@nplinnspace
๐ธ๐ช Exoplanet atmospheres + chemistry + formation at Uppsala University ๐ช๐ญ Also into astrobiology, policy, climate, equality/EDI, and scicomm โจ (she/her) โ linnboldtchristmas.wordpress.com
Five panel close-up stitched view of a rock formation on the surface of Mars, as seen by the Curiosity rover. The formation is a light, sand color and is covered in pea-sized nodules.
#PPOD: From orbit, parts of Mars look like sprawling spiderwebs etched across the hillsides. These patterns may record a time when groundwater flowed through large fractures in the rock, leaving minerals behind. ๐งช ๐ญ
With the first Ariane 6 with four boosters, our fleet of rockets is complete ๐
We will continue to work on upgrades to reduce costs, make our launch systems more robust and launch more often.
For example, the powerful P160C rocket motor will replace P120C on both Ariane 6 and Vega-C rockets.
๐ญ Damn, sad to hear this โ the PROBA-3 mission was a really exciting one for solar physics studies, basically consisting of two instruments making a coronagraph in space that was letting us study the Sunโs outer corona. Really hope it can be restored before itโs too late!
Join @stsci.edu as a software engineer, working on interactive data analysis and visualization tools for astronomers. ๐ญ #astrocode
Apps due March 18, 2026.
recruiting2.ultipro.com/SPA1004AURA/...
๐ข Less than 1 hour left until this talk begins!
14:00 UTC = 15:00 CET = 09:00 EST = 06:00 PST = 23:00 JST
If you haven't signed up to our mailing list to access the Zoom-link, you can also watch it live on our YouTube channel ๐ญโ๏ธ๐งช Livestream: www.youtube.com/watch?v=058C...
An image of the speaker, Miki Nakajima. She is smiling and looking into the camera. She has long dark hair and is wearing earrings & a white striped shirt with a black blazer. She is stood outdoors, leaning against a fence, with some trees visible but blurred in the background.
A photo of... a magma ocean?! Not quite, because that would be a really difficult picture to take since we do not have any on hand. Instead, this is a photo that was taken in the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, in May 1954 during the eruption of the Kilauea Volcano. The floor is literally lava, blackened and fragmented with what appears to be whirlpools of red and yellow lava in their centres. Close enough? Credit: Photo by J. P. Eaton, May 31, 1954
You've maybe heard of ocean planets ๐๐ช but what about *electric magma* ocean planets?! ๐ฅโก๐
For our next #RockyWorldsDiscussion on Thu 5 March @ 14:00 UTC, Miki Nakajima will present exciting simulations on magma ocean dynamos in Earth and super-Earths
More: www.rockyworlds.org/event-detail...
๐งช๐ญ
TESS confirms what we saw with Kepler and K2 - on average, ***every single small red star has a planet around it***! And a short-period one at that (<30 days).
And you know what the galaxy is mostly made of?
Small red stars.
PLANETS. PLANETS EVERYWHERE!!!
Happy weekend pondering that, everyone.
Two new JWST COMPASS papers on arXiv today! โจ
Transmission spectra of HD 15337c (led by @nicolewallack.bsky.social & @planetarygao.bsky.social) and TOI-260 b (led by myself & @planetarygao.bsky.social):
arxiv.org/abs/2602.22327
arxiv.org/abs/2602.22329
A white, glowing egg-shaped object lies in the centre of the black-and-white image, on a dark, starry background. Glowing streaks spread upwards from the object. In the top left, a yellow arrow marked โSunโ points straight down, and a blue arrow marked โVelocityโ points towards the 7 oโclock direction. In the bottom left, an inset shows the same object on a lighter grey starry background, filled with ragged-edged, concentric egg shapes gradiented black-to-white.
Our first glimpse of comet 3I/ATLAS from Juice's science camera ๐โ๏ธ
The precious data from the mission's November observations of the interstellar comet arrived on Earth last week. Teams are now digging in to discover what they reveal.
Stay tuned for updates!
More ๐ www.esa.int/ESA_Multimed...
๐ญ ๐งช
"There is no public mandate for a single company in one country to make changes on that scale to the planetโs atmosphere." - Lawler, @astrokiwi.bsky.social & Revell (2026)
"no group has the right to change the Earth's environment in any significant way w/o full int'l study & agreement" - IAU (1961)
Coronal loops on the eastern limb--here is a Blue/White/Red color scaling of SDO AIA 171 ร
showing intense plasma loops over the Sun's limb.
The loops are boosting x-ray flux to above the C-class floor. The soures of these loops are active regions--we will see them soon.
#heliophysics
This is so cool! You can see that at solar maximum (around 2002, 2013, and 2024 ish) HST drops more rapidly, because the increased solar activity puffs up the atmosphere, increasing drag on orbiting satellites ๐งช๐ญ
A still satellite image of the blizzard of 2026 in the Northeast United States. This image contains the GeoColor product from the GOES-19 weather satellite from the evening of 2026-02-23.
A view we will not soon forget.
The Blizzard of 2026.
Call for Editors at the Open Journal ofย Astrophysics
The number of papers submitted to the Open Journal of Astrophysics continues to rise, as demonstrated by this nice graphic which shows the stats for new submissions for the last five years: It's very clear that the thicket is getting thicker!โฆ
Hedgerow prominences along the solar rim yesterday! Taken with the Lunt 50mm Ha Solar telescope with 2x Televue Powermate. #astrophotography #solarphotography
#NASAWebb provided the first vertical view of Uranus's ionosphere, revealing auroras shaped by its tilted magnetic field: https://esawebb.org/news/weic2602
Abstract of the paper described above.
Book cover โScience for Sustainability and Wellbeing in the Anthropocene.
A nerd with a suit and tie (me) at the pontifical science academy.
The ornate domed roof of the Pontifical Science Academy.
"Astrobiology and the Anthropocene: How Searching for Life Elsewhere Can Help Us Sustain Life on Earth".
A talk I gave at the Vatican.
Dropbox link to pdf of the paper
www.pas.va/en/publicati...
Pontifical Science Academy page with the talk video and paper text:
๐งช
www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/5d9go...
Lipids are kind of the ignored middle children of origins of life research. It's time they got a bit of attention, too!
This week's post is a Q&A with geoscientist-turned-??? (interdisciplinary folks know the struggle) @jamessaenz.bsky.social about why there's no cutting the fat from origins. ๐งช
Can't believe I never heard of this before: a laser that shoots at space debris to effectively poke them out of a collision course?! Using fancy adaptive optics for locking in on faint targets?!? This is a project for space safety, yes, but also a project engineered carefully to be MY FAVOURITE ๐ฅบ๐ญ๐งช
Love that you can't always tell whether a wacky scheme mentioned in @xkcd.com is actually real or not. SNEWS is real!
xkcd.com/3208/
A nightโtime photo of the Sentinelโ3A satellite launch, showing the rocket rising from the pad amid bright orange flames and thick billowing smoke. The rocket and launch towers are illuminated against a dark sky.
Satellite view of Earthโs high northern latitudes, showing a vast expanse of snowโcovered and iceโcovered terrain in soft purple and blue tones. The left side of the image fades into darkness, marking the boundary between night and day. Cloud formations swirl above the icy landscape.
A falseโcolour infrared satellite image of a large hurricane approaching Florida. The stormโs cold central clouds appear deep blue, surrounded by lighter blues and yellows, while the surrounding warm areas show as bright red. Florida, Cuba, and the Bahamas are outlined with labelled cities including Tampa, Miami, and Havana.
A naturalโcolour satellite image showing thick plumes of brown Saharan dust blowing westward from Africa over the deepโblue Atlantic Ocean. Swirling white clouds sit above the water, while the coastline of northwest Africa and the bright desert interior are visible on the right.
Today weโre celebrating 52,600 orbits of Earth by the Sentinelโ3A satellite, together with @euspa.bsky.social and @eumetsat.int
For ten years, it has been delivering data on oceans, land, ice and atmosphere.
The constellation will grow with the launch of Sentinelโ3C in late 2026๐
๐งช๐ญ The Terra Hunting Experiment is *so close* to first light โ our instrument HARPS3 is looking sharp!
If you wanna know more about our upcoming decade-long hunt for an exoplanet Earth, @sciencenews.bsky.social recently did this great article on what weโre up to: www.sciencenews.org/article/eart...
โฆis useful for describing the physical world around us that often sees continuous change proportional to itself. As always, thereโs a great 3Blue1Brown video on how e is defined and why itโs really just a neat shorthand that pops out (which I would argue is โallโ ฯ is too) youtu.be/m2MIpDrF7Es?...
I agree with @ravenonthill.bsky.social; it describes proportional/exponential change, which exists in biology to thermodynamics to nuclear physics. But e wouldnโt alter the environment; the environment would alter e, b/c e is defined by *us* from algebra. Itโs the value where d/dt(e^t) = e^t, whichโฆ
View of Mars from orbit, showing a curved horizon against the blackness of space. The dusty tan surface is marked by scattered impact craters and rugged ridges. Along the horizon, a thin pale bluish atmospheric layer creates a misty glow, and a single distinct white cloud is visible near the upper layers of the atmosphere.
Mars - Cloud over Promethei Terra
Full size 5k image and more info: flic.kr/p/2rWMYkb ๐ญ๐งช
Credit: ESA/DLR/FUBerlin/AndreaLuck CC BY
@esa.int Mars Express 2025-05-24
ID: HR000_0000 (ND+RED+GR+BL)
Yep!
Excluding a few dinosaurs and traditional institutions that persist over on Twitter, I get all my science news, leads, and chats with scientists through here now.
The feeds also allow me to monitor all the topics Iโm interested in so as soon as any new paper drops โฆ itโs in my TL!
๐ญ๐งชโ๏ธ
Once again, humanity has been fooled by the classic prank โthis is surely a fixed value that we can use as a unit of measurement foreverโ on us by the natural world around us โ first a foot, then a stone, now the radius of Jupiter. When will we learn?! ๐งช๐ญ
Astronomers: highly recommend this thoughtful opinion piece by @hogg.bsky.social on how to think about our field in light of the development of large language models. whether you agree with him or not itโs vital to discuss the principles behind our science. ๐ญ arxiv.org/abs/2602.10181
How do you track space debris as it makes its fiery descent through the Earthโs atmosphere? Geophysicists have come up with an intriguing new answer: use a network of earthquake sensors to follow the shock waves the debris creates. ๐งชโ๏ธ๐ญ physicsworld.com/a/earthquake...
