A pen sketch of a web page for an astronomer, showing name, email, optional phone number, and professional contact details, with a one sentence summary of their research and an ADS link.
My periodic reminder for #astrosci #astrodon #exoplanets Early Career Researchers to please, please, please have a simple web site with your current email address on it - rationale here: kenworthy.space/advice/
A selfie of me smiling in front of The Storr, a mountain on the Trotternish peninsula of the Isle of Skye in Scotland, which has several unique jagged rock formations.
The view from the summit of Blà Bheinn, a mountain on the Isle of Skye that has stunning views over a large area of the island including the Black Cuillin ridge, a famous mountain range that gets its name from the dark colour of the gabbro rock it is composed of.
A photo of the cliffs at Neist Point, the headland that represents the westernmost point of the Isle of Skye. There is a yellow and white lighthouse on the top of the cliffs with green hills in the foreground. There is a seabird colony on the cliffs themselves, perched high above the sea.
A photo of Dun Beag Broch shortly after sunset. Dun Beag Broch is an iron-age broch, largely in ruins today but the walls can still be seen. There are mountains in the distance and the sky is a sunset gradient of blue to orange.
Swapped ‘on sky’ in the astronomical sense for ‘on Skye’ in the Scottish sense last week - I’d been meaning to visit this stunningly beautiful place since moving to Edinburgh and it definitely lived up to expectations! So many amazing hikes and things to see (+ we even had surprisingly good weather)
Different telescope mirror apertures and their resultant point spread functions.
Together with Sebastiaan Haffert our review on “High-Contrast Coronagraphy” is out - writing an ARA&A review has been on my academic bucket list, and I’m very proud of the result. It uses the showyourwork! framework, making it a completely reproducible paper. #FAIR #astrodon #exoplanets
I’m around in Edinburgh! Am otherwise occupied this weekend but can maybe meet up in the week if that works? (also let me know if you fancy a visit to the ROE and have time - I’m sure the other exoplanet folks here would be keen to talk to you!)
Congratulations to Dr Ben Sutlieff (@bensutlieff.bsky.social) for his pop up talk describing his poster about mapping exoplanet atmospheres with ground based observations 🔭 #ukexom25
Wow, these are beautiful! Looking forward to following this thread!
Please help us get the word out: our 6 wk astrophysics 🧪🔭summer research program for international MSc students is open for application! Note this is aimed at students from disadvantaged regions or under-represented groups in astro! I will host one position on black holes ⚫️!
aspire.science.uva.nl
With astronomy job season approaching, if you’re a PhD or early postdoc, PLEASE make a webpage and put your current contact details on it, so that searching for “< your name > astronomer” finds you first - more explanation how and why here: Unsolicited Advice #astrodon 🔭🪐
Sharks are older than the rings of Saturn.
This paper finds that the rings are no older than 400M years. Sharks date back to at least the Late Ordovician Period, 450M years ago.
Lovely to go on the Dirleton Solar Walk and see some of what @bensutlieff.bsky.social has been up to 🪐
Would definitely recommend, and Neptune is near a great garden centre if you need cake motivation.
Yes, it was such a beautiful morning! A really lovely welcome for my first visit to the city.
A leafy grassy verge, surrounded by trees, sports a tall pole with a silver orb on top. This is the start of the Dirleton solar walk.
A sign showing the location of all the planets. It reads "welcome to the Direction Solar Walk" with a cute walking astronaut cartoon logo
Inside on a table and all lined up are the planet markers before they were installed in the outside. You can see the swirly pinks on Jupiter and the pockmarks on mercury. Bluer planets for Neptune uranyst and earth are in the distance with red mars right at the end of the table
A wooden marker saying "Earth" with a perspex earth like planet on the top. The autumnal leaves scatter the grass verge with trees surround a sort of grassy paddock in the background.
Calling the Lothians - fancy an autumnal planet walk?
The beautiful historic village of #Dirleton is proud to announce that dirleton.solar is open! 🥳😎
Take a stroll from the Sun in the village through to Neptune at the Archerfield Walled Gardens. Scan the QR codes for planet-facts en route! 🔭
For those in Scotland, Dan Arnold has just completed the Dirleton Solar Walk - dirleton.solar - a scale model of the solar system, with help from @astroroyalscot.bsky.social , @bensutlieff.bsky.social , @astronomyedinburgh.bsky.social and others listed on the supporters page. #astronomy
Just found out that some of the talented people at work helped with this project to make a walk that takes you through the solar system in the very lovely heart of East Lothian.
Definitely on the list to try out soon.
dirleton.solar/flight-plan
Lastly, thank you very much to @astroroyalscot.bsky.social for introducing me to the team, and to @martinwhitfieldmsp.bsky.social and @brionya.bsky.social for joining us for the grand opening today!
Massive congrats to everyone that worked so hard to make this happen - it was led by Dan Arnold @heriotwattuni.bsky.social, with support from Dirleton Primary School, the Astronomical Society of Edinburgh (@astronomyedinburgh.bsky.social @mikechristie.bsky.social), the local council, and many more.
A sign showing a map of the Dirleton Solar Walk, with information describing its scale (1:3.6 billon) and instructions on how to access its augmented reality features for each planet.
Myself next to the marker for the planet Jupiter, which consists of a fence post with a sign on top showing an artistic representation of Jupiter and a metallic ball representing its relative size according to the scale. There is also a QR code linking to information about the planet and an AR representation.
The marker for the planet Saturn, with a view of the countryside around Dirleton.
Myself and my colleague Gergely Friss attempting to demonstrate the augmented reality visualisation of the planet Neptune. I am trying to hold the planet but my hands are in totally the wrong place.
Very excited to be at the opening of the Dirleton Solar Walk today - a scale model of our Solar System in the East Lothian countryside, placed over 1.2km of the John Muir Way walking route! 🪐🔭 This was a really fun project to support and I highly recommend it for those local, esp. for kids/families!
A photo of some bollards in Dundee, Scotland. Some are standard black bollards, but several are designed to look like penguins, emphasising Dundee’s connection to the Antarctic.
Also these excellent penguin bollards 🐧
The RSS Discovery, a historic barque-rigged auxiliary steamship built in Dundee and launched in 1901. It carried Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton on their first journey to the Antarctic. It is now a museum ship in Dundee.
A view over the River Tay, just before sunrise. The sky is yellow and the water is reflective like a mirror. A bird (a cormorant, I think) is swimming by.
The McManus art gallery in Dundee. It is an impressive gothic revival building with green trees on either side and a curved staircase leading up to the main entrance.
The view as seen from Dundee Law (a hill in Dundee) shortly after sunrise, with the sun low in the sky to the east. The city below is in the foreground with the River Tay behind it. The Tay Rail Bridge over the river can be seen.
In Dundee yesterday for the Scottish Universities Physics Alliance Annual Cormack Astronomy Meeting (longest conference name ever? 🔭) with @agastro.bsky.social, @dirkscholte.bsky.social, and others. A full day of talks, but still managed to sneak in a little bit of sunrise sightseeing!
Reposting this video because I think everyone needs to see it. We’re so used to seeing Martian dust storms in movies, but this is actual footage, this is real! 🔭
A huge circular storm NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill
An enormous 5,000 kilometer wide storm in Jupiter’s north polar region. Imaged by NASA’s Juno orbiter on November 24th during Perijove 67 approach.
Check out BU PhD-student @alliemccarthy.bsky.social's paper just accepted to ApJL! JWST spectral light curves of SIMP 0136 show clear pressure-dependence, indicating three variability mechanisms: clouds, hot spots and C chemistry. @johannavos.bsky.social is the JWST PI! arxiv.org/abs/2411.16577
Optimist: The cup is half full
Pessimist: The cup is half empty
Exoplanetary scientist: We've detected water in the cup!
These are the planets to scale not only in size, but also in their tilt and rotation speed. Pluto and Ceres (a couple of dwarf planets) are included whether you like them or not 🫣
Does it still count as being at work if I left my card for the gate at home? 😉
A selfie of me in front of the Royal Observatory Edinburgh. There is a lot of snow on the ground, with some grass poking through and a few scattered trees.
A view of a snow-covered Arthur’s Seat (an extinct volcano in Edinburgh) as seen from Blackford Hill.
A landscape shot showing the snow on Blackford Hill and the Braid Hills beyond. In the far distance, the much taller Pentland Hills can just about be seen through some clouds. A radio mast is visible on the right.
A very happy snowman (not built by me!) with a large smile and sticks for arms on Blackford Hill. Arthur’s Seat can be seen in the background on the right, as well as Edinburgh Castle on the left.
Finally got to experience a snow day at the observatory!! I only wish I had a sledge… 🔭☃️ (also saw this excellent snowman on Blackford Hill for which I cannot take credit)
What's happening with these clouds? While it may seem that these long and thin clouds are pointing toward the top of a hill, and that maybe a world-famous observatory is located there, only part of that is true. In terms of clouds, the formation is a chance superposition of impressively periodic undulating air currents in Earth's lower atmosphere. Undulatus, a type of Asperitas cloud, form at the peaks where the air is cool enough to cause the condensation of opaque water droplets. The wide-angle nature of the panorama creates the illusion that the clouds converge over the hill. In terms of land, there really is a world-famous observatory at the top of that peak: the Carnegie Science's Las Campanas Observatory in the Atacama Desert of Chile. The two telescope domes visible are the 6.5-meter Magellan Telescopes. The featured coincidental vista was a surprise but was captured by the phone of a quick-thinking photographer in late September. Your Sky Surprise: What picture did APOD feature on your birthday? (post 1995)
🔭 Undulatus Clouds over Las Campanas Observatory - ©Yuri Beletsky
apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap24111...
JWST observations of the ice giant Uranus over 1 year!
Full size, more info & single images: flic.kr/p/2pUN7Ec 🔭
Credit
Processing: Andrea Luck CC BY
Raw Data: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI
3 Frames
2023-02-06, 2023-09-04 PI: Klaus Pontoppidan, JPL
2024-02-06 PI: Naomi Rowe-Gurney, RAS
An infrared photo of a rainbow: a strange, ghostly-looking rainbow in a mostly black and white photo, with a faintly red outer edge and a cyan inner edge, and what look like a few even fainter ‘echo’ bows inside
A regular visible-light pic of a rainbow
An ultraviolet picture of a rainbow: a dark, foreboding landscape with a deep purple stripe emanating from it, and a grey stripe inside
A composite of the three preceding photos, showing that the infrared bow is ‘outside’ the visible light rainbow, and the ultraviolet bow ‘inside’
There’s more to rainbows than the human eye can see: here’s how a rainbow extends into the infrared and ultraviolet.
Photos:
1. Infrared
2. Visible (obviously)
3. Ultraviolet, and
4. A composite showing how UV is beyond the violet in a rainbow, and IR beyond the red end.
🧪 #photography
Macquarie central square
Macquarie lawns and theatre
Applications are open til April 30 2025 for international applicants to do a Masters + PhD combo with me in astrostatistics at Macquarie University in Sydney!
www.mq.edu.au/research/phd...
