Notices by Corey S Powell (coreyspowell@mastodon.social), page 3

People tend to take the Moon for granted, but it can be a source of constant wonder. I recently gave a lecture about the marvelous weirdness of our satellite.

The helped validate Einstein's general relativity. It left scars beneath your feet. It still flashes with constant meteor strikes. My latest Invisible Universe column:

https://invisibleuniverse.substack.com/p/its-strange-its-glorious-its-overhead #space #Science #nature

Bring some lunar joy into your life in the new year. Here's a sweet NASA preview of every lunar phase & every move the Moon will make in 2026.

https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/5587/ #space #science #nature

One fun detail: Reginald Daly is now remembered as the guy who proposed the idea that the Moon formed from a giant impact. But he was 75 at the time! During his life, he was mainly known as the guy who mapped all the geology along the 49th parallel of North America, kilometer by kilometer.

DiskSats can be designed to remain horizontal, so they experience minimal aerodynamic drag. That would allow them to orbit at unusually low altitudes (less than 185 miles/300km), useful for detailed Earth-imaging studies.

Or they could potentially fly to the Moon.

https://www.nasa.gov/smallspacecraft/disksat/ #science #tech #nasa

There are now four flying saucers circling the Earth.

They arrived on Thursday, when a NASA-funded program launched these experimental DiskSats. They have a versatile, standardized form that could simplify a wide variety of science & tech missions. (Illo below)

https://aerospace.org/kickstage/successful-launch-puts-all-4-disksats-orbit #space #science #tech

Asteroid collisions spotted around another star!

Twice over the past two decades, the Hubble telescope saw new dust clouds around the star Fomalhaut. They're probably places where large rocks crashed into each other in a young, forming planetary system.

https://news.berkeley.edu/2025/12/18/astronomers-see-fireworks-from-violent-collisions-around-nearby-star/ #space #science #astronomy

Wow! Not only can we see the disks where planets are being born around young stars, now we can sense the pull of the worlds taking shape within.

Blue ovals show orbits of 31 newfound stellar companions. Bottom right: a simulation of our solar system at the same age.

https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2025/12/Gaia_finds_hints_of_planets_in_baby_star_systems #space #science #nature

In most cases, we don't have the technology to directly see newborn planets orbiting baby stars. But the Gaia space telescope is so sensitive that it can measure the stars being yanked back & forth by the gravity of the hidden objects around them.

Full paper at link.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.00157 #space #science #tech

I could use some light in this darkness right now, so I thought I'd share a gorgeous image from JWST.

This cosmic butterfly is a star being born. New planets are forming within the vertical dark line. Galaxies shine through the scene from the far distance.

https://esawebb.org/images/potm2508a/ #space #science #art #nature

For those who like to know how the sausage gets made: Here is a breakdown of how scientists catch & measure neutrinos as they fly through ice at the south pole.

https://icecube.wisc.edu/science/icecube/ #science #tech

And on humanity's visionary side:

Not only can we see neutrinos, we can now measure their spectrum. In essence, we can see neutrinos in *color* and start to track down the cosmic sources that create them.

https://www.science.org/content/article/cosmic-neutrinos-kink-could-help-explain-particles-origins #science #nature #physics

New results are in from the huge, underground LZ experiment: We really, really, really have not found dark matter.

LZ is so sensitive that it can see neutrinos! But still no sign of the hypothetical WIMP dark matter it was designed to detect.

https://sanfordlab.org/news/lz-sets-worlds-best-hunt-galactic-dark-matter-and-gets-new-look-neutrinos-suns-core #science #nature #tech

We knew it was going to be bad, but now we know how bad:

A study of half a million stars shows that their planets rapidly vanish as the stars grow old and bloated. The planets may get shredded, evaporated, or (most likely) dragged by tides into a fiery death.

https://warwick.ac.uk/news/pressreleases/ageing_stars_likely_destroy_their_closest_planets/ #space #science #nature

Contrary to all those click-baity headlines about how cosmology is "broken," scientists are mostly frustrated that it's *not* obviously broken.

When we can find the real cracks, we'll have a path to deeper understanding.

https://noirlab.edu/public/news/noirlab2408/ #space #astronomy #science #physics

A 6-year survey mapped the biggest structures in the universe. The results are beautiful...and, annoyingly, they fit nicely with the current model of cosmology.

We know there's something missing from that model, but figuring out *what* is not easy!

https://news.uchicago.edu/story/scientists-release-new-survey-biggest-objects-universe #space #science #nature

Marvelous new image of interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS, taken by photographer Satoru Murata before dawn this morning. *

On the right you can also see galaxy NGC 4691. There should be a lot more pictures coming in soon.

(Yes, this one really is the interstellar comet.)

https://www.facebook.com/groups/227002358661288/permalink/1619658589395651/?mibextid=wwXIfr&rdid=Es101r7n2s2JTsMn #space #science #nature

Spectacular time-lapse image of Comet Lemmon (C/2025 A6), taken by astrophotographer Michael Jäger.

There might have been, um, a few satellites passing by during the long exposure.

https://forum.vdsastro.de/viewtopic.php?t=7600&start=50#p43988 #space #science #astronomy #art

Historians are still decoding the complex calendar system in the Dresden Codex. Who knows what information was in the many other, lost Mayan manuscripts.

All of these tables were created using centuries of carefully recorded, naked eye observations.

https://archaeologymag.com/2025/10/maya-astronomers-predicted-solar-eclipses/ #history #science #astronomy

I find this remarkable:

The Dresden Codex, one of the few surviving Mayan manuscripts, contains tables that give highly accurate timings of solar eclipses over more than 700 years, from 350 CE to the 12 century.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adt9039 #history #science #astronomy

This is what the band of the Milky Way would look like at night if your eyes could see radio waves. A hidden beauty.

It's a new image created by the Murchison Widefield Array, which scanned the sky in 20 radio "colors" over frequencies from 72 to 231 megahertz.

https://www.icrar.org/gleam-x-galactic-plane/ #space #science #nature #tech