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

Very sad news. Fred has been an inspiration. I got to meet him and tour his home observatory back in 2015. 🔭

submitted 10 hours ago • 5 comments

Is the famous 'Wow' signal from Ohio State in 1977 result of a natural process? New paper suggests how it might have occurred. Jim Benford discusses this, along with his own thought that Wow might have been evidence of power beaming, accidental catch from ETI. www.centauri-dreams.org/2025/04/15/n...

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

A worthy thread for your Sunday. 🦝

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

#Comet C/2025 F2 SWAN caught with my @unistellar.bsky.social #eVscope. ☄️

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

ONLY Standard Time, yes! Please and thank you. We tried permanent Daylight Saving Time in the 70's. It was universally HATED by EVERYONE. It was repealed at lightning speed by Congress - which generally doesn't do a darn thing at a speed faster than a tortoise in molasses going backwards.

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

Standard Time forever, please. www.npr.org/2025/04/12/n...

submitted 2 days ago • 4 comments

Saturday night's full Moon. 🔭

submitted 3 days ago • 6 comments

Saturday night's full Moon. 🔭

submitted 3 days ago • 6 comments

It is a pleasure to have a new episode of Doctor Who out there.

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

That's wonderful!

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

Massive (68%) cut to NASA astrophysics proposed in WH budget. If this stands, it's the end of American pre-eminence in space science. arstechnica.com/space/2025/0...

submitted 4 days ago • 11 comments

From last night: here's 67 minutes worth of asteroid (8) Flora passing in front of galaxy NGC 3628. 🔭

submitted 4 days ago • 4 comments

Inge Lehmann, a Danish seismologist & geophysicist, discovered evidence of the Earth's solid inner core & molten outer core. Her work was confirmed by computer models decades later, but she did all her data collection & calculations by hand. More: adalovelaceday.subst...

submitted 4 days ago • 3 comments

𝘐𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘧 𝘐𝘤𝘦𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘥, 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘍𝘢𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘥𝘢𝘭𝘴𝘧𝘫𝘢𝘭𝘭, 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘋𝘢𝘳𝘬 𝘓𝘰𝘳𝘥 𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘨𝘦𝘥, 𝘪𝘯 𝘴𝘦𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘵, 𝘢 𝘔𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘙𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘰 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘳𝘰𝘭 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘴...

submitted 5 days ago • 6 comments

Happening right now: asteroid (8) Flora is passing in front of galaxy NGC 3628. The asteroid is 13 light minutes from Earth, while the galaxy is 35 million light years away. M65 and M66 (lower right) round out the view. 🔭

submitted 5 days ago • 2 comments

No kitteh! (Image - sans cat - is from a glass plate of Haley’s comet taken in 1910.)

submitted 5 days ago • 1 comment

From last night here's an animated gif showing asteroid (8) Flora passing near galaxy NGC 3628. The asteroid will pass in front of the galaxy tonight. M65 is in the lower right. 🔭

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

Mathematician and aerospace engineer Mary Jackson was born #OTD in 1921. Jackson worked at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics until it was succeeded by NASA in 1958. She then became the first black woman to work as a NASA engineer. 🧪 🚀 👩🏾‍🔬 www.nasa.gov/history/mary...

submitted 6 days ago • 4 comments

I held a telescope night for some of my students last night and here’s some of what we saw: the Moon, the Orion Nebula, globular star cluster M3, and edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 4565. Also, Jupiter, Mars and Uranus. 🔭

submitted 6 days ago • 1 comment

Timeline cleanse.

submitted 7 days ago • 2 comments

OTD one year ago: A grand total solar eclipse graced the skies across the United States. This was my second total eclipse, but it hit me just as hard as the first. That calm during totality - the silence - will sit with me for as long as I live. One of the most surreal experiences you can ever have.

submitted 7 days ago • 17 comments

Happy anniversary of the April 8, 2024 total solar eclipse. This was my second total solar eclipse. They were the most magical things I've ever seen.

submitted 7 days ago • 8 comments

Tonight's Moon - 71% illuminated in the waxing gibbous phase. 🔭

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

If you were tasked by an enemy, foreign or domestic, with destroying the United States of America from within, would you do anything different than the actions of this administration over the past few months? You wouldn't. This would be the script.

submitted 9 days ago • 21 comments

In light of the recent visa withdrawals, here is a PDF with advice for international students at UCLA. I’m so sorry to have to share this. drive.google.com/file/d/1x8_z...

submitted 9 days ago • 5 comments

Here are some of the galaxies I captured this weekend: NGC4631, the Whale Galaxy; Messier 63, the Sunflower Galaxy; Messier 104, the Sombrero Galaxy and Messier 83, the Southern Pinwheel. All shot with a Celestron Origin telescope with no post-processing by me. 🔭

submitted 9 days ago • 1 comment

"If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we're up for grabs for the next charlatan, political or religious, who comes ambling along." - Carl Sagan

submitted 10 days ago • 1 comment

I didn't get a chance to post this yesterday but, here is last night's first quarter Moon. 🔭

submitted 10 days ago • 3 comments

On Thursday, April 10 asteroid (8) Flora will pass directly in front of galaxy NGC 3628, a part of the Leo Triplet of galaxies. Here's a screen grab from SkySafari of the view in the evening from California. Telescopic observers, don't be fooled into thinking its a supernova! 🔭

submitted 10 days ago • 1 comment

From last night, here's the globular star cluster known as Messier 13. It is a made up of several hundred thousand star and is located about 22,000 light years from Earth in the constellation of Hercules. At left is a galaxy that is 30 million light years away. 🔭

submitted 10 days ago • 6 comments

Note to self: triple check the altitude of each object before adding it to the queue for my Celestron Origin's observing schedule. Here's a view from early this morning of Centaurus A, well mostly the trees on the hill of my southern horizon. 🔭

submitted 10 days ago • 2 comments