iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Mathew Owens

Living Reviews | Solar Physics @livingrev-solphys.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Mathew J. Owens & Luke A. Barnard. Space-Weather Utilities for Research and Forecasting (SURF): A Tool for Investigating Hydrodynamic Aspects of Solar Wind and Coronal Mass Ejection Expansion and Evolution. #SolarPhysics 301, 147 (2026). doi.org/10.1007/s112... #OpenAccess

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Reposted by Mathew Owens

ESA Space Science @science.esa.int · 30/09/2026

Inspector Smile is ready for science! 🫡 This is Smile’s first ultraviolet view showing an auroral substorm. With the ultraviolet camera now operational, Smile becomes the first spacecraft since 2008 to capture the full ring of northern lights around the north pole in ultraviolet light. 🔭 🧪 ☀️

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Mathew Owens @mathewjowens.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

The paper describing the new solar wind modelling framework, SURF (which includes HUXt) is published. The code is up on github and will be installable from conda and pypi in a week or so. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

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Christian Möstl @chrisoutofspace.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Amazing new reconstruction of sunspot number for the last ~1000 years by Saha et al. 2026: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Sunspot number since the year 971, showing several long minima and the recent, more regular solar cycles

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Mathew Owens @mathewjowens.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

As editor for one journal manuscript, I've had 14 review rejections. And as many again just not reply. Only 4 suggested alternate reviewers. 2 years back, I'd need to ask 2 or 3 people tops. This is not a criticism of my colleagues - it's an indirect measure of rising academic workloads.

14 red review rejections for one manuscript. 4 have info redacted as they'd suggested alternate reviewers.

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Mathew Owens @mathewjowens.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Nature is amazing. Watching the end-of-summer migration of Volvos to National Trust properties and garden centres around the UK.

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Dmitry Grozoubinski @explaintrade.com · 24/08/2026

Short version:

People talk about an institution like Harvard withdrawing a speaking invitation as if it were shutting access to the marketplace of ideas. Except Harvard isn’t the marketplace. YouTube is the marketplace, and you’re welcome to set up your stall there and hawk your wares. Harvard is supposed to be Neiman Marcus or Harrods. You have to earn a place on their shelves because their customers trust them to curate quality. If they discover the shoes you’re selling leak in the winter and hate black people all year round, they’re perfectly entitled to kick you out of their collection.

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Mathew Owens @mathewjowens.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

If he'd been hit by a car, he'd probably not be around to ban anything.

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Prof Jim Wild @jim-wild.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

🚨New paper alert 🚨 A lot of space weather science depends on OMNI solar wind data propagated from L1 to Earth. But what are the actual uncertainties?

An artists impression of the four ES cluster Spacecraft in orbit around the Earth. Credit: ESA

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Vincent Ledvina @vincentledvina.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

Here's an animation of recent CME activity courtsey of the HUXt model. Every blob coming off the orange circle in the center (the Sun) is a modeled solar storm. The pink blob traveling towards the black dot to the right (Earth) is a filament-CME currently predicted to impact us on August 17.

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Mathew Owens @mathewjowens.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

My dad's watching Sky News. Stories about wildfires and train derailments talk about weather, heat and the "new normal". But never mention climate.

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Mathew Owens @mathewjowens.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Got to love my university's media summaries. "BBC South... featuring space scientist Professor Mathew Owens (Meteorology) looking into a cardboard box"

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Mathew Owens @mathewjowens.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Actually, everyone prefers movies to static images, right?

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Mathew Owens @mathewjowens.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

This is our first ever genuine forecast driven by in situ observations (and coronagraphs for the CME). It ain't perfect, but it's promising.

Time series plots of observed (real-time) solar wind speed, density and temperature, alongside model forecasts. There's reasonable agreement, particularly in the CME arrival time.

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Mathew Owens @mathewjowens.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

Florence is an amazing city. Arguably its greatest wonder: an 18-minute tram ride from airport to centre, every 15mins, for €3. No complicated ticketing or confusion. Shame I land at Heathrow.

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Mathew Owens @mathewjowens.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

I should not have played Assassin's Creed just before coming to Florence. I need to survive the week without attempting to scale something historic and jumping off into a non-existent pile of hay. If anyone's at COSPAR and fancies pizza and/or gelato, hit me up. Or, you know, talking science.

Me in front of Basilica di Santa Maria Novella. I look hot. And I definitely mean temperature. It's 40 deg C.

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Reposted by Mathew Owens

Mathew Owens @mathewjowens.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

The proper forecasts are back up. Thanks @lukebarnard.bsky.social Get 'em here: swxforecastlab.org/forecasts.html

swxforecastlab.org

Forecast Products - The Space Weather Forecast Laboratory

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Mathew Owens @mathewjowens.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Looks like we need to put another 50p in the HUXt meter. Fortunately, I can now run the forecast on my phone (link coming soon). It's only a single run (it's an old phone), but the WSA-DONKI-SURF forecast puts the recent CME arriving late on the 1st/early on the 2nd.

Simple time series plots of predicted solar wind at Earth

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Mathew Owens @mathewjowens.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Some very clever and industrious folk wrote a great review of "switchbacks" in the near-Sun solar wind. My contribution was very minor. But I did make this schematic. No AI. I'm kind of sad that the ability to make such sketches is now of diminishing value. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

A schematic of the heliospheric magnetic field. It has blue lines and red lines, showing how different processes can twist up the field.

The OSF is defined as the total unsigned magnetic flux threading the source surface. Estimating the OSF from heliospheric observations, such as at 1 au, is complicated by inverted HMF from waves, stream shear, turbulence and switchbacks. Figure adapted from Owens and Forsyth (2013)

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Prof Lucie Green @luciegreen.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

This is a fantastic summary of key developments in our understanding of the Sun and its place in the Solar System. Well worth reading!

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Mathew Owens @mathewjowens.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

I get described as "deeply baffled" all the time. I hadn't realised it was a positive. No (stray) light hitting my brain.

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Reposted by Mathew Owens

Royal Astronomical Society @royalastrosoc.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

Just stepping away from NAM2026 for a moment (although not from the Sun 🌞)... The growing understanding of our star over the past two centuries has been reflected in a new online collection of papers collated from our journal MNRAS. Read the 32-page booklet at: academic.oup.com/mnras/pages/...

The front cover of The Sun as a Star, an online collection of papers celebrating our growing understanding of the Sun over the past two centuries.

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Mathew Owens @mathewjowens.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

Wow. I'm a product of mid 70s UK and have more than a passing interest in distance running. I knew about Gibb crashing the Boston marathon in the mid 60s. But I had no idea this was so recent in the UK.

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Mathew Owens @mathewjowens.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

Over 30°C, in the *coolest* part of the night. Outside. In France, not Death Valley. That's such a massive health risk. Fans provide much lower cooling effects as air temperature approaches skin temperature (typically ~34°C). And indoor temperatures will likely be higher than the outdoor min.

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Mathew Owens @mathewjowens.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

Just found this badboy thrashing in the verges on my pond. Google Lens tells me that it's a Lime Hawk caterpillar and that the colour indicates it's ready to pupate in the soil. So I've airlifted it to a suitable spot. I've so many problems with AI. But it can be used for good too!

Picture of reddish/pink caterpillar, with distinctive blue horn. Now safely on some soft earth.

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Richard Allan @rpallanuk.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

Intensification of hot, dry periods is killing the UK’s trees and while adapted management and deep soil watering can help, the long term solution is of course limiting #climate change by more rapidly decoupling our society from fossil fuels: theconversation.com/heatwaves-wh...

theconversation.com

Heatwaves: why British trees are shedding branches and dying

British trees struggle to survive as temperatures get higher, and many die.

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Mathew Owens @mathewjowens.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

I know us oldies tend to think "science has always been competitive" but it really is so much harder for early career researchers than it was even 10 years ago.

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Mathew Owens @mathewjowens.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Someone should probably take the GUI tools away from me. You can now "draw" the solar wind speed that goes into our solar wind model (SURF-HUXt). Because that's a vital capablity.

screen shot of a solar wind solution on the right. On the left is the GUI used to run the model.

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Reposted by Mathew Owens

SolarSteph 🌞 @stephyardley.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

I'm happy to share our Royal Society Theo Murphy special issue on solar atmospheric abundances is out in Phil Trans A 🌞 I wrote the intro — 16 papers, almost a third led by early-career scientists. Thanks to Guest Editors D. Long, D. Brooks & D. Baker! royalsocietypublishing.org/rsta/issue/3...

royalsocietypublishing.org

Volume 384 Issue 2323 | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A | The Royal Society

Influential themed journal issues across the physical mathematical and engineering sciences.

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Reposted by Mathew Owens

SolarSteph 🌞 @stephyardley.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Space weather update 🌞 Unsettled–active conditions possible 2 Jul as a CME from 27 Jun arrives. G1–G2 storm conditions likely by 3 Jul from the CME associated with the X1.1 flare on 30 Jun. Aurora chances rise for Northern UK, cloud/light permitting. 🛰️

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Mathew Owens @mathewjowens.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

Cor, the bird feeder is empty again? Oh right.

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Mathew Owens @mathewjowens.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

All the info boards in Broad St mall, Reading, have been replaced by advertising screens. So now noone can find anything, but we can watch adverts for things not for sale in said mall. Genius. How do humans consistently manage to make the simple things worse?

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Mathew Owens @mathewjowens.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

How hot is it? Well, the weather is causing the fire alarms to randomly trigger in buildings across the University of Reading campus.

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Leo Hickman @leohickman.carbonbrief.org · 24/06/2026

Letter in today's Times by climate scientist Sir Brian Hoskins: "The discourse around net-zero is increasingly decoupled from…science and our changing weather. "Net-zero is not an arbitrary slogan, rather it is dictated by the laws of physics."

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Mathew Owens @mathewjowens.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

Oh great. My kid's school will be rewarding students who hit 95% attendance (and implicitly penalising those who don't). I get that schools have attendance KPIs imposed on them, and need to try meet them. But applying this at an individual student level is some ableist bullshit.

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Peter Tennant @pwgtennant.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

I sometimes log back into X to see who's still active. I am always disappointed. But it's the journals, employers, & other health organisations that shock me most. The message this sends about culture & values is so negative. From a quick scroll, I saw JAMA, Lancet, BMJ, APHA, Wellcome, NCRM, etc

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Mathew Owens @mathewjowens.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

PDF used to be the safe academic presentation format. No risk of missing fonts or shifting text/images. Now Adobe Acrobat is a mess of pop-ups and prompts. Free Trial! Start the tour! Do you want an AI summary? Mmmmm, lovely, lovely AI - have some! Makes you look like an absolute clown shoe.

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Mathew Owens @mathewjowens.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

My connecting train was cancelled. But there's an earlier one I can catch because it's delayed by 2 hours. Which will make my total journey time shorter. Sometimes the UK rail system is soooo shit it's good.

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Mathew Owens @mathewjowens.bsky.social · 23/05/2026

On very sunny days, my solar panels produce about £2.50 of electricity I sell back to the grid. In practice, this just means ice lattes are now only £2.

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Mathew Owens @mathewjowens.bsky.social · 23/05/2026

Trail runners! No need to take any gels out today. You'll swallow plenty of caterpillars.

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Dr Adam J. Finley @adamfinley.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

New paper day! Louis-Simon Guité et al. investigated if sungrazer comets could trigger analogous behaviour to star-planet interactions. Using an MHD wind model, they searched for activity on the Sun's surface connected by magnetic field lines along the comet's path: arxiv.org/abs/2605.18280

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Dr James O'Donoghue 🪐 @interplanetary.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

We have a PhD project opportunity starting in September 2026 led by @lukebarnard.bsky.social, supported by me and @mathewjowens.bsky.social It's on Solar Wind - Magnetosphere Coupling at the Giant Planets. Deadline is June 12th. You can apply here: www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

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Dr Luke Barnard @lukebarnard.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

Looking for a PhD position in solar system science? Consider coming to work with me, @interplanetary.bsky.social and @mathewjowens.bsky.social! We have a project on Solar Wind - Magnetosphere Coupling at the Giant Planets. www.findaphd.com/phds/project... #heliophysics#aurora#spaceweather

findaphd.com

Solar Wind – Magnetosphere Coupling At The Giant Planets at University of Reading on FindAPhD.com

PhD Project - Solar Wind – Magnetosphere Coupling At The Giant Planets at University of Reading, listed on FindAPhD.com

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Predictive Science Inc. @predsci.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

🚨 New paper alert! 🚨 PSI's Roberto Lionello led a team (including @mathewjowens.bsky.social) to investigate the magnetic connectivity of the corona/heliosphere system under busy (solar maximum) and quiet (solar minimum) conditions. Details below! iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...

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Chris Scott @profchrisscott.bsky.social · 19/04/2026

Just to reassure you that the world is still turning. A timelapse of the Moon and Venus setting over Oxfordshire in the UK this evening.

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Mathew Owens @mathewjowens.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

Ah, the Outlook mobile app has ditched the archive button -- my single-most used way of dealing with email on my phone -- in favour of a CoPilot summary button. Which I will literally never use on my phone. And I'm not even anti-AI. The enshitification continues apace.

Outlook mobile quickbar. Now has Keep Unread, Delete and CoPilot Summary

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Mathew Owens @mathewjowens.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

My son is excited because he managed to pick up a particular Pokémon card from "the nineteen hundreds." He means 1998.

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