iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Tom Megeath @megadeath.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

did he pay extra for a separate seat for the baby, or did it spend the entire flight on his lap?

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ESA Space Science @science.esa.int · 06/10/2026

A glowing stellar nursery 👶⭐ Webb’s infrared sensitivity has revealed the protostars & stars of NGC 7129, a stellar nursery that lies 3,300 light-years from Earth. In the centre, lies the massive star LkH(alpha) 234, which has carved into its cloudy surroundings 👉 www.esa.int/ESA_Multimed... 🔭 🧪

$A young star cluster filled with many stars that display Webb’s unique eight-pronged diffraction pattern. At its center is a yellow star which sports the largest diffraction pattern. To the left of the star, there is a region filled with yellow dust and gas that extends from the star to the left border of the image. This yellow region extends from the bottom, covering about two-thirds of the image. The yellow region has several blue stars of different sizes embedded within. The top third, which lies outside of the yellow region, holds a few bright protostars, within dense gray gas. Those stars illuminate the gas, making it appear blue. A few red outflows from other protostars are visible above this grayish-blue region. To the right of the central star, there is a clumpy, flame-like plume of red dust and gas with protostars that emit a soft white light within. The plume is surrounded by more dense gray gas and dust. There are several background galaxies strewn throughout the image. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Image Processing: A. Pagan (STScI)$

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Tom Megeath @megadeath.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

fun fact, the makers of the Core tried to get him to help promote the movie, which may have motivated his proposal: archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes....

archive.nytimes.com

Probe of Earth's Innards May Not Be So Preposterous After All

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Tom Megeath @megadeath.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

i wonder if the science is best served by lots of small programs. At some point, instead of 100 scattershot proposals of object type X, more large, coordinated, community generated programs with separate funding streams. To ensure the science gets done. A bit more roman style.

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Tom Megeath @megadeath.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

except many resubmissions may try for a much more compelling overall proposal, that might not come down to a single page. Certainly i have found much rethinking, rescoping, resizing - where it is almost a different proposal.

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Tom Megeath @megadeath.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

iIf there was more funding for archival work, i think that would be of huge benefit. The data is very rich and merits more analysis than is possible with current funding allocations. Of course this is impossible in today’s funding environment, but it is worth acknowledging.

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Tom Megeath @megadeath.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Many resubmissions involve significant rewriting and rethinking, in my experience, and rejection may be that the proposal just didn’t excite the panel as much as other proposals (and not a fundamental flaw).

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Tom Megeath @megadeath.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I suspect he was familiar with the essays of Swift as well. (and he was a great teacher, btw).

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Briony Neilson @brionyneilson.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Volkswagen might be on the skids today, but back in 1959 they were manufacturing Volkswagen Beetles fitted with dashboard-mounted coffee machines 🗃️

b&w news clipping with photo of a car dashboard with a metal coffee machine attached and a ceramic cup beneath

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Laura Helmuth @laurahelmuth.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Not everybody knows this, and everybody should. On Sept. 26, 1983, a Soviet nuclear warning system alerted Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov that the U.S. had launched a missile attack. He did not retaliate, preventing WWIII. This is a post about AI. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanisl...

en.wikipedia.org

Stanislav Petrov - Wikipedia

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Justin Walsh @jstpwalsh.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Shane Ross at Virginia Tech created a simulation of what 500k orbital data centers, as proposed by SpaceX, would look like from your home latitude sdross0.github.io/orbital-data...

sdross0.github.io

What would orbital data centers look like from your sky?

500,000 satellites from SpaceX's FCC filing, two published brightness models and the real stars, for any latitude, date and time. Computed in your browser.

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Kelly Hereid @kellyhereid.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Science is a part of your brain you just don't turn off. In an $80 Motel Room, a Discovery to Shed Light on the Origins of Life 🎁 link www.nytimes.com/2026/09/26/s...

Sciencing the shit out of this motel room

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Tom Megeath @megadeath.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Muse looks like something out of a Black Mirror episode in the first place, it certainly puts the creepy into ai and surveillance tech.

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Tom Megeath @megadeath.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

can i go to your toledo concert dressed as t-rex, or is that asking for it?

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Tom Megeath @megadeath.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

we need an astro-luddite category on arXiv. For those of us preserving the old ways.

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Caltech @caltech.edu · 23/09/2026

NASA has selected PRIMA, a far-infrared space observatory designed to reveal the cold, dusty universe hidden from visible-light telescopes. Caltech, JPL, and IPAC will play key roles in the mission, targeted to launch in the 2030s. Read more: www.caltech.edu/about/news/n...

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Tom Megeath @megadeath.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

„polytropes“ that is. (where is the spell checker when you need it?)

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Tom Megeath @megadeath.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

I know this isn’t the most important hill to die on at this time, but as i am teaching stellar this semester, I wanted to point out that polytopes are the slide rules of stellar astrophysics. Elegant, somewhat useful in the day, no longer needed because of computers. 🔭

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Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · 20/09/2026

Today I learned there are only two known polyhedra in which each face shares an edge with every other face. One of them being the timeless beauty of the tetrahedron and the other one being whatever the heck this is

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Ennius @enniusredloeb.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

The autumnal equinox is only a few days away and here's what Stonehenge looked like in the 16th century. BL Add MS 28330; Lucas De Heere, Corte Beschryvinghe van Engheland, Schotland, ende Irland; 1573 CE-1575 CE; England (London); f.36r @blmedieval.bsky.social

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Space Telescope Science Institute @stsci.edu · 15/09/2026

#NASARoman activated the Wide Field Instrument—a 300-megapixel infrared camera that will allow it to explore wide swaths of the cosmos quickly. This test image captures the very first photons of starlight to reach the instrument—taken as an initial performance assessment: go.nasa.gov/4rg4qEc

$At the top, a grid of 21 panels shows a series of blue images with tiny neon green and yellow circles. A larger image highlights a section of the grid with circular patterns, and an inset presents a detailed star-like diffraction pattern. The colors consist of blue, green, and yellow.$

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Astronomy 🔭 @astronomy.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

NASA's new Roman Space Telescope now has enough fuel to last 22 years after a near-perfect course correction More than double what it was built for!

An artist's concept of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope with gold and silver panels, set against a purple cosmic background filled with stars and galaxies.

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Tom Megeath @megadeath.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

the brian eno desert island selection (really just give me everything he did, collaborated on, produced,….)

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Tom Megeath @megadeath.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

doesn’t matter, the force is with you.

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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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Tom Megeath @megadeath.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

the only problem i see is that there is only one bike.

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Tom Megeath @megadeath.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

my favorite non-alcoholic beer is brewed in canada. enjoy.

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Tom Megeath @megadeath.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

As a scientist who is (mostly) vegetarian & bikes to work, my footprint is dominated by travel. I mitigate this by donating to community solar and combining travel. I do feel that with growing nationalism everywhere, international travel & relationships are crucial for addressing climate change.

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Thomas Carpentier @thocarp.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Today was a great day for me on professional and personal levels, so I will share something even greater: a JWST observation of the centre of our galaxy! 🔭 This is Sagittarius B2, a molecular cloud a few hundreds light years away from SgrA*, as seen by MIRI and processed by me!

Observation of the Sgr B2 molecular cloud in mid-infrared by the JWST. The cloud appears mostly in red/orange and blue colors. In this wavelength, what is mostly appearing is the dust in the cloud, which is everywhere in the image. Some brighter spots can be seen, where new stars are located. Background and foreground stars can also be spotted as blue and bright dots.

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Robert Simmon @rsimmon.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

I am having a particularly frustrating week, so here’s one of the best things I’ve ever done. The eruption of Sarychev Peak in the Aleutian Islands, seen by the crew of the space station. www.nasa.gov/image-articl...

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Tom Megeath @megadeath.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

As a kid from New Mexico who lived in California, upstate NY, Boston area, and NW Ohio, it’s nice see my linguistic map be almost anywhere but Texas.

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Tom Megeath @megadeath.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

i just assumed the person who designed this and the people who buy them never locked up a bike with a u-lock or with big tires (or at all). It’s almost like a cartoon version of a bike rack brought to life.

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Tom Megeath @megadeath.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

it’s the eternal struggle against this style of bike rack. How did they become so universal?

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Tom Megeath @megadeath.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Congratulations to the Nancy Grace Roman telecope team for a flawless launch. I look forward to amazing data on our galaxy and its star forming regions.

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Jonathan McDowell @planet4589.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

LAUNCH at 1125 UTC Aug 30 of a Falcon Heavy from Kennedy Space Center with NASA's Roman Space Telescope

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Scientific American @sciam.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Breaking: We have lift off! NASA’s Roman Telescope is on its way to deep space, embarking on a mission that could solve some of the universe’s greatest and most enduring mysteries and discover new, alien worlds.

scientificamerican.com

NASA’s Roman Telescope lifts off, starting a mission to explore the universe’s biggest mysteries

The Nancy Grace Roman Telescope will probe dark matter and dark energy, discover exoplanets and study stars

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Tom Megeath @megadeath.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

they did wonders for Wall Street.

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Chris Mihos @chrismihos.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Ahh, I'm seeing a lot of particle physicists riding into astronomy research, ready fix our field and solve all our science questions for us. I mean, how hard can astronomy be, right? Welcome in, dear.

1950s man comes home, where his wife and children are hiding behind the door holding carving knives. His wife is labelled "Systematic uncertainties" and his kids are labelled "Non-Gaussian Errors" and "Dust".

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Paul Byrne @theplanetaryguy.com · 30/08/2026

Watch what it's like to sample an asteroid. On 20 October 2020, NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft positioned itself above asteroid Bennu and used its sampling system to grab material for return to Earth. Rather than being a solid chunk of rock, Bennu turned out to have the cohesion of a ball pit.

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Tom Megeath @megadeath.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

my band wrote a song about this very idea called “i want to be a billionaire”. I thought the song was satire.

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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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Tom Megeath @megadeath.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

my last trip to a connecting flight in Schipol was about 2 hours due to the huge line at passport control. 34 minutes sounds great.

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