iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Rob Seaman @robseaman.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

Catalina Sky Survey is evaluating Anthropic's Claude AI for software coding projects. NEOlyzer, a NEO visualizer (via NEA.txt), is now available to the wider community: github.com/rlseaman/neo... See the README for a screenshot and quick start details. #PlanetSci #AstroMethods #PlanetaryDefense

Whole-sky equal-area opposition-centered ecliptic plot of PHAs visible to a limiting magnitude of V 22.

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Rob Seaman @robseaman.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

Catalina Sky Survey has been evaluating Anthropic's Claude AI for software coding projects. NEOlyzer, a NEO visualizer, is a resulting project that is now available to the wider community from: github.com/rlseaman/neo... See the README for a screenshot and quick start details.

NEOlyzer's whole sky Hammer plot of PHAs visible to a V limiting magnitude of 22.

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Rob Seaman @robseaman.bsky.social · 19/06/2025

Of course, this is still better than many humans manage.

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Rob Seaman @robseaman.bsky.social · 19/05/2025

The 2025 Catalina Sky Survey Monsoon Workshop will be held in Tucson, August 1-5, as a splinter session of the ADASSx Summer Software Workshop, immediately following the Rubin Community Workshop. Registration (free) and abstract submission are now open. #PlanetSci #AstroMethods #PlanetaryDefense

catalina.lpl.arizona.edu

Monsoon Workshop 2025 | Catalina Sky Survey

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Rob Seaman @robseaman.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

Happy bee in a prickly pear bloom in the Sonoran desert. Not sure if either species is native. #Pollinators #Insects #Angiosperms #Arizona

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Rob Seaman @robseaman.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

I wanted to call this "Agave and Adobe", but alas, the neighbor's house is stucco. The Century Plant, a rare modern example of truth in advertising, is a member of the Asparagaceae family. #CenturyPlant #PatienceSometimesPaysOff

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Rob Seaman @robseaman.bsky.social · 09/05/2025

Where's Kosmos 482? To put the current NASA shenanigans into perspective, this Venus lander outlasted the country that launched it, and is landing on another planet entirely. #PlanetSci

aerospace.org

COSMOS 482 DESCENT CRAFT (ID 6073) | The Aerospace Corporation

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Rob Seaman @robseaman.bsky.social · 08/05/2025

The future Leo XIV graduated with a BS in mathematics from Villanova, my alma mater, in 1977, the same year I matriculated with a joint major including math and astro/physics. VU math professors were some of the best I've ever had. (I ended up an agnostic with a math minor) #LeoXIV #Villanova #Math

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Rob Seaman @robseaman.bsky.social · 01/05/2025

Here's a second glimpse at Murderbot from Apple. They appear to be steering the production in a direction that understands the character. youtu.be/wSCDyYOQgQA?...

youtu.be

Murderbot — An Inside Look | Apple TV+

YouTube video by Apple TV

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Rob Seaman @robseaman.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

The production team and a broad swath of projects supported by NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office and the international near-Earth asteroid community did a great job with this documentary. #PlanetSci

youtube.com

Planetary Defenders (NASA+ Original)

YouTube video by NASA

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Rob Seaman @robseaman.bsky.social · 10/04/2025

Cautiously optimistic. Cast looks great. Hoping it's not a sitcom. No sign on IMDB that we meet ART in the first season. I think I see how they plan to minimize the first-person narrator. I don't think it can work if they create entirely new narratives. #Pleasedonotmurdermurderbot #SanctuaryMoon

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Rob Seaman @robseaman.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

Observations from JWST and Cerro Paranal have narrowed the uncertainties for that pesky asteroid 2024 YR4 to hit the Moon on December 22, 2032. The estimated impact probability is now 3.8%. The risk for the Earth on the same date is now too low to report. Near Earth = Near Moon. #PlanetSci #MoonSci

science.nasa.gov

NASA Update on the Size Estimate and Lunar Impact Probability of Asteroid 2024 YR4 - NASA Science

Since near-Earth asteroid 2024 YR4 was first discovered in December 2024, NASA and the worldwide planetary defense community have continued to observe the asteroid, which was ruled out as a significan...

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Rob Seaman @robseaman.bsky.social · 31/03/2025

The Franklin Mint sold America in Space mini-coins in the 1970s. At the time, my father, Lew Seaman, was the Nimbus & Landsat Program Manager at the GE Space Technology Center. Dad managed four out of the 18 robotic missions in Series 2 & 3. All these spacecraft remain in orbit. #Space #Satellites

The Franklin Mint's series of shiny space medallions were sold on a subscription basis, two at a time, with matching crewed and robotic missions. They also released a series of mini-coins in silver. These are four of the 18 robotic missions.

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Rob Seaman @robseaman.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

ESA's NEO Coordination Centre (NEOCC) computes impact probabilities (tmp link: neo.ssa.esa.int/-/latest-news) including animations of the uncertainty shrinking as more observations of 2024 YR4 were reported. Note the difference between missing along-track (Earth) and cross-track (Moon). #PlanetSci

ESA Planetary Defence Office’s NEO Coordination Centre (NEOCC) has released v5 of its Aegis software. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10569-024-10225-z

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Rob Seaman @robseaman.bsky.social · 23/03/2025

Earth's rotation is being slowed by the tides. Length of the day increases about one second every 50,000 years while the Moon recedes about a mile to carry off its angular momentum. Over human timescales, the Earth's rotation follows a random walk and sometimes speeds up. #Astronomy #Science #Time

Plot of Solar Time minus Atomic Time with leap seconds indicated by jumps in the y-axis. Tenth-second calibrations are published by the International Earth Rotation Service (IERS). The Earth has recently been spinning up a bit, though the long term trend is tidal slowing causing the day to lengthen a few milliseconds per century.

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Rob Seaman @robseaman.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

The continuing saga of human (left) against robot (right). It is the robot who claimed I was lucky. #DangerWillRobinson

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Rob Seaman @robseaman.bsky.social · 15/03/2025

Overview of the workflow of discovering NEOs from Mount Lemmon by my colleague David Rankin. The coordination among multiple teams funded by NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO) is absolutely critical to the process. Discovery is also needed for science & future mining. #PlanetSci

theamericanscholar.org

Asteroid Hunters - The American Scholar

The scientists and engineers who defend our planet day and night from potentially hazardous space rocks

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Rob Seaman @robseaman.bsky.social · 15/03/2025

On-sky plot (left) of NEOs discovered over 3 days in Oct 2022. Table (right) of their various sizes and other properties. A typical batch of discoveries. One PHA. Big dots are discovery observations. NEOs move in all directions and rates, as shown, typically fading. Comments for more. #PlanetSci

Ecliptic latitude (y-axis) versus longitude, relative to solar opposition for discovery epoch observations of two dozen NEOs discovered between October 16-18, 2022.

NEOfixer table for two dozen NEOs discovered by various surveys between October 16-18, 2022.

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Rob Seaman @robseaman.bsky.social · 13/03/2025

"I cannot generate code for you, as that would be completing your work. [...] You should develop the logic yourself. This ensures you understand the system and can maintain it properly. [...] Generating code for others can lead to dependency and reduced learning opportunities." #Wellitaintwrong

arstechnica.com

AI coding assistant refuses to write code, tells user to learn programming instead

Cursor AI tells user, “I cannot generate code for you, as that would be completing your work.”…

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Rob Seaman @robseaman.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

Spoke too soon. (Needless to say, I am not part of the team to find these...mumble...mumble...carry the one...128 new moons.) Saturn is the god of the Capitol, time, wealth, agriculture, and liberation, according to Wikipedia. Also moons. www.minorplanetcenter.net/mpec/K25/K25... #PlanetSci

minorplanetcenter.net

MPEC 2025-E155 : THIRTY-THREE NEW SATURNIAN SATELLITES

We are the official body that deals with astrometric observations and orbits of minor planets (asteroids) and comets.

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Rob Seaman @robseaman.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

In addition to "messes", Commercial Space lacks public visibility & oversight. "It has been an uncharacteristically messy start to the year for [...] SpaceX." "Without being inside SpaceX, it is impossible to put a fine point on what precisely is happening to cause these technical issues." #Space

arstechnica.com

What’s behind the recent string of failures and delays at SpaceX?

SpaceX has long had a hard-charging culture. Is it now charging too hard?

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Rob Seaman @robseaman.bsky.social · 09/03/2025

Data fusion comparing the period histogram of known NEOs brighter than H=22 (larger than ~140-m) versus the population model from NEO Surveyor, as well as NEOMOD3. This is only possible with contributions from multiple NASA-funded projects. (See alt text) Data from > a century's effort. #PlanetSci

Data fusion of known H < 22 Near-Earth Asteroids with modeled 140-m NEA detections over the five-year NEO Surveyor mission. Data from the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NEOfixer from the Catalina Sky Survey at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory of the University of Arizona. Compared to population models from the Reference Small Bodies Population Model of the NEO Surveyor team and the NEOMOD3 team. See:

https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2024Icar..41716110N/abstract

and

https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.18805

from the Astrophysics Data System at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the arXiv research-sharing platform hosted at Cornell University.

Data from the major Planetary Defense surveys of Near-Earth Objects is hosted at several community archives, including the Planetary Data System (PDS), the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive (IRSA), and the Space Telescope Science Institute's MAST.

Many or most or all of these are NASA-funded. I have undoubtedly missed multiple key services that were instrumental in one way or another in my being able to generate this plot.

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Rob Seaman @robseaman.bsky.social · 07/03/2025

I haven't finished my coffee and just realized I bollixed the hashtag. See comments over on #PlanetSci #astromethods

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Rob Seaman @robseaman.bsky.social · 07/03/2025

Hot-wiring the Transient Universe 5 was the final one in the original poster series. I had left NOAO by the time of the meeting in 2016, and NOAO was soon descoped & reorganized. The 5th workshop was the first organized by a university department, a model that continues. (see comments) #PlanetSci

Poster art by Pete Marenfeld, National Optical Astronomy Observatory.

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Rob Seaman @robseaman.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

The Solar System is both crowded & empty. PHAs are asteroids large enough to cause regional destruction if they hit Earth & near enough to evolve onto a collision course over a few centuries. However, none known pose a significant risk in the near future...but then half are unknown. #PlanetSci

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Rob Seaman @robseaman.bsky.social · 05/03/2025

The CCTF-IERS Workshop on the Negative Leap Second will be held on March 13, 2025. See details at: datacenter.iers.org/data/2/messa... Register for the two-hour online session: bipm-org.zoom.us/webinar/regi... #UTC #LeapSeconds #NegativeLeapSeconds #Time #Space

datacenter.iers.org

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Rob Seaman @robseaman.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

It's cool to land on the moon to conduct scientific research. Nothing stops a commercial company from doing this all by themselves. Rather, they rely on public funding & scientists employed by universities & non-profit institutions. #space #moon #moonlanding #IsThereAnActiveSpaceCommunityOnBluesky

thespacereview.com

The Space Review: Firefly lands on the Moon

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Rob Seaman @robseaman.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

Continuing with posters for the Hot-wiring the Transient Universe series, the 4th workshop was hosted by the Las Cumbres Observatory global network of telescopes. Discussions at these meetings have resulted in tools & infrastructure widely used by the community (lco.global/aeon/). #astromethods

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Rob Seaman @robseaman.bsky.social · 02/03/2025

Hot-wiring the Transient Universe 3 was hosted by Los Alamos. National Labs provide many services to the scientific community and the nation, far beyond their central remit. Workshops are one way academia and public institutions collaborate to magnify impact on science & engineering. #astromethods

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Rob Seaman @robseaman.bsky.social · 01/03/2025

Hot-wiring the Transient Universe 2 was in Santa Cruz in 2009. These meetings became a key forum for discussing software & hardware engineering & robotic operations needed to capture observations of rapid transient celestial events. The science of things that go boom in the night. #astromethods

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Rob Seaman @robseaman.bsky.social · 28/02/2025

The first Hot-wiring the Transient Universe workshop was held at the University of Arizona in June 2007. This was a joint workshop of the VOEvent working group of the Virtual Observatory & the Heterogeneous Telescope Networks Consortium. Motivated attendees made the meeting a success. #astromethods

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Rob Seaman @robseaman.bsky.social · 28/02/2025

"This capability did not exist before us, but one's mastering of this technology enables you to provide not only debris removal service, but also orbit correction, refueling, inspection, observation, and eventually repair and reuse services." #SpaceJunk #EarthOrbitOperations #StuffInSpace

arstechnica.com

Astroscale aced the world’s first rendezvous with a piece of space junk

This success lays the foundation for future missions to dock with out-of-control satellites.

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Rob Seaman @robseaman.bsky.social · 26/02/2025

Where's 2024 YR4 now? Why, there it is! Over by Mars. Zoom & rotate & change time itself! #PlanetSci Scroll NEOfixer & open Orbit View tab: neofixer.arizona.edu/site/500/K24... Or enter any objects you want in Catalina Sky Survey's full orbit viewer app: catalina.lpl.arizona.edu/css-orbit-view?

Orbit view of 2024 YR4 on 26 February 2025. Catalina Sky Survey orbit viewer by D. Rankin.

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