Hayley Williamson

These observations by NASA’s SPHEREx show the infrared light emitted by the dust, water, organic molecules, and carbon dioxide contained within comet 3I/ATLAS’s coma during the mission’s December 2025 campaign. NASA/JPL-Caltech

Comet 3I/ATLAS faded from the news once it became impossible to sustain the "alien spaceship" fantasy. But the science kept going!

Studies from the SPHEREx satellite show how water escaped from the interstellar comet, exposing buried dust & organic molecules. 🧪🔭

science.nasa.gov/blogs/sphere...

The local Women in Space group is hosting a PR VP from the company that says they'll put mirrors in space to reflect sunlight to the surface whenever you want it, are we actually fucking serious right now? Yay, girlbosses can be part of startup scams too! So inspirational!

Are we destroying our window to the cosmos? Satellite trails could make space science nearly impossible, say astronomers | BBC Sky at Night Magazine Projected 560,000 satellites could overwhelm future observatories. Astronomers worry satellite trails will mar every view of the Universe.

Elon Musk et al are totally fucking up the night sky ALREADY and they plan to make it worse 🔭

www.skyatnightmagazine.com/news/satelli...

Future investors in the SpaceX IPO need to pay attention to threads like this. Don’t get suckered by the “data centers in space” hype.

Reporters too! Ask those AI billionaires about their plans for thermal control of their “data centers in space”. Don’t let them escape w/o answering.

Asthma sucks 🫠

BepiColombo at Mercury: Three Flybys, Three Magnetospheres First observations of the equatorial magnetosphere from the Search for Exospheric Refilling and Emitted Natural Abundances-Miniature Ion Precipitation Analyzer sensor BepiColombo's first three Me...

So check out our results in "BepiColombo at Mercury: Three Flybys, Three Magnetospheres" published open access in GRL doi.org/10.1029/2025...

We see these surface-directed ions for up to 12 minutes! This shows us that Mercury's magnetic field, unlike Earth's, can't protect the surface from precipitation of high energy ions in the regions BepiColombo flew through. Hopefully we will see more once we're in orbit! Mercury is very dynamic!

Bursty bulk flows are driven by magnetic energy released by snapping magnetic field lines into a more dipolar configuration. We know these high energy ions are from an ongoing process, not circulating in the magnetosphere, because their angle wrt the magnetic field means they will go to the surface.

In flyby 1, we see evidence for this kind of steady-state reconnection driven circulation. But in flybys 2 and 3 we see ions at energies way too high for this process alone, which matches "bursty bulk flows" seen at Mercury by MESSENGER and at Earth.

Mercury's magnetosphere is very cyclical; solar wind enters the day side, goes over the poles, and back into the tail, where a process called magnetic reconnection sends it back towards the planet, where it can then just hit the surface of Mercury (called the Dungey cycle, also happens at Earth).

My first BepiColombo paper is published! We used data from the Miniature Ion Precipitation Analyzer to compare plasma data from Bepi's first 3 Mercury flybys. In flybys 2&3, we see an energetic feature called "bursty bulk flow" in the magnetotail dx.doi.org/10.1029/2025...

Lmfao it looks like the weather there has already been bouncing above and below freezing, i.e. the Kiruna Spring Classic weather. Can attest that that alone makes everything slippery as hell 😂 May they never buy shoe spikes!

Stylised poster depicting the ESA-JAXA Ramses mission to asteroid Apophis

Third poster in our series: "Space Safety - in action!"

Mission: Ramses
Objective: Intercept and explore the asteroid Apophis as it passes Earth in 2029
Unique feature: Ramses capitalises on a one-in-7000-year scientific opportunity
Launch: 2028

Download at: esa.int/space-safety/in-action

Weather forecast for Kiruna, showing snow until Friday

NOAA SWPC 3 day geomagnetic forecast, with geomagnetic storm levels up to G4 over the next 3 days, maximum G4 at Nov 12 15-21 UTC

Agghhhhhh

Not that an actual good snow after weeks of slush and ice isn't nice, but it always seems to be cloudy here when there's a big geomagnetic storm!

Or alternatively they happen when it's still not dark at night, that's also an option.

Damn.

📣It's tiiiiiime!

The European #SpaceWeather Week #ESWW2025 in Umeå 🇸🇪 has kicked off today!

☀️✨🍭🌍📡🛰️⚡️✈️🚀👨‍🚀

There's lots going on for ESA and the ESA SWE Service Network at ESWW with contributions across many sessions.
We'll be sharing some highlights over the coming week👀
#SpaceSafety

Artist's impression of ESA's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) spacecraft

Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS seen by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope

ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) spacecraft is ready to aim its instruments at interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS! 🪐☄️

Here’s what’s happening and why it’s such a rare opportunity 🧵

I have this hanging in my office!

Screenshot from the Juice bar X account showing a progress bar at 30%.

#ESAJuice reached 30% of its journey to Jupiter! 🙌

What has Juice been up to and what comes next? Read along. 1/8

No Step 2 for my ESA F3 proposal :(

I do not want to enable location services. I do not want to create an account. I do not want to sign up for special offers and news about your product. I would like to engage in a simple transaction where I give you money in exchange for a good.

Thanks for featuring my paper! This was a first for me, it's cool that people are interested :)

Happy 100th anniversary to Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin’s extraordinary thesis!

Made me think of this

BepiColombo at Mercury: Three flybys, three magnetospheres We examine the first three BepiColombo Mercury flybys Using data from the Miniature Ion Precipitation Analyzer (MIPA), an ion mass analyzer in the Search for Exospheric Refilling and Natural Abundance...

Check out my new paper on arXiv!

We used data from IRF's ion sensor, MIPA, to compare Mercury's magnetosphere from BepiColombo's first three flybys. The second and third show evidence of an energetic process called bursty bulk flow that isn't seen in the first.

arxiv.org/abs/2509.17872

BEARS BEARS BIG FAT BEARS

Clearly that's what fixed it 😂

Thank you!!

Fabulous... 😑 I appreciate you checking! I really hope this isn't a new permanent thing, maybe they're updating for GDPR compliance or something.