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Sian Prosser

@prossian.bsky.social
1.3K followers 374 following 41 posts

Medievalist now managing an astronomy library and archive.

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Reposted by Sian Prosser
Prof Jim Wild @jim-wild.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Fabulous that humanity has regained the ability to image the Earth's entire auroral oval from orbit. Well done to the whole SMILE/UVI team! 👏 Note how the whole oval seen here is in daylight These ultraviolet images were captured during the middle of summer in the northern hemisphere 👀
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Royal Astronomical Society @royalastrosoc.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Stargazing news! ✨🌃 From 1-4 October stargazing beginners in the UK and Ireland can take part in an initiative called '100 Hours Under One Sky'. It features four simple challenges, with the chance to win badges and put your mark on a shared map. Find out more at: 100hours.online
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Royal Astronomical Society @royalastrosoc.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Come and explore the Royal Astronomical Society! 💫🚀🪐 Today we've thrown open our doors as part of Open House festival, offering self-guided tours for members of the public to find out more about what we do and how we began. Join us any time between now and 1pm, or from 2-5pm (last entry 4.30pm) 👋
Members of the public explore the RAS library as part of the Open House festival.People outside the RAS waiting to explore the Society's HQ.The RAS library.
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Mobeena @mobeena.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
I don’t know what the library equivalent of dimming our lights is but whatever it is, we should be doing it for Dolly because what that woman did for literacy deserves so much more recognition than it got
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Alex Selby-Boothroyd @alexselbyb.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Eclipse playlist open.spotify.com/playlist/6Wf...
Eclipse playlist
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RAS Library and Archives @astrolibrarian.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
These original negatives of the 1875 eclipse, loaned to us by the Royal Society, have now been returned. We are grateful to the @royalsociety.org for not fining us!
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Robert "The Bobby Yaga" McNees @mcnees.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
Geologist Marie Tharp was born #OTD in 1920. She built the first accurate map of the Atlantic Ocean floor, discovering the Mid-Atlantic Ridge that provided evidence for seafloor spreading and plate tectonics. 🧪 👩‍🔬 Image: Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
Black and white photo of Marie Tharp adding detail to a large map of the sea floor , which is probably 6ft x 3ft. She is wearing a dark sweater over a white, collared blouse, and holding a pen in her right hand.
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Dr Vanessa @hpsvanessa.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
"don't cite what you haven't read" remains the basic entry level academic responsibility; & if your discpline "doesn't have that as a norm" then sorry, your discipline needs reforming for this new world. Citations are structural parts of trust and knowledge building, not trinkets or optional extras
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Digital Scholarship @ British Library @bldigischol.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
EThOS platform restored! 'Following restoration work, all metadata records previously available on EThOS have now been restored, along with an additional 14,000 records added since the service was taken offline' - more to come www.bl.uk/stories/news...
bl.uk
EThOS records restored
We are pleased to share that EThOS (E-Theses Online Service) is now available again following restoration work after the cyber-attack.
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Katie Birkwood @girlinthe.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
We're got LOADS of really cool books on display in #ABodyOfKnowledge, and it closes on 23 July. If you can't get to us during working hours, maybe you can make Thursday evening's late? I'll have even more COOL BOOKS out for a special viewing. #GLAMS #RareBooks 📚
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Royal Astronomical Society @royalastrosoc.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
We're delighted to announce that Dr Isobel Romero-Shaw has won the 2026 Caroline Herschel Prize Lectureship. Her lecture, at the University of Bath in November, is titled 'Violent Beginnings Have Violent Ends: Deciphering the Origins of Binary Compact Object Collisions with Gravitational Waves'. ⤵️
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James Elder @jameselder.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Somewhat depressing that although the British Library is one of the headline cases, the article (and seemingly the report behind it) then pivots to talking solely about Galleries and Museums, ignoring Libraries. And Archives aren’t even mentioned. Don’t forget the L and A in GLAM!
theguardian.com
UK’s museums and galleries left vulnerable to cyber-attack and theft, MPs warn
Report by Commons committee says government has failed to make concrete changes after recent security failures
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Chris Lintott @chrislintott.bsky.social · 14/06/2026
Oh my! Cambridge University Press have put Agnes Clerke's 'A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century' online. I had no idea. How fabulous.
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Chaminda Jayanetti @cjayanetti.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
Charlie Baker, a veteran of Manchester housing, is doing a 1,000 mile cycle through ten countries in ten days to raise money for Asylum Speakers, a charity that organises talks by refugees for schools and unis so young people can hear their stories directly: www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding...
justgiving.com
Help raise £10000 to fund Asylum Speakers to amplify real stories of asylum seekers – JustGiving Crowdfunding
Iʼm raising money to fund Asylum Speakers to amplify real stories of asylum seekers. Support this JustGiving Crowdfunding Page.
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Stuart Hoddinott @stuarthoddinott.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
Love this as a prevention case study: - Low cost, even revenue raising in the short term - Improves health outcomes and reduces costly hospital admissions Shows political leadership is key: - Politically costly for Khan to implement - Did it despite cost savings landing outside GLA
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Marianne O'Doherty @marianneodoherty.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
OK #MedievalSky and #Skystorians: early career job klaxon! A post on my new project 'Strange Geographies: Spatial Imaginaries of Medieval Britain', 30 months (with poss. of extension). Details at jobs.soton.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx... @royalhistsoc.org @memorients.bsky.social @imc-leeds.bsky.social
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Royal Astronomical Society @royalastrosoc.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
Don't forget to tune into tonight's episode of the BBC's The Sky at Night. 🪐🔭 'Space Weather: The Perfect Storm' airs on BBC Four and the iPlayer at 10pm and features our new President Professor @jim-wild.bsky.social talking to @chrislintott.bsky.social. 👉️ www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...
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Royal Astronomical Society @royalastrosoc.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
We're delighted to say that the RAS will be featured in the next episode of the BBC's The Sky at Night. 🪐🔭 Our new President Professor @jim-wild.bsky.social was interviewed for 'Space Weather: The Perfect Storm', which will air on BBC Four and BBC iPlayer at 10pm on Monday 8 June. ☀️☄️
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Cambridge Digital Library @camdiglib.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
Humanity has long been captivated by rainbows - this collage contains over 1000 years of curiosity and wonder from all over the world! bit.ly/CamDigLib-Ra... This universal fascination is one reason 🌈 symbolise inclusion and a reason to have #Pride in the wonderful diversity of the world!
A collage of pages, texts, illustrations, photographs and thoughts relating to rainbows from the collections found in Cambridge Digital Library.
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John Bull @garius.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
Historian of something cool and niche? i've got some episode slots available on the Untitled History Podcast in the coming weeks. so if you're up for coming on and talking about your area, DM me! Think In Our Time but more casual. ESPECIALLY if its non-mil stuff. (spread the word, peeps)
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Early Modern How-to Books @howtobooks.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
Meet us at the GLASGOW SCIENCE FESTIVAL! Together, we’ll test real experiments from 16th-c how-to books. Try your hand at making a floating compass or writing with invisible ink, and discover the quirky world of early modern practical knowledge. You can find us at the Riverside Museum (June 7-10).
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University of York Library @uoylibrary.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
Noted, thanks Mel. We should probably hold off on making any firm decisions about REF2029 until we've heard from the bloke who made Angry Birds.
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Daina Bouquin @dbouquin.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
The Apollo computer's memory had to be woven. Wire by wire, by women whose names never made it into NASA's reports. It also needed integrated circuits, built by Navajo women with "innate" rug weaving skills. New episode of Found in the Machine about the weavers: foundinthemachine.com/episodes/9-t...
Black-and-white photograph of an unidentified Black woman in a white lab coat, seated and bent over a rectangular core rope memory module. She holds a thin wire or needle tool in both hands and works with focused attention on the grid of ferrite cores in the frame in front of her. A task lamp is visible above. Raytheon Company, Waltham, Massachusetts, circa 1960s.Color photograph of an unidentified Navajo woman in a light blue uniform, seated at a binocular microscope on the factory floor of Fairchild Semiconductor's Shiprock, New Mexico plant. She looks up from the eyepiece toward the camera. A man leans over her shoulder from behind, observing her work. Additional workers are visible and out of focus in the background. Fairchild Semiconductor, Shiprock, New Mexico, circa 1969.
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Katie Birkwood @girlinthe.bsky.social · 25/04/2026
Last year we finally got language information in the catalogue for everything in the @rcpmuseum.bsky.social library (hurrah!), and I've done some stats and stuff on how the breakdown changes over time. #libraryhistory #GLAMS 📚
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Internet Archive @archive.org · 23/04/2026
🧵 We tend to think the internet is permanent, but VANISHING CULTURE—the new 📚 from Internet Archive—starts with a simple reality: our digital record is far more fragile than we think 🕳️ 📖 Read for free: archive.org/details/vani... 🛒 Purchase in print: www.betterworldbooks.com/product/deta... ⬇️
Book cover titled “Vanishing Culture” on a teal background. Pixel-art style graphics show a VHS tape, open book, film reel, chain link, and vinyl record dissolving into digital fragments. At the bottom, a cursor icon points to the word “SAVE,” alongside an archive-style building icon, evoking digital preservation.
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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
A recommended read by Hiranya Peiris: "[we] had a quality problem long before LLMs...publish or perish, citation metrics as proxy for impact, volume as proxy for productivity... have been producing incremental, poorly checked, & sometimes wrong papers for decades"🧪🔭⚛️ www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Deckard was wrong, in the end, not because the replicants were dangerous, but because he had misunderstood the nature of the problem. The question was never really about the machines. It was about what kind of society had produced them and why. The same is true here. LLMs are not a threat to astrophysics. But the mirror they hold up to our profession is not entirely flattering, and we would do well to look at it honestly. The problems it reveals — the perverse incentives, the erosion of mentoring, the substitution of volume for thought — are ours, not the machine’s. Fixing them is our problem. It always was.
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RAS Journals @rasjournals.bsky.social · 16/04/2026
Published in #GJI Geophysical Journal International: "Subsurface density structure of the Orientale basin revealed by 3-D gravity inversion of GRAIL data", Manda et al. This is Fig. 1: please visit academic.oup.com/gji/article/... to read the paper. @royalastrosoc.bsky.social @academic.oup.com
The geology of the Orientale Basin, adapted from the Unified Geological Map of the Moon, as modified by C.M. Fortezzo et al. (2020).
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Chris Lee @cpl43uk.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
I saw this art work by #AnnaGillespie at the #RWA exhibition on “Art and the Cosmos” in Bristol - to me it says “the future of astronomy“ as we try to peer through the bars in our skies from bright satellite “noise”. 🤔 Art can be so profound! 🔭 #space @royalastrosoc.bsky.social
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Oliver Morton, Eater of Sun @eaterofsun.bsky.social · 10/04/2026
Refreshed gift link www.economist.com/leaders/2026...
Picture of teh crescent Earth with the hedlines of the piece
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Dr. Skylar Grayson @skylargrayson.bsky.social · 04/04/2026
NASA just dropped this image of Artemis II astronaut Christina Koch looking back at us. The first woman to ever see our planet in its entirety. I’m not crying you’re crying 🥹🔭🧪 📸: NASA
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Royal Astronomical Society @royalastrosoc.bsky.social · 03/04/2026
With all the excitement around Artemis II and our return to the Moon, who's also ready for Mars? 🚀 Why not join our Education and Outreach Officer Lucinda Offer as she explores past and future exploration of the Red Planet at a #SpaceLates event hosted by the National Space Centre on 17 April. 🪐 ⤵️
Lucinda Offer, Education and Outreach Officer at the Royal Astronomical Society.
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Citizen.Coping @propcazhpm.bsky.social · 02/04/2026
African American women mathematicians Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson did the complex calculations that made spaceflight possible. Johnson helped map the trajectory for Apollo 11. Vaughan lead unit of Black women mathematicians. Jackson became NASA’s 1st Black woman engineer.
clickorlando.com
From hidden figures to Artemis: How NASA women reshaped America’s race to the moon
The Artemis program to land the first woman on the moon, following the path of many trailblazing women in space.
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Angela Cassidy @angecass.bsky.social · 30/03/2026
Super interesting #scicomm #scipol #STS job in UK Govt.
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Royal Astronomical Society @royalastrosoc.bsky.social · 20/03/2026
ℹ️ & 🎟️ www.rwa.org.uk/collections/...
rwa.org.uk
Cosmos: the art of observing Space
A major art and science exhibition celebrating our enduring fascination with Space.
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Royal Astronomical Society @royalastrosoc.bsky.social · 20/03/2026
✨ Don't miss it! ✨ There is now less than a month to go until the exhibition Cosmos: the Art of Observing Space closes at the Royal West of England Academy. Curated by Ione Parkin RWA and delivered in partnership with us, the exhibition explores humanity's enduring fascination with the cosmos. ⤵️
Artwork promoting the Cosmos: The Art of Observing Space exhibition at the RWA.
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Royal Astronomical Society @royalastrosoc.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
Why not come and visit the brilliant 'Our Fragile Space' exhibition here at the Royal Astronomical Society... The free display about space debris, which opened to the public last week, will be in Burlington House courtyard until 10 May. 🛰️ 🚀 🔭
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Rebekah Higgitt @rhiggitt.bsky.social · 08/03/2026
Awful! Started in a vape shop and the 1850s buildings are gone. I can only hope that starts to allow firefighters to get it under control.
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Rebekah Higgitt @rhiggitt.bsky.social · 08/03/2026
Here's one we made earlier for #IWD - 8 women in Scotland who shaped #histSTM www.nms.ac.uk/discover-cat...
nms.ac.uk
8 women in Scotland who shaped the history of science | National Museums Scotland
Many of the scientific endeavours featured in our collections are the work of women with a connection to Scotland. Below, we've highlighted key contributio
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Astronimouse @astronimouse.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
In the 19th century the Cambridge Observatory was sent the publications of many other observatories from around the world: this is from the East India Company's Observatory at Madras.
A catalogue of stars from the Madras Observatory - with a picture of the observatory on the title page
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Dover Museum & Bronze Age Boat Gallery @dovermuseum.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
Welcome aboard today's #commute with John Lewis Roget (1828–1908), calling at #Deal, #Dover, #Kearsney, #Canterbury and #Faversham. Roget took every opportunity to illustrate the places he visited, including the railway station. 1) Deal Station – Canterbury Station. 6th August 1891 #trainstation
John Lewis Roget's pencil sketch of a two-wheel hand truck, flowers and adult and child passengers in period hats, suits and dresses at Deal and Canterbury railway stations.
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Chris Lintott @chrislintott.bsky.social · 03/03/2026
New podcast from the awesome Daina Bouquin on the strange history of computing. A must listen.
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BOO! k HistoriAAAH 🎃 @book-historia.bsky.social · 02/03/2026
Starting TOMORROW!! #BiteSizedBookHistory returns with a 5-episode season! BSBH is a series of 7-10 minute long videos about various book historical topics, aimed at a general audience. Catch up with previous episodes here: youtube.com/playlist?lis...
youtube.com
Bite Sized Book History - YouTube
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Katie Birkwood @girlinthe.bsky.social · 02/03/2026
For £35k, which is zippity nada in the scheme of even impoverished council funding, just going to show that it's not actually about the money in any case. Vandals.
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Josiah Mortimer @josiahmortimer.bsky.social · 02/03/2026
Over 100 works of art being put up for auction by (cash strapped) Reform-run Kent County Council. Kent Greens: "While the total financial value of the art is only around £35k, the historic and social value of the art, most of which depicts Kent, is far higher."
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Chris Lintott @chrislintott.bsky.social · 26/02/2026
As @vrubinobs.bsky.social gets going with its survey of the sky, nice to be reminded of a Fred Hoyle quote: ‘a large telescope is a good example of the things which our civilisation does well’.
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Royal Astronomical Society @royalastrosoc.bsky.social · 21/02/2026
Last chance to visit Moon Palace! 🌔 🚌 The school bus-turned mobile observatory is here for one more day at the @royalastrosoc.bsky.social – don't miss the chance to explore everything on board. Come and see us from 10am-4pm today!
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Dr Anke Timmermann @elixirlibri.bsky.social · 20/02/2026
Save the date! T&F's Mark James FLS and Dr Anke Timmermann FLS (i.e.yours truly) will discuss Sir Joseph Banks' botanical discoveries at the Grantham Museum in September. More information and tickets available here: granthammuseum.org.uk/product/sir-...
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Rebekah Higgitt @rhiggitt.bsky.social · 20/02/2026
Job opening at the Royal Observatory Greenwich (3 year fixed term): Heritage Operations Officer, responsible for coordinating public engagement and events for the Heritage Fund programme associated with the First Light redevelopment of the site #scicomm 📜
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Oliver House @oliverhouse.bsky.social · 19/02/2026
Jobs! Senate House Library is embarking on an ambitious project to transform access to one of the UK’s largest and richest collections of queer literature —the remarkable Haud Nominandum Collection, donated by activist, bookseller and co-founder of Gay’s the Word bookshop, Jonathan Cutbill.
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Alison Fisk @alisonfisk.bsky.social · 17/02/2026
The Roman Pharos (lighthouse) at Dover, still standing after almost 2,000 years! 🤩 It is the tallest surviving Roman structure in Britain, and one of only three surviving lighthouses from the former Roman Empire! Dated 1st-2nd century AD. 📷 me #Archaeology
My photo shows the ruin of an eight-sided Roman brick lighthouse with four stepped levels. There is a central arched opening (doorway) at ground level. On the upper three levels, in line with the doorway, there are narrow rectangular window openings. The lighthouse stands 15.8 metres high and is 12.2 metres wide at the base. Roman fabric survives to a height of 12.5 m. The brickwork of the uppermost level was reconstructed for use as a church bell tower for the adjacent Anglo-Saxon church of St Mary in Castro, which can be glimpsed on the right-hand side of my photo. The lighthouse is dated circa 1st century to early- 2nd century AD. It was one of a pair originally built on each side of the Roman port of Dubris (Dover). The other does not survive. This lighthouse stands within the grounds of Dover Castle.
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