leighfletcher.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

Just a month after #Saturn's solar conjunction, and 3 weeks since ring plane crossing, @deep-twilight.bsky.social has these lovely images of an almost ringless giant. #planetsci

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

✍️I visited British Steel last week - just as workers were discovering that the plant's Chinese owners were effectively planning to starve the blast furnaces to death. It was a strange, unsettling experience. With deep ramifications. Some thoughts: edconway.substack.com/p/the-strang...

submitted 6 days ago • 18 comments

Helsinki is hosting the #EPSCDPS25 planetary meeting in September, with abstracts due May 7th. There's a #JWSTSolSys session planned, encouraging topics from across the #planetsci community - do join us in Finland! meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EPSC-DPS2025... 📷 NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, ERS Team

submitted 6 days ago • 1 comment

After decades of nondetections and tantalizing maybes, astronomers have definitively detected an aurora on Neptune. With comments from @jnic.bsky.social . Story by @astrokimcartier.bsky.social Read and listen here: eos.org/articles/aft...

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

Biggest commitment to a 3 second joke I've ever seen

submitted 9 days ago • 871 comments

Thanks to more than a decade of Uranus 🔵 observations from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have measured the planet’s internal rotation rate with a level of accuracy 1000 times greater than previous estimates! Read more 👉 esahubble.org/news/heic2503/ 🧪 🔭 ☄️ #planetsci

submitted 11 days ago • 1 comment

I'm looking to hire a post-doc to work on tropical wetland #methane modelling. If that sounds like something you'd be interested in, get in touch. Happy to have an informal chat before applications :-) Closing date 4th May. jobs.le.ac.uk/vacancies/11...

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

🧵 Hi everyone! I have a new paper out in Planetary Science Journal discussing volcanic activity on Jupiter's moon Io as seen by Juno's JIRAM instrument (IR imager and spectrometer): doi.org/10.3847/PSJ/...

submitted 13 days ago • 3 comments

A few days before yesterday's news of DSIT budget... "STFC is preparing to launch a voluntary exit scheme and potentially scaling back the major facilities it funds, as well as a reduction in rewarding grants." Wonder how the new UKRI budget will affect this... 🤔

submitted 12 days ago • 1 comment

Clear skies over the UK 😊🔅 Image taken by Sentinel-3 on April 2, 2025.

submitted 12 days ago • 4 comments

NEW 🧵 A quick thread of charts showing how Trump’s economic agenda is going so far: 1) US consumers are reacting very very negatively. These are the worst ratings for any US government’s economic policy since records began.

submitted 13 days ago • 94 comments

Springtime in Oxford, nothing better. Back to catch up with friends and colleagues 21 years after first joining the Atmospheric, Oceanic, and Planetary Physics group.

submitted 18 days ago • 0 comments

Incredible moon rise behind the Extremely Large Telescope @eso.org A stunning video taken on 13 March by our colleague Juan Beltrán, who works at ESO’s Paranal Observatory, not far from the ELT. #astronomy

submitted 25 days ago • 3 comments

#graphicdesign progress. From back in 2014, working on early roughs to the first release version of our #voyager #screenprint. We have revised this a bit since it has been reproduced in three series now. But the fourth was the first series run. #sciArt

submitted 58 days ago • 2 comments

#Saturn's simulated appearance from Earth from Jan'25 to Dec'26, showing the changing perspective of the rings as the gas giant moves into southern spring. SkySafari doesn't render the ring shadows, & Saturn is out of view on the other side of the Sun for the ring-plane crossing tomorrow, Mar 23rd.

submitted 26 days ago • 1 comment

Once every 15 years, #Saturn's rings vanish as viewed from Earth - the ring-plane crossing is on March 23rd, before it reaches northern autumn equinox on May 6th (Sun over Saturn's equator). 📷 Thermal 17µm image from @eso.org VISIR in 2010, after the 2009 spring equinox (Credit: ESO/Blake/Fletcher)

submitted 27 days ago • 1 comment

#PPOD: As NASA's Juno spacecraft flew low over Jupiter’s cloud tops in March 2023, its JunoCam instrument captured this view of bands of high-altitude haze forming above cyclones in an area known as Jet N7. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Image processing by Björn Jónsson 🧪 🔭

submitted 29 days ago • 0 comments

What a week. But I was delighted to see the breadth of planetary atmospheres and ionospheres science awarded in #JWSTCycle4, a departure from the small-bodies/satellites science we've seen in previous cycles. This'll be a treasure trove for the giant planets: www.stsci.edu/jwst/science...

submitted 34 days ago • 0 comments

About fifty years ago, NASA strapped a message in a bottle to a rocket and flung it into the deep dark It wasn’t supposed to go this far, but it did. Long past its mission, it’s still out there so far away now that a simple hello takes a day to reach it, and another day to hear if it says hello back

submitted 37 days ago • 35 comments

🪐Jupiter or Saturn? Which gas giant is best? Our Dr Paul Abel joins @robinince.bsky.social & @briancoxtalks.bsky.social in The Infinite Monkey Cage to debate it on Radio 4 tomorrow (Sat 15 March) or already available on BBC Sounds! 🪐 www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

submitted 34 days ago • 1 comment

OMG. Last night's lunar eclipse -- as seen from the Moon! The Blue Ghost lander got this shot. The Sun is overexposed, but in the reflection you can see it's almost fully eclipsed by the Earth. 🧪🔭 fireflyspace.com/news/blue-gh...

submitted 34 days ago • 11 comments

Next is Christopher Mankovich on using Orbiter-Based Ring and Doppler Imaging Seismology to Probe Uranus's Interior Structure Abstract 1115: www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/lps... #LPSC2025

submitted 35 days ago • 1 comment

A mere 244 years after the discovery of #Uranus, sounds like #LPSC2025 has been hosting an interesting set of talks on future exploration of the Ice Giant. Follow @martinhajovsky.bsky.social for details!

submitted 35 days ago • 0 comments

This is phenomenal geology humor (full video at www.instagram.com/reel/DHHL3fI...)

submitted 36 days ago • 51 comments

At the end of the rainbow you'll find... the Uni of Leicester. Which I'd tag if they'd join us where the skies are blue.

submitted 36 days ago • 1 comment

This is #HeraMission's view of Mars acquired yesterday, at 1.07 million km from the red planet, hurtling towards it at 9 km/s. The north pole and other features clearly visible - closest approach comes at 13:51 CET today, images unveiled tomorrow! www.esa.int/Space_Safety...

submitted 37 days ago • 11 comments

The NASA Headquarters Briefing (aka NASA Night) at #LPSC is going out live on YouTube starting momentarily www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ns4s... Anything they know and can say has a chance of coming out here. These are often the most important summaries from NASA for planetary each year. 🧵

submitted 38 days ago • 3 comments

The entirety of March 2025 in the Sun’s atmosphere! With an absence of notable solar flares, sunspot numbers remain in the Sept-Feb 154-166 range – still down from the 196-216 range seen last summer. Surely more exciting solar activity is coming up, but when? #spaceweather

submitted 40 days ago • 3 comments

I once wrote a short story about a planetary robot that cost billions and took years, only to reach its destination, turn around and phone home, but no one was left to listen, to understand, to interpret its discoveries. I thought I was joking.

submitted 41 days ago • 1 comment

Today was the 1st day of the National Student Space Conference 2025, organised by UKSEDS at #Leicester, with a few fellow speakers from @physicsuol.bsky.social. I think I attended one of these back in the late 90s, a great way to find out about UK space careers. www.space-park.co.uk/2025/02/nssc...

submitted 47 days ago • 2 comments

#Mars is getting bigger out of the window, with #EuropaClipper just a couple of hours away from its gravity assist. Follow along with eyes.nasa.gov/apps/solar-s...

submitted 47 days ago • 0 comments

First day of spring, and a quiet wander through the Leicestershire countryside while son is at football training. This is what Saturdays are for. Spotted red kite, heron, cormorant, and the regular swans, geese, pheasants...

submitted 47 days ago • 0 comments

NASA's Lunar Trailblazer is set to launch to the Moon very soon. 🛰️🌘🔭 The spacecraft, carrying the University of Oxford's (@ox.ac.uk) Lunar Thermal Mapper – funded by us - will map the location of water to support future missions, when astronauts return to the Moon. 👉 jpl.nasa.gov/news/how-nas...

submitted 50 days ago • 1 comment

With this so-called planetary parade in view, I had the chance to talk about planetary exploration and the enormity of the Solar System on BBC Radio #Leicester this morning, challenging listeners to at least spot Venus, Mars and Jupiter (bronze tier viewing!) www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

submitted 51 days ago • 3 comments

#EuropaClipper closing in on Mars this weekend, a gravity assist for the long journey to Jupiter (but back via Earth in Dec'26 for another speed boost). Looks like thermal imaging and radar will be tested during the flyby, can't wait to see the results. #planetsci www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-e...

submitted 51 days ago • 0 comments

Amazing view of #Jupiter from late January. Just above the broad/brown north equatorial belt you can see the turbulent wake of the NTB storm outbreaks, wrapping east-west around the northern hemisphere and still going strong many weeks after the first eruption. #planetsci

submitted 55 days ago • 1 comment

Not exactly as some of our followers expected it, but here comes the ESA #Juice bar update 😀 The mission continues to stay close to the Sun until March. The distance between Juice & Earth is increasing quickly. It now takes 9 minutes for telemetry data to travel one way. 1/2 #planetsci

submitted 62 days ago • 4 comments