadowing our planet as it moves through space. Read more from @sciencefocus:
Neues Geplänkel! Wir sprechen heute ausgiebig über euer Feedback zu unseren letzten Folgen. Es geht um Geoengineering an den Eisschilden. Und Franzi erklärt, warum Schwarze Löcher keine Haare haben. 👨🦲
➡️ https://astrogeo.de/astrogeoplaenkel-gletscherflut/
📷 : CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO, Copernicus Sentinel data processed by ESA; ASA, ESA, H. Bond (STScI), M. Barstow (Univ. of Leicester); NASA/CXC/SAO
#Space video accounts to follow:
(If an account looks blank to you, see https://fedi.tips/why-does-someones-account-page-look-completely-blank-is-it-really-blank)
➡️ @lightcurvefilms_socialmedia - Planetary science videos
➡️ @europlanet_media - European org for planetary science
➡️ @issi_media - Research on Solar System, planetary sci, astrophysics etc
➡️ @geo.x_media - Geoscientific competence network based in Berlin & Potsdam, Germany
➡️ @openplanetary_media - Helping planetary scientists & software developers to share data & tools
🧵 1/2
👨🚀🚀 3... 2... 1... Liftoff!
Last night, Europe's new heavy-lift rocket, #Ariane6, successfully made its inaugural flight.
Ariane 6 can launch both heavy and light payloads to a wide range of orbits for applications such as Earth observation, telecommunication, meteorology, science and navigation.
It is a key step towards secure and autonomous 🇪🇺 access to #space.
Congratulations to the teams at European Space Agency, National Centre for Space Studies, Arianespace on this success!
📷© ESA
SETI Institute In the News 2025: October Roundup
Throughout October, the SETI Institute was featured across leading science and media outlets, underscoring its continued leadership in research, innovation, and public engagement. From advising Disney/Pixar on the science behind Elio to contributing expert analysis on Martian dust dynamics, SETI Institute scientists help bring complex discoveries to a global audience.
Read the full stories: https://www.seti.org/news/seti-institute-in-the-news-2025-october-roundup/
In a recent episode of SETI Live, SETI Institute Deputy Director Dr. Simon Steel spoke with astronomer Dr. Melissa McClure of Leiden University about a groundbreaking discovery: the earliest stages of planet formation caught in action.
The finding, published in Nature, marks the first direct evidence of hot mineral condensation in a protoplanetary system at such an early stage.
Learn more: https://www.seti.org/news/birth-of-planets-jwst-spots-hot-mineral-condensation-in-a-proto-stellar-system/
Next #SETILive: TRAPPIST‑1 e Revealed
Peering Inside an Exoplanet’s Atmosphere
TODAY, 6 November, 10 am PST / 1 pm EDT
Join SETI Live host Moiya McTier with Néstor Espinoza (STScI) and Ana Glidden (MIT) for a deep dive into the latest JWST observations of TRAPPIST‑1 e, one of the most tantalizing Earth-sized planets in the habitable zone of a nearby star.
WATCH LIVE: https://youtube.com/live/wQfR7yn82CY
Ship 30's static fire over the new Massey's Test site flame trench. As viewed from its windward side.
Getting ready for IFT-5.
Close up image and animation of Comet67P
Full size image 3000x3000: https://flic.kr/p/2q5WmRH
Video: https://flic.kr/p/2q648Ym
ESA Rosetta Orbiter
Instrument: OSIRIS Narrow Angle Camera
Target: 67P/CHURYUMOV-GERASIMENKO
Altitude: 28 km
Time: 2016-04-23
Filters Near IR + Orange + Blue
Product IDs & more info on Flickr.
Raw image 1/3: https://rosetta-osiris.eu/image/NAC_2016-04-23T06.06.10.011
Credit:
Processing: Andrea Luck CC BY
Raw data: ESA/Rosetta/MPS/OSIRIS/IAA/INTA
Neue Folge! 1965 zerstört ein einziges Foto die Träume vom Leben auf dem Mars. Jahrzehnte später entdeckt ein Doktorand rätselhafte Wolken – und eröffnet ein neues Forschungsfeld. Karl erzählt eine kleine Geschichte der Mars-Atmosphäre:
➡️ https://astrogeo.de/ag126-von-marskanaelen-zum-wolkenatlas-duenne-luft-auf-dem-mars/
📷 : NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/ @stim3on
Don't cross the streams!
All four 8 m units of ESO's Very Large Telescope are now equipped with lasers, as part of the GRAVITY+ upgrade of the VLT Interferometer.
These telescopes can work together as a gigantic "virtual" telescope. But combining their beams requires, among other things, bright reference stars, which are scarce. The lasers create artificial stars high up in the atmosphere, solving that problem.
We tell you all about it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzK1B3VU1L8
This is what the band of the Milky Way would look like at night if your eyes could see radio waves. A hidden beauty.
It's a new image created by the Murchison Widefield Array, which scanned the sky in 20 radio "colors" over frequencies from 72 to 231 megahertz.
https://www.icrar.org/gleam-x-galactic-plane/ #space #science #nature #tech
"The surge in megasatellite constellations is creating problems beyond amplifying the Earth-circling space debris, according to new research. Reentering spacecraft and rocket stages may also be damaging Earth’s atmosphere. 'Space waste,' spacecraft reentering the atmosphere, injects a considerable amount of its matter into the mesosphere and lower #thermosphere — enough to potentially weaken the Earth’s #ozone layer."
The SETI Institute recently hosted the Joint IRIS and MUSE Science Team Meeting, bringing together more than 50 solar physicists from around the world for an intensive week of collaboration and discovery.
During the meeting, scientists exchanged ideas and compared state-of-the-art models with real solar observations to deepen understanding of the complex processes driving solar dynamics and heating.
Learn more: https://www.seti.org/news/seti-institute-hosts-joint-iris-muse-solar-science-team-meeting/
#PPOD: The interaction of two doomed stars has created this spectacular ring adorned with bright clumps of gas – a diamond necklace of cosmic proportions. Fittingly known as the “Necklace Nebula,” this planetary nebula is located 15,000 light-years away from Earth in the small, dim constellation of Sagitta (the Arrow). Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, K. Noll
For the first time ever, astronomers have unveiled the shape of a star’s explosion at its earliest stage.
The feat was achieved by ESO's Very Large Telescope just a day after the detection of this supernova, as the blast was breaking through the star’s surface.
This brief initial phase wouldn’t have been observable a day later. This will help shed light on how massive stars go supernova.
https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso2520/
Illustration: ESO/L. Calçada
What do planet formation and badminton have in common?
From @ArsTechnica: "Dust grains in protoplanetary disks align via the same aerodynamics as the sport."
See the full paper here: https://academic.oup.com/mnras/advance-article/doi/10.1093/mnras/stae2248/7783265?login=false
For more space news, follow @space-ScienceAlert
The European Space Agency's Euclid space telescope is assembling the largest 3D map of the universe ever made.
The first section is now complete. Take a look at what happens when you zoom in...
https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Euclid/Zoom_into_the_first_page_of_ESA_Euclid_s_great_cosmic_atlas #space #science #astronomy #nature
