iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Artists, show how you paint/draw stars!🌟✨

A green pea galaxy, illustrated by making brush textures from real Hubble data. A green, glowing cloud of gas surrounds an incredibly active region of starburst full of very hot blue stars. Their intense radiation blows the gas cloud outward like a wind.

The fast-spinning, hot blue star named Altair. Its axis is tilted to the side and the surface of the star is a squished sphere due to the speed at which it spins. The textures on the surface are just an artistic guess at what it could look like, featuring some bright eruptive areas, and some darker spots like sunspots, and a very speculative equatorial banding that's slanted like, say, some tire treads. We don't know what stars or even planets that rotate this fast look like.

A landscape view of the star Trappist-1. The landscape is the barren and hard surface of one of the many planets orbiting the star. An ice halo is visible in the sky, suggesting the planet is cold, and has an atmosphere of some kind. The star itself is a red dwarf, so the sun dogs in the halo which would normally include a full spectrum of color are markedly redder than an Earth sun dog would be. A line of small white specks in the sky look like stars, but are actually the other planets orbiting Trappist-1. This view is from Trappist-1h, or the 7th and outermost planet of the system.

An illustration of a dusty torus around a protostar which is accreting the dust and gas from the torus. The dust torus inclined so that we are able to see the star from the underside. The light is red due to all the dust and the relatively low temperature of the forming star. Two bright white jets erupt from the poles of the star, which is a very common (or universal?) feature of accretion.

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

I was like, omg, how big is that image, like 15kb? Oh, but I was wrong, it's 14kb. Sheeeeesh. Here's another image!

An astronomical image featuring an object known as a Herbig-Haro object. It's two jets shooting off the poles of a forming star. The star itself is enshrouded in a dusty donut. Two cones of light are also visible where the dust is cleared off. The overall image is orange and brown. Light passing through denser dust is more orange. The jets of material are more white.

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

here you go, the fabled capybara plush in its habitat

a large brown and brown plush that is very round and shaped sort of like a capybara sitting up on its rear with hands ready for a hug or to be picked up. it’s in the huge box in a costco warehouse on top of some other random plushes. it is also huge

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Fun time. Here's H-alpha from Hubble, and its infrared analogue Paschen-alpha from JWST. If you look closely in the center near the star, you can just make out the front and back of the nebula moving away from each other. It's not flat!

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

I have been working on NGC 2392 (Lion Nebula) bit by bit over the past couple of weeks. Pretty happy with it! As always, high quality image and perhaps overly verbose information is available at my Flickr gallery: flic.kr/p/2swHfCQ

A heavenly view of one of our friendly neighborhood planetary nebulas, the Lion Nebula. It's circular in appearance with cometary knots streaming outward from the center, making up the "hair" of the lion's mane. The lion's face is a brightly outlined inner shell that kinda looks like a spaghetti nest with a bright star nestled in the center. Numerous background galaxies are sprinkled around the image, along with a handful of stars. The lion has a blueish mane and a pinkish face with a deep, dark cyan center. The background galaxies are subtly colored with yellows, oranges, and reds. The few stars are more or less white.

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Bonus view of outside the frame where I didn't spend as much time processing.

A wider view of the image from the previous post. Now the outer parts of the galaxy are visible: most notably, one tidal stream in particular seems to form a nice loop around the galaxy. The messy tidal shells are also a bit more apparent. Expanded view also includes poorly or low-processed artifacts, some blank spots where the detector stopped, and more faint distant things.

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Made a nice new version of NGC 5972. Hubble and Legacy Survey data. HST Proposal 12525 (@ngc3314.bsky.social) flic.kr/p/2suiAkm

A disturbed galaxy with an incredible green and red glowing gas feature shaped like a figure eight in its center. The glowing feature is at least half as long as the galaxy itself, meaning it's very, very large. Faint swooshes of galaxy can also be seen at the periphery. The galaxy does not look like a spiral or any other normal galaxy shape. The shape of the figure eight feature looks like it was possibly a disk at one point, but is now twisted and contorted by its past gravitational interactions. Few other objects such as faint Milky Way stars and faint background galaxies also dot the image in a few places.

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

got in the mail today. it came with a sticker. pretty cool

an award certificate, reading:
Smithsonian excellence in digital awards

Digital impact award
This certificate is proudly presented to
Judy Schmidt
In honor of your work in the digital space that has had a demonstratable, meaningful impact on its audience, users, or stakeholders and improved user experiences, increased engagement, or delivered value to target audiences through both quantitative and qualitative metrics

signature in the corner from Rebecca Boutwell Kobberod, chief digital and innovation officer
April 21, 2026

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

here’s the other (less expensive) cat loafing

A dark gray tabby cat sitting on her belly with her front paws folded under. she is very like a bread loaf in shape and softness.

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

been doing some local mapping lately and noticed on google maps this artificial lake thingy is marked as a road. all I'm saying is a human who lives here would never do this. probably even a human who doesn't live here would not make this mistake

top down aerial view of a suburban neighborhood with squared cul de sacs and an artificial blue water feature behind the backsides of the houses. the roads are marked by white lines, and somehow one of them connects to the water feature, mistaking it for a street in several places.

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

so there's the secondary mirror, the primary mirror, and then ???? where the cameras go

Hubble lego model with panels taken off. two inset images show close-ups of the interior.

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

hmph my myriapods aren’t very fluorescent… i did find the asshole who’s been eating my strawberries tho. fled the scene before i could get a good pic

a centipede under uv light. some ground dwelling plant life is fluorescing red. the centipede has some whiteish highlights along its sides and legs.

terrible photo of a katydid on a destroyed strawberry flower under uv light. it actually fluoresces green pretty well

a very fluorescent green caterpillar on a wildflower. the wildflower is fluorescing red with blue tips

a striped slug slightly fluorescing. some leaves at the upper right are fluorescing red

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

I wonder how badly compression will make this gif? Let's find out!

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 13/06/2026

I managed a bit better video this time. They are just so small. 🥹

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 13/06/2026

Happy, happy update! They have hatched.

two tiny baby hummingbirds nestled tightly together in their tiny nest. They have a little fluff on their backs that looks slightly damp. the beginning spikes of feathers ate growing out of their bodies. their eyes are shut. the nest looks very soft and cozy. mama hummingbird is away foraging.

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

ah, I made this (as a rough idea, not finished) just trying to get the idea of what you want. like this? attribution to NASA science.nasa.gov/neptune/ anyway, feel free to disregard, just thought it was an interesting problem to have

Diagram of Neptune showing outer moons on the left and inner moons in blow-up diagram on the right. The outer moons are very disorganized encircling the planet in many different ways and Neptune is just a small dot when showing them, because they are far out. The inner moons are a lot more organized and Neptune is big enough to see as a disk in the center of them.

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

Two telescopes, two epochs, the same nebula. You might have to stare for a little bit to fully appreciate all the movement going. Apologies to any faint stars who got deleted. I tried to remove the NICMOS PSFs from the Hubble view (which is lower resolution/blurrier)

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

This is from a book someone gave my kid. It’s a Nat Geo book. I need to mark it up for correction. Tarantulas are impressive, but not quite that big… CW there is a partial spider butt in the photo.

A page from a kid’s book with a single paragraph above a photo of a fuzzy tarantula. “Tarantulas are big spiders that hiss. They have eight legs that can each grow around a foot long. Their legs have hairs that feel vibrations, letting them know prey is near.”

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

Update: She’s been doing a lot of sitting. It’s surprisingly hard to concentrate on taking a picture while a hummingbird is yelling at you.

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

Was able to zooooooom with phone camera for low resolution high quality cuteness

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

Very happy to report that some new tenants looking to start a family have moved into my back porch. I want badly to move the ladder to peep inside, but they only started building the nest a couple days ago. Must be patient…

A hummingbird nest! A tiny woven mound of dried grass held together with strands of spiderwebs sitting atop one of the lights on a party light string. it’s shaded by a porch cover. there are various trees out of focus in the background.

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

Kevin posting this is like sending out the bat signal to me. Oh, there's an imaging challenge? Something to figure out? Fine, I'm interested... I guess Mars is cool. From the Psyche mission. solarsystem.nasa.gov/psyche-raw-i...

A multispectral color image of some part of Mars. As with most of Mars, there are a whole lot of craters. Notably, a bunch of the craters in the lower left look like they have comet tails stretching out long across the surface. A lot of the craters have bright rims on the left side of them and dark floors. Some features resembling rivers are etched across the lower smoother dark part that only has small craters. This doesn't mean they were ever rivers. The writer of this text doesn't know enough about terrestrial imaging to give information about what the various colors mean. The darker areas tend to be blues and purples while the lighter areas tend to be yellows.

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

Made a view of FU Orionis with Spitzer and WISE data. No particular reason other than an interest in FU Orionis after reading the name in the Star Formation Newsletter. As always, more to read at the Flickr page: flic.kr/p/2sdQhtR

A star-infused nebula. The cloud of the nebula is mostly pale with very faint coloration, but there is a little swoosh at the top that is like a blue glint, and another blue bit near the right side that is part of a jet. The shape of a nebula is like a lumpy mountain turned on its side. Dozens of sparkling yellow and orange stars dot the image. Many fainter white and blue stars sprinkle the image. The star of note is the brightest one just left and below the center. It glows yellow.

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

Context: it looks like a humongous quilt because it was processed to try and make the rest of the galaxy clear through all this dirt the planets kick up while they go around and around. Wide horizontal line is the ecliptic, where the zodiacal light lives. Diagonal on the left is plane of our galaxy.

A black and white image of a whole bunch of images put together to form a mosaic of a very wide view of the night sky. The edges of every square are very easy to see, which is not preferable with image mosaicking. There's a very bright diagonal line across the lower left corner of the image, and a fainter horizontal set of lines across the center. The Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex sits left of center in a vaguely D shape. It says allWISE W3 in the upper left. A compass showing "north" up and "east" left is in the lower right. A scale bar indicating a width of 10 degrees in the lower left. The entire field of view is noted to be 56.4 degrees wide by 34.4 degrees high in the lower center.

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

ceci n'est pas une ... satellite? flic.kr/p/pCAFzG 😆

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

I just wanted to draw Frog but I messed up his pants, which really need to come halfway up his belly. I almost gave up after realizing I couldn’t fix it. I want to try again but my hands hurt.

A simple cartoon style anthropomorphized frog standing as if trying to reach for something. He wears a brown jacket and some gray pinstripe pants. No shoes. Long feet. Green skin. Bulbous white eyes with black horizontal pupils. Medium blue background.

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

I mean, come on (A rather quick test combination of four similar exposures: ART002-E-11554, ART002-E-11559, ART002-E-11564, ART002-E-11569)

An eerie view of the moon from the Artemis craft. It is mostly a black disk. There is a faint illumination on the left side of the sphere, presumably from Earthshine. Faint round indentations and crater rims are visible. The Zodiacal light glows in sunshine from behind. A pale greenish cast, which is not real, but looks creepy, slightly colors the image.

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

I was checking around the new yard plants with UV light, as perfectly sane, normal people do, when I passed by the geode and was like oh, I should check. And... it glows orange?!

A rock cracked in half with lots of crystals inside. A blue light is cast upon it, the visible part of a UV flashlight. One crystal formation in particular is glowing orange. The crystals are shaped differently from the other crystals in the geode, being flat and stacked like a mound of pancakes.

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 25/04/2026

Came down with a sudden upper respiratory infection tonight; sat down with the kid to watch Sealook when this showed up... The iconic NGC 605 from Hubble, Chandra, and Spitzer. Looked it up on Youtube and this thing has 15 million views. Loud electronic music: www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdp2...

A beautiful, hollowed out cloud of a nebula illuminated from within by a cluster of blue stars in the center. There are soft patches of magenta and red overlaid atop a golden hued cloud. Background galaxies also dot the image, including a rather pleasing one in the lower left.

That same image of a nebula, but with three identical copies of a yellow 3d-generated cartoon seal dancing in front. It has a research tag on its rear flipper, being used like a human foot, which reads 002.

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

my kid’s drawing of the sun and the earth shaking hands.

a drawing of the sun on the left and the earth on the right with one arm each outstretched to shake hands. the style is that of an uncoordinated hand, in this case, a young child. the paper is creased many times from being folded into a small rectangle.

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

it’s a beautiful day for a fascist to fall

A rainbow stretches across a dark, cloudy sky over some recently tilled farmland. The top of the rainbow has some curtain-like streaks in it where the rain is falling less smoothly

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 15/03/2026

cracked a bigger one this year. shades of smokey quartz. weird blobby flat stacked crystals in one side.

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 15/03/2026

Ok got a new phone so I can take photos more the way I want them. The bad news is I have no idea what color this bird is. What even is a bird?

Colored pencil sketch of a cedar waxwing bird on blue paper with pencils strewn about. Its head and upper body are colored, but its feet, tail, and a branch are sketchy lines. It has a peachy brown head with a black beak and black mask and a black eye. Its body is a smooth gradient to a yellow belly and a gray wing.

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

A color image. Wasn't sure it was worth it, but I decided I had to find the filters that provided the most detail of the nebula. F700W (the blue channel, here) seems to show the most detail, but the nebula is still red, even in infrared. For some reason this is surprising to me.

$The image, now in color, provides a stark contrast between the diffraction spikes and the actual nebula. Starlight pours in from the upper right, while a very red "leg" extends outward from between the two much brighter diffraction spikes. Small blue points and reddish smudges dot the image, showing where stars and background galaxies are.$

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 19/02/2026

Trying to help with an annotated image. The star says (sort of) because though the star is there, it's actually crossed and hidden by a ring (torus) of dust. So you technically can't see it.

$Annotated version of the same image from earlier in the thread. "Diffraction spike" is labeled on top of the three JWST diffraction spikes. Arrows point to the HST diffraction spikes. The "X" part of the nebula has one "Leg" labeled, and the lines between the legs of the X are labeled as "Rungs". The star has an arrow pointing to it (however the star is actually obscured by a ring of dust, not easy to see in the image). Also noted is that the "Legs" are connected and have a continuous repeating pattern, but the two different telescopes with different seeing capabilities do not properly show it.$

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