iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Nereide

On 11 Nov. 2020, APOD published this spectacular image. It is a spiral mosaic of 48 full moons, collected over 10 years from northern to southern Italy. No trick: it is the Moon, filtered by Earth’s atmosphere. Credit: Marcella Giulia Pace apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap20111... 🔭⚛️🧪 #astrophotography

Forty-eight full-Moon photos. Black background. They form a spiral, and the rings get tighter toward the middle. Some appear gray, some brownish gray. Others appear yellow, orange or deep red. A few pale blues. One vivid purple Moon sits near the center.
Several disks low in the arrangement look slightly flattened rather than round. The sequence ends with a faint red Moon from the total lunar eclipse of 27 July 2018.
Small credit text at the bottom reads Marcella Giulia Pace.

25911

Nereide @drnereide.bsky.social · 18h

Ash from certain eruptions, like Krakatoa in 1883, or smoke from large fires, as from Alberta in 1950 all the way to Europe. Etna’s ash is too mixed, and without the date of the shot you can’t say what colored that moon in the mosaic. 2/2

130

Nereide @drnereide.bsky.social · 18h

Not city dust, and not desert dust. Those usually turn the Moon yellow or red. Blue needs particles almost all the same size, about half a micron or a bit more: they scatter the red and let the blue through. It rarely happens. 1/2

140

Nereide @drnereide.bsky.social · 20h

Pace spent ten years showing what the atmosphere does to the Moon. Height, humidity and dust are enough to turn that gray disk into all these apparent colors.

060

Nereide @drnereide.bsky.social · 20h

the Moon looks like an ellipse, not a circle. The last shot in the spiral is the total eclipse of July 27, 2018. The Moon was in Earth’s shadow and appeared a faint red, lit only by light refracted and stripped of blue by the atmosphere.

150

Nereide @drnereide.bsky.social · 20h

The purple at the center has no single explanation: it is probably the sum of several effects, among air layers, humidity, and dust. It is not a filter added in post-production. Shape deceives too. Near the horizon, denser air bends the rays and flattens the disk vertically: ⤵️

130

Nereide @drnereide.bsky.social · 20h

Blue is rarer. It appears when the air holds larger dust particles, which scatter light differently and can let the shorter wavelengths prevail.

230

Nereide @drnereide.bsky.social · 20h

When the Moon is low, the light's path through the atmosphere is longer. Blue light is scattered more (Rayleigh scattering). Fine dust takes care of the rest. What remains is red & orange light, as at sunset. That is why many moons in the mosaic, low on the horizon, appear yellow, orange, or red.

120

Nereide @drnereide.bsky.social · 20h

We see the Moon by sunlight bouncing off it. Outside the atmosphere, its dusty surface makes it appear a gray with brownish tints. The reds, yellows, blues, and purple are the result of light’s journey through the atmosphere, before it reaches our eyes or the lens.

120

Nereide @drnereide.bsky.social · 20h

The spiral is a deliberate choice. Aim: to show how many different appearances a full moon can take on. Ten years of outings, from Veneto to Sicily, to gather different humidity, dust, and heights above the horizon. The sequence closes with the total eclipse of July 2018.

120

Nereide @drnereide.bsky.social · 20h

25911

Reposted by Nereide

Nereide @drnereide.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

#NobelPrize2026 in #chemistry Kagan showed that, in certain reactions, a small predominance of a molecule’s "right-handed" or "left-handed" form (in the catalyst) can produce a much higher excess than expected. 🧪 #HistSci #Science

2188

Nereide @drnereide.bsky.social · 21h

The contrast you announce is sharp: blue everywhere in sky and sea, rare as a pigment in the living world. What interests me most is the shift from structural colour to bioluminescence.

010

Reposted by Nereide

Bernard Valeur @bvaleur.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

1/2 Mon nouveau livre sur le bleu paraît aujourd’hui en librairie : BLEU - Quand la nature invente l’exception Éditions Quae tinyurl.com/mt7pkfd4 Publié dans la catégorie beaux-livres, cet ouvrage richement illustré met à l’honneur le bleu dans toute sa diversité.

4126

Reposted by Nereide

Nereide @drnereide.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

You are looking at the dunes of Endurance Crater on #Mars, in this approximate true-color panoramic camera image, highlighting the reddish-colored dust present there. What a fascinating geological phenomenon! science.nasa.gov/resource/end... 🔭🧪⚛️ #planetsci #HistSci

You are looking at the dunes of Endurance Crater, in this approximate true-color panoramic camera image, highlighting the warm reddish and golden dust present there. The dunes show sinuous sand formations that extend to heights of less than a meter.
Fine ripples texture the slopes, and the nearest sand in the foreground looks granular and close.

28028

Nereide @drnereide.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Unexpected? Maybe. Undeserved, no.

100

Reposted by Nereide

Nereide @drnereide.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Francis Halzen turned Antarctic ice into a telescope🔭 IceCube is a cubic kilometre of ice with thousands of sensors. It catches rare blue flashes when ultra-high-energy neutrinos hit nuclei. They fly straight from violent cosmic accelerators. Magnetic fields don't bend their path⚛️ #NobelPrize 🧪

1258

Reposted by Nereide

Nereide @drnereide.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

From a light-seeking alga came the key to controlling single neurons in the living brain. Hegemann and Nagel’s protein, turned by Deisseroth into an optical switch, activates circuits in ms and shows how memories, emotions and actions arise. An epochal leap for #neuroscience. #NobelPrize2026 🧪

1196

Nereide @drnereide.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

and it offers the first chemical model of how life can come to use only one of the two mirror images of amino acids and sugars.

040

Nereide @drnereide.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

These discoveries close a puzzle that had been open for more than a century. The result matters twice over: it makes the synthesis of drugs more controllable, where the wrong form can be harmful,⤵️

130

Nereide @drnereide.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Soai created a reaction in which the molecule produced favours the formation of others identical to itself. A minimal initial advantage, even a chance one, can thus become almost total. It is the first chemical model of how only one of the two mirror-image forms could come to prevail.

140

Nereide @drnereide.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

It is a principle useful to those who manufacture drugs: often only one of the two mirror-image forms works, while the other may be useless or harmful.

130

Nereide @drnereide.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

2188

Nereide @drnereide.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

With IceCube, 2013 brought the first evidence that cosmic neutrinos were found. A couple of years later, so much data were gathered that the discovery was certain. "Francis Halzen has laid the foundation for an entirely new type of astronomy"🔭 #NobelPrize2026 in #physics ⚛️🧪

1102

Nereide @drnereide.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

1258

Nereide @drnereide.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell Further reading ➡️ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enduran...

en.wikipedia.org

Endurance (crater) - Wikipedia

071

Nereide @drnereide.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

that shaped the Martian landscape. The dunes of Endurance Crater not only represent an important milestone in the history of space exploration but also a focal point for understanding how water and sediment shaped this part of Mars, offering clues to what the area may have looked like in the past.

170

Nereide @drnereide.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

However, the analysis of the surrounding rocks made it possible to collect valuable data. The dunes show sinuous sand formations that extend to heights of less than a meter. These features not only provide clues about the direction and strength of winds on Mars but also about the agents⤵️

160

Nereide @drnereide.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

An area called Karatepe was chosen for the crater entrance. Opportunity descended further to the crater floor to study the sand dunes. Along the way, various rock outcrops were analyzed, and it was ultimately decided not to push the rover onto the dunes to avoid getting it permanently stuck.

160

Nereide @drnereide.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Endurance is an impact crater located within the Margaritifer Sinus quadrangle region; it has given scientists a window into the geological and hydrological history of this part of Mars. After arriving at the crater, the rover performed a preliminary survey to allow for planning of observations.

160

Nereide @drnereide.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

The crater was explored by the Opportunity rover from May to December 2004. It is named after the Endurance ship that set out for Antarctica on an exploration trip organized by Ernest H. Shackleton and was later crushed by pack ice in the Weddell Sea.

160

Nereide @drnereide.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

28028

Nereide @drnereide.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Laboratories worldwide now use this light to map circuits of pain, reward and memory. It has clarified mechanisms of depression, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s and opens clinical paths, such as restoring sight with light-sensitive proteins. The brain is no longer a black box. #NobelPrize2026 🧪

070

Nereide @drnereide.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

1196

Reposted by Nereide

Nereide @drnereide.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

🔭 🧪🧵 1/ The #JWST has provided a unique view of an edge-on protoplanetary disk in the Taurus Molecular Cloud, within the dark cloud LDN 1551. This object, known as Herbig-Haro 30 (or HH 30), is crucial to astronomical science for various reasons. Let me explain. Go to➡️ esawebb.org/images/potm2...

This new NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope image presents HH 30 in unprecedented resolution. This target is an edge-on protoplanetary disk that is surrounded by jets and a disk wind, and is located in the dark cloud LDN 1551 in the Taurus Molecular Cloud.

24912

Reposted by Nereide

Nereide @drnereide.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

" #Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of the mystery that we are trying to solve." — #MaxPlanck, 'Where Is Science Going?' (1932) He passed away #OTD in 1947. 🧪🔭⚛️ #HistSci #physics

0214

Reposted by Nereide

Nereide @drnereide.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

"The history of humankind and of science teaches us that difficulties have always improved human beings. And it is precisely from imperfection that progress was born!" —R. Levi-Montalcini, int. P. Zullino, Telèma, 1998, in 'Alla scoperta dei Premi Nobel: Rita Levi-Montalcini', p. 91 🧪 #WomenInSTEM

Color portrait of elderly Rita Levi-Montalcini, framed from the upper chest up, white hair swept back, wearing a black top with a distinctive brooch at the center, and a slight smile.

1214

Reposted by Nereide

Nereide @drnereide.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

19 January 2007, natural color. Not a single frame: 36 wide-angle shots from #Cassini, assembled later. Spacecraft was ~1.23 million km from #Saturn. Image scale 70 km/pixel. -> science.nasa.gov/photojournal... 📷NASA/JPL/SSI 🔭🧪⚛️ #planetsci #histsci #astronomy #science

Saturn is centered in the wide oval of its rings, on black. Half the globe is pure white, overexposed; a thin twilight line divides it from the dark night side.
The rings are beige, pale brown and dark brown, with many fine concentric bands. Saturn’s shadow cuts across them as a solid black wedge extending to the right.

2538

Reposted by Nereide

Nereide @drnereide.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Oct. 1, 1847, Nantucket (MA). That evening, 29-year-old #MariaMitchell went to the roof of their home above the Pacific Bank. With a small 2-inch telescope she spotted a fuzzy object 5° above Polaris, the North Star. It wasn't on the charts. It was moving. A telescopic #comet. 🔭🧪⚛️ #HistSci

15617

Reposted by Nereide

Nereide @drnereide.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

This is one of the largest images #JWST has ever put out. IC 348 is a stellar nursery about 1,000 light-years away in Perseus. Shot in 2024; public view of a 2025 paper. The image release is from 2026: esawebb.org/news/weic2619/ 🔭🧪⚛️ #stellarastro #stars

Image Description from ESA: A star-forming region. It is blanketed in thick clouds of gas and dust, millions of kilometres across, that form swirling patterns. Bright stars are scattered throughout the clouds, with the densest cluster situated in the centre of the scene. Each is crowned with six long points created by the optics of the telescope’s mirrors. In the upper right, a couple of hidden stars blast out long, glowing jets of material.

https://esawebb.org/images/weic2619a/

67525

Nereide @drnereide.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

0214

Nereide @drnereide.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Photo: Presidency of the Italian Republic / Quirinale. it, 20 April 2009 (Via Wikimedia Commons). Edit, crop, blur, color, modify: Lucas

030

Nereide @drnereide.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

1214

Reposted by Nereide

Nereide @drnereide.bsky.social · 02/10/2025

🧵 Question: "If chimps are so much like us, why are they endangered while humans dominate the globe?" Goodall: "Well, in some ways we're not successful at all. We're destroying our home. That's not a bit successful." — #JaneGoodall, 3 Apr. 1934 - 1 Oct. 2025 #ForeverInspiring #LegacyOfHope 🧪

The photo features Jane Goodall and infant chimpanzee Flint reach out to touch each other's hands. Flint was the first infant born at Gombe (Tanzania) after Jane arrived. With him, she had a great opportunity to study chimp development.

Photo source: https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/jane-goodall/

9586161

Nereide @drnereide.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Thanks. The geometry is what makes this one hold up: Cassini was already north of the rings, and the Sun was low enough for the shadow to cross them. Twenty years on, that alignment is still the interesting part.

010

Nereide @drnereide.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I like the idea of a bag project: small enough to finish, careful enough to frame. The black frame then makes a clean edge and lets the two colors stand out without weighing the square down.

110

Nereide @drnereide.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

High inclination was the point of this mission phase (mid-2006 to mid-2007): fewer icy-moon flybys, but a full view of rings, atmosphere and magnetosphere, before the inclination was lowered again that summer. Saturn’s equinox came in August 2009.

070

Nereide @drnereide.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

That elevation shows the shadow running all the way across the rings. The shadow itself is long because the Sun was already nearing the ring plane, unlike the more open 2004 views. The B ring looks dark while the nightside globe still glows gold with ring-shine.

180

Nereide @drnereide.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

a Titan flyby on the 13th raised it, and Rev 38 reached 59.2° on the 24th. On 17 January it made an ascending ring-plane crossing at ~897,000 km from Saturn’s center. Two days later it was already north of the rings, looking down on their unlit face from ~40° above the plane.

170