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Dr. Caitlin Ahrens

@ahrensscience.bsky.social
2.2K followers 1.1K following 344 posts

Planetary scientist, lunar exploration and sustainability policy. Lunar architecture and risk analysis nerd! UMD-CRESST-II Asst. Research Scientist at NASA GSFC. Science Outreach! Ten Outstanding Young Americans 2018. WVU alum. Views are my own.

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Reposted by Dr. Caitlin Ahrens
Paul Byrne @theplanetaryguy.com · 28/09/2026
This is a photo of our home planet taken only a few hours ago! So what? We have photos of Earth taken from space every day. Ah, but *this* photo was taken by a spacecraft ON ITS WAY TO JUPITER.
From the source: "Mostly black space, most of Earth visible at the top right of the image. Part of a spacecraft visible on the left."
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Luca Migo @victinibcn.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Every stitch tells a story of love, community, and remembrance. Volunteers across MN created the "Stolen Neighbors Quilt" with 11,000 squares to honor Minnesotans detained by ICE. Each fabric square represents a neighbor, a family member, and a life impacted by deportation. We stand for Justice!
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Randall Munroe @xkcd.com · 25/09/2026
Voyager Instruments xkcd.com/3302/
 3-panel comic. (1) [Person with shoulder-length hair gestures at diagrams on wall in front of table with three people.] PERSON 1: As the radioactive power source on *Voyager 1* weakens, we’ve been turning instruments off to conserve power. (2) PERSON 1: Only two instruments remain. Do we want to lose the plasma wave subsystem or the magnetometer? (3) PERSON 2 with ponytail: You know, if we just turned off Greg’s LED underlighting– PERSON 4 with short hair: Absolutely not. PERSON 3: Dammit, Greg. PERSON 4: I will *not* allow us to look uncool in front of aliens.
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Lee West @whodat35.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Two Minnesota solar farms turned the ground beneath their panels into habitat, and native bee abundance rose more than 20-fold www.ecoticias.com/en/two-minne...
ecoticias.com
Two Minnesota solar farms turned the ground beneath their panels into habitat, and native bee abundance rose more than 20-fold
Minnesota solar farms planted with native flowers saw native bees rise 20-fold, with bees also pollinating nearby soybean fields.
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Riding With Robots @ridingrobots.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Today, NASA announced PRIMA, a new far-infrared space telescope that will explore long-standing mysteries around the formation of planets, stars, black holes, and even how water on Earth came to be. go.nasa.gov/3TgGh3W JPL will manage the mission, which is targeted to launch in 2033.
An illustration of a telescope spacecraft with a parabolic mirror floating in deep space.
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John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 24/09/2026
ONE OF US ONE OF US ONE OF US Congrats on your space potato @alyankovic.bsky.social!
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Artologica aka Michele Banks @artologica.net · 24/09/2026
#sciart
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Paul Byrne @theplanetaryguy.com · 23/09/2026
Another stunner from JWST—this time part of a *much* larger scene I'll post later. This portion is made up of stars and protostars in a cluster about 1,000 lightyears from Earth. The bright, multi-point features are nearby stars. The smaller features in the background are other galaxies.
From the source: "A star-forming nebula that contains young stars called protostars. Two of these protostars are shooting out long jets that are colliding with the nebula, creating glowing, colourful outflows. A few other protostars create orange and red areas in the nebula. Most of the image is covered by blue gas, with brighter areas, denser clouds and dark gaps; the bottom-left corner contains greenish-yellow gas."
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Gene J. Mikulka @genejm1017.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Space Job in IT!!!
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PBS News @pbsnews.org · 23/09/2026
For decades, the Mystras palace has been closed to the public. But now, after renovation work lasting 40 years, this UNESCO World Heritage Site is open for all to see. to.pbs.org/4itKb3B
to.pbs.org
Restored Greek Byzantine palace offers blueprint for preserving cultural heritage
History buffs heading to Greece are mostly drawn to the country’s wealth of classical temples and amphitheatres. But now the culture ministry has opened a stunning, restored palace from the Byzantine ...
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Paul Byrne @theplanetaryguy.com · 23/09/2026
I said I'd do a thread about my new Space Science Reviews paper, so here it is! This is part of a collection of papers arising from a meeting at the International Space Science Institute in Bern in 2024: a workshop to better understand rocky extrasolar planets. A 🧵:
Interior structure models of Earth, Venus, Mercury, Mars, the Moon, and Io, all shown to scale and key elements labelled.
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Michelle says: Be kind. Always. ❤️ @snarkysillysad.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
@mossranger (IG) shows us the intricate beauty of moss: #AGoodPlace
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Michelle says: Be kind. Always. ❤️ @snarkysillysad.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Boogs Rosales captures a tasselled wobbegong shark getting comfy - West Papua, Indonesia: #AGoodPlace
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European Space History @eurospacehistory.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
#OTD 21 September 1973, the ESRO council approved a draft arrangement between ESRO and European governments for the execution of the future Ariane launcher programme 🚀 www.esa.int/About_Us/ESA... @transport.esa.int #Space #History #SpaceHistory @cnes.fr
Artist impression of the original L3S design for the first European launcher project to be undertaken for the new ESA. Known in French as Lanceur à Trois Etages de Substitution (LIIIS) or L3S, it would eventually be renamed Ariane.
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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
NASA picture of the day today is a real 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿beauty! This is a composite image of the ~5000yo Callanish Stones on the Isle of Lewis. The amazing Giuseppe Petricca has only gone and photographed the Sun at noon there, every few days, for a whole year. #Dedication 🔭🧪👌 ℹ️: science.nasa.gov/image-articl...
The imposing Callanish Stones stand talk with their shadows spanning out across the glass.  It's a super clear sky, but looks cold. Above the central stone is a strange figure-of-8 shape of dots.  This is the location of the Sun, at noon, on various different days across the year.
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Melissa Jo Peltier @melissjpeltier.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
www.irishtimes.com/environment/... Someone out there is thinking of the good things we can do with technology. 🐠 🐟 🪸
irishtimes.com
Irish scientists lay 3D-printed reefs in pioneering bid to restore deep-sea coral
Artificial reef project aims to speed up recovery process after decades of damage by commercial fishing ships
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Dr. Caitlin Ahrens @ahrensscience.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Battling a stupid cold. Here, have some Mars rocks.
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Dr. Caitlin Ahrens @ahrensscience.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Watery Fowls 😆
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Rosemary Mosco @rosemarymosco.com · 18/09/2026
Humaning.
A four-panel comic. In panel 1, a Northern Cardinal and American Goldfinch perch above a busy crowd in a city, looking down. The cardinal says "It's a nice day to go humaning." The goldfinch says "Just look at them. Majestic." In panel 2, a close-up of the two birds. The cardinal says "Nobody tells you that you'll reach a certain age and suddenly get into humaning. I hit 3 years old, and then bam."The birds are looking out over the crowd scene. In panel 3, the cardinal says "Their calls sound funny to us, but each one has a unique meaning." Below, people are saying various things: "I'm tired." "Where's my phone?" "I'd murder a burrito." In panel 4, the birds look down excitedly at a man walking by. The cardinal says "Wait, is that a guy who got dressed in the dark and put his shirt on inside out and backwards?" And the goldfinch exclaims, "Holy... that's a lifer!"
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Dr. Adeene Denton @spacewhalerider.com · 17/09/2026
Everything kinda sucks right now, but I was going through old writing and found my defense of public lands. It reminded me why so many of us do what we do. It's so important to be able to find joy in the natural world, and that starts with being able to access it: www.grandcanyon.org/about/blog/g...
grandcanyon.org
Dr. Adeene Denton: Importance of Public Lands
Interested in learning about the importance of public lands and how they play a role in art and science? If so, click to hear from GCC Astronomer Dr.…
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Lynn Carter @lynncarter.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Finally a very detailed article describing the destruction and chaos at NASA Goddard. www.npr.org/2026/09/15/n...
npr.org
NASA rushed engineers out of their labs. They say it risks future space missions
NASA employees say they've lost vital equipment and staff needed to make sophisticated spacecraft amid the agency's abrupt relocations over the past several months.
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Randall Munroe @xkcd.com · 16/09/2026
Aerospace Flowchart xkcd.com/3298/
Comic: Aerospace Engineer Problem-Solving Flowchart. [Start→Could we solve this problem by building giant airships again?→(No)→Try other solutions→(four arrows leading off-panel)]
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European Space Agency @esa.int · 16/09/2026
Mars isn't always red. 💜 New images from Mars Express reveal striking purple swirls near the planet's south pole. 🔗 esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Mars_Express/Purple_swirls_on_the_Red_Planet @science.esa.int
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womensartbluesky.bsky.social @womensartbluesky.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
So sad to hear of the death of Bonnie Greer, novelist, broadcaster and hugely inspiration woman. She was a great supporter of this Womensart project & WA books and our chats will be cherished always. A true intellectual & beautiful person. RIP xx
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Riding With Robots @ridingrobots.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
From NASA Get ready with us to observe the Moon 💅 Only a few days until International Observe the Moon Night! You’re invited to celebrate our nearest neighbor in space, together with people all over the world. Find an event near you, or observe on your own: go.nasa.gov/ObserveTheMoon
Collage of images: The Moon, with the Apollo 15 landing region (Hadley-Apennine) outlined and labeled, overlaps with a photo of an astronaut reaching out to touch a rover on the lunar surface. In the same photo, behind the astronaut, a dramatically shadowed grey hill rises towards a black sky. In the sky, text reads “International Observe the Moon Night” “September 19, 2026”. Along the bottom edge is a partial, zoomed-out screenshot view of a Moon Map document, with highlighted areas of the Moon, close-up photos, and location labels.
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Tim Fernholz @timfernholz.com · 15/09/2026
this is an important investigation into how NASA cuts are directly affecting flagship space science missions www.npr.org/2026/09/15/n...
npr.org
NASA rushed engineers out of their labs. They say it risks future space missions
NASA employees say they've lost vital equipment and staff needed to make sophisticated spacecraft amid the agency's abrupt relocations over the past several months.
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tom t @bankphysics.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
www.physicsresourcebank.com/post/iop-eve... 🧪
physicsresourcebank.com
IOP events for teachers
Booking details are included in each listing. • 17 September  Identifying student misconceptions made evident in the marking of the 2026 LC Physics Higher Paper  • 24 September IOP Ireland Physics Hub • 3 October Frontiers of Physics conference • 5-6 March 2027 Ireland Spring Conferencethe IOP Ireland Education team
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Mr. Blabalino 🇳🇴🇺🇸💙 @blabalino.com · 14/09/2026
More octopus fun. They may be one of the most intelligent animals on earth.
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Jack O’Lantern🎃 @47pumpkins.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
This is the actual bird, nothing like what is in that stupid clanker🤖 vid
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Will Quinn @willquinnart.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Daily bunny no.3440 having a picnic of the third kind
Two bunnies have a picnic atop a rocky plateau, looking like a miniature version of Devil's Tower in Wyoming. Above them, a large UFO is floating, and several round one-eyed aliens float around the picnic curiously. One of the bunnies has a keyboard, to communicate with the aliens.
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Brian D. Wade @astrobrian.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
On this day in space! NASA astronaut Mae Jemison makes history as the 1st Black woman in space #OTD #SpaceExploration #HumanSpaceflight www.space.com/space-explor...
space.com
On this day in space! NASA astronaut Mae Jemison makes history as the 1st Black woman in space
Jemison, a medical doctor and engineer, spent 8 days in orbit on space shuttle Endeavour.
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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 12/09/2026
“these solutions are announced in a rush, leaving no time for a proper writeup, the isolation of new methods & ideas, & citing relevant previous work of others. … We are witnessing a general threat to intellectual work, with misalignment between the outcome of the use of AI and its initial purpose.”
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European Space History @eurospacehistory.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
#ThisWeek in 2007, the NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini spacecraft took this close-up of saturnian moon Iapetus on 10 September. This mountainous terrain reaches 10 km in height along the unique equatorial ridge of the moon 🧪🔭 www.esa.int/ESA_Multimed... @science.esa.int @carolynporco.bsky.social @esa.int
This stunning close-up shows mountainous terrain reaching about 10 km in height along the unique equatorial ridge of Iapetus. The view was acquired during Cassini's only close flyby of the two-toned Saturn moon. 
Above the middle of the image can be seen a place where an impact has exposed the bright ice beneath the dark overlying material. Image scale is 23 m per pixel (pic: NASA/JPL/SSI)
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Edward Elderman @elderman.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
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Randall Munroe @xkcd.com · 11/09/2026
Fault Taunting xkcd.com/3296/
4-panel comic. (1) [Giant fishing rod-like cat toy positioned above four tectonic plates. Two helicopters that appear tiny due to scale fly above. People next to device are so tiny they cannot be seen.] PERSON 1: The key to exposing new geologic layers is understanding the three forces driving plate movement: slab pull, ridge push, and taunting. (2) PERSON 2: Taunting? What do– PERSON 1: *Initiate thrust fault pattern!* [The dangly end of the toy wiggles.] (3) “Rumble” sound effect from tectonic plates. (4) “Lunge!” sound effect from tectonic plates. [Plates split at a diagonal angling toward toy.]
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Gene J. Mikulka @genejm1017.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Meanwhile we let our huge radio telescope disintegrate with no plans to replace it.
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Dr. Jessie Christiansen @aussiastronomer.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
We trained a natural language agent to query the archive's tables! Ask a question of AstroFetch and it will do a search of our documentation and ADS, generate the right TAP query, and present the results. Give it a try! exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/index.html
Screenshot of the front page of the NASA Exoplanet Archive with a button labeled 'Query AstroFetch AI' circled in red. Squared in red? Highlighted in red.
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Gene J. Mikulka @genejm1017.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Via #WRAL - NASA wants your cloud photos: A new citizen-science project is asking people to photograph the sky as NASA's PACE satellite passes overhead www.wral.com/weather/nasa...
wral.com
NASA wants your cloud photos
A new citizen-science project is asking people to photograph the sky as a NASA satellite passes overhead.
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Riding With Robots @ridingrobots.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
From NASA What if you could work with NASA Earth science data without downloading entire datasets first? 🌎💻 Watch our webinar recording to learn how the earthaccess Python library can stream data directly into your Python workflow: go.nasa.gov/3TfKGE9
go.nasa.gov
Using the earthaccess Python Library to Stream Data | NASA Earthdata
How to use the Python earthaccess library to stream NASA data directly to memory.
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Mike Okuda @mikeokuda.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Today, September 8, 2026 marks the 60th anniversary of Star Trek’s premiere on American network television. From the beginning, there was something special about this show. >> [more]
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Dr. Adeene Denton @spacewhalerider.com · 08/09/2026
Really great explanations in this piece from the University of Arizona about how our new lunar modeling raises some new, necessary questions about when the Moon formed relative to the age of the Solar System. Quotes from me and the fantastic @namyab.bsky.social: news.arizona.edu/news/soft-an...
news.arizona.edu
Soft and stretchy or rock solid? New modeling study sheds light on how the Earth got its moon
Historically, computer simulations modeling collisions between protoplanetary bodies have treated them largely as fluids. A new study suggests taking into account the material strength of solid bodies...
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Ryan J Hollister @phaneritic.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Some decent near-vent video I hadn’t seen yet.
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Matthew R Francis @bowlerhatscience.org · 06/09/2026
note that they put a big blue pad for their robots knowing they'll crash hard, but all of us normal squishy humans are expected to believe "AI" won't fail catastrophically and just take the damage when it does
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𝕯𝖆𝖓🍂🎃🕸️ @arepublic86.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Charlotte Wainwright restoring and saving old/ancient books. www.wainwrightbookbinding.com
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Rae Radford @raeradford.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Absolutely… #BookSky
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Rae Radford @raeradford.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
100% #BookSky #WritingCommunity
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Dr. Caitlin Ahrens @ahrensscience.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
I’m having an exponential crisis
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Steven Beschloss @stevenbeschloss.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
“Remember, the Constitution doesn’t begin with, ‘I, the president.’ It begins with, ‘We, the people.’ ” —Gloria Steinem at the 2017 Women’s March
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Elle Cordova @ellecordova.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Rough Draft vs Final Draft
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Rae Radford @raeradford.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
So true…. #BookSky
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