Notices by Mark McCaughrean (markmccaughrean@mastodon.social)

Coming up in 100 minutes at 21:48CET: the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter mission is making flyby at Venus, just 379km above the cloud tops.

Although it has made several Venus flybys before, this one's special: it's the first of a sequence designed to lift the spacecraft out of the ecliptic plane.

Why? Because Solar Orbiter is aiming to take the first clear images of the north & south poles of the Sun.

Will there be a polar hexagon like on Saturn? Stay tuned 🌞

https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Operations/Solar_Orbiter_ready_for_close_encounter_with_Venus

#SpaceScience

I definitely wasn't supposed to be doing this this afternoon, but ... 🤷♂️🙂

A time lapse movie of the northern hemisphere of Saturn, showing a full rotation of the famous polar hexagon, a very cool fluid dynamics phenomenon in the planet's atmosphere 🪐🐻❄️

Taken by the NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini spacecraft over a 12.5 hour period on 3 & 4 April 2014: 35 ISS WAC images 512x512 pixels, CB2 filter at 752nm 🛰️📷

Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, SSI, Mark McCaughrean

#SpaceScience

When PR goes wrong 🤷♂️

If you’re going to advertise a nice space discovery, make sure your lead image shows it clearly.

Don’t lead with a context image in which it’s very hard to see and/or which could be misinterpreted.

Because the press will use that first image & everyone will be confused.

Case in point: this @guardian story about an Einstein ring seen by Euclid, PR’d by ESA this morning.

Can *you* see it? 👀

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/feb/10/euclid-telescope-captures-einstein-ring-revealing-warping-of-space

#SpaceScience #Astronomy

A different twist on the planetary parade tonight: Mars & Jupiter aided by Capella, making a triangle around the Moon circled by its own 22° ice halo 🌝

#Astronomy ✨
#Photography 📷
#iPhonePhotography 📱

“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them."
– Ray Bradbury

University of #Helsinki library, January 2025

#Finland 🇫🇮
#Photography 📷
#iPhonePhotography 📱

Men of steel ⚒️

“Kolmen sepän patsas” (Three smiths sculpture) by Felix Nylund at the intersection of Aleksanterinkatuand Mannerheimintie in Helsinki, January 2025.

#Finland 🇫🇮
#Photography 📷
#iPhonePhotography 📱

When you look up at the night sky, the photons arriving from distant stars & galaxies have experienced no passage of time during their journey to your eye 💫

From their perspective, they arrive at exactly the same moment that they left & they have travelled no distance ⏰📐

You may now continue your sub-light speed day 🤷♂️

(Yes, my train to Mannheim was late & I made it on to my connecting ICE to Frankfurt Airport thanks only to the conductor who kept his door open for me 🚅😰)

#Relativity

Earlier this week, Comet C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) made its closest approach to the Sun.

While doing so, it made a dramatic appearance sweeping the wide-field LASCO C3 coronagraph of the ESA/NASA SOHO mission over a few days.

Here’s my take, a triplet of Deep Red, Orange, & Blue filter images taken over an hour around 09:00UTC on 14 January, as an RGB composite.

#C2024G3 💫
#CometATLAS ☄️
#Perihelion 🌞
#Photography 📷
#SpaceScience 🛰️

You know what they say about sleeping dogs 🐕🤷♂️🙂

Jokes aside, the life of street dogs in India & elsewhere must be tough, & it’s hard just walking past them.

But they also seem to have a certain dignity about them, which I hope I’ve been able to capture a little of here.

As seen in Bangalore today.

#DogsOfMastodon 🐾
#Photography 📷
#India 🇮🇳

Circle of life – sunlight, water, air, & organic compounds.

#Photography 📷
#iPhonePhotography 📱

As you may recall last week, it took me sometime to figure out how I could send my current passport back to the UK as required to get a new one, as many courier services said they wouldn’t take passports.

In the end, I was told by HMPO that they could as long as it was direct to them, no-one else. So I sent it with DHL & it arrived in Hemel Hempstead 48 hours later.

The new passport was printed the same day & sent, but the weekend slowed it down, meaning it only arrived today, again by DHL.

So, in the end, it took just 8 days from sending my current passport from Germany to the UK before I received the new one via DHL today.

I’m impressed – thank you, HMPO 👏

And to be honest, I don’t mind the colour of the cover & there are some nifty new security features inside, including me staring through a 20p-shaped plastic lens for some reason 🤷♂️

But I strongly object to the lack of “European Union” on the outside 🤬

#FuckBrexit

#JWST needs to be very cold to avoid emitting light at the same IR wavelengths as its faint celestial targets.

It does so by hiding behind a huge sunshield, cooling radiatively into the blackness of space.

Although vindicated by the observatory's astonishing performance today, it was a struggle to convince the community of this approach.

This article by Harley Thronson tells of the key role played by Tim Hawarden & other UK astronomers, & the POIROT & Edison concepts.

https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4877/1

On the mostly clear Saturday morning of 21 May 2011, this shot shows almost the whole of The Netherlands apart from part of South Limburg 🇳🇱

Space shuttle Endeavour at top left on its final ever mission, STS-134.

Taken from the ISS with a Nikon D3S by an astronaut of Expedition 27 or STS-134, perhaps ESA's Paolo Nespoli or Roberto Vittori, as ESTEC is in there in Noordwijk, on the Dutch coast halfway between the Hook of Holland & IJmuiden.

Original NASA shot iss027e036161, processed by me.

Morning.

A long 600km drive home yesterday from Katwijk to Heidelberg, with a stop in Cologne to meet my lovely publishers in person for the first time. Now I just have to finish the book 🤷♂️

Reflecting on a week of meeting friends in Noordwijk & Edinburgh who I haven’t seen for half a year, 10, or 40, & riding again under the wide open skies of south Holland 🚴♂️

And as for the future, who knows? We must somehow hold onto the light against the gathering dark.

Spot on by @carolecadwalla & absolutely terrifying.

She is the modern day version of King Canute, exhorting us to witness the infinite fetid ocean of shit rising inexorably around her, as we wring our hands & try to dilute it with our pathetic little eco-friendly water bottles full of “truth”.

It’s not that we’re losing the war; we’re fighting completely the wrong one.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/11/a-new-era-dawns-americas-tech-bros-now-strut-their-stuff-in-the-corridors-of-power

A late night treat.

This 1978 BBC documentary brilliantly captures not only Genesis in their new “And Then There Were Three” incarnation, playing Mannheim, Leiden, & Knebworth, but also a moment in time that feels so familiar to me as a then 17 year old.

Remarkable to hear the narrator saying about Genesis that “you might not have heard of them” & “if they’re not household names”, but we forget that legends are made over time & that 1978 is almost half a century ago 😱

https://youtu.be/5wCfKvfu2fY?si=w1s1359RN97Yniac

@NatureMC @sundogplanets Absolutely – we co-wrote this paper on the subject a couple of years ago 👍

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-022-01655-6

Sign of the times.

There are lots of timelapses of the lovely Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS on the net ☄️

But watch a few & you’ll quickly notice many have huge numbers of passing satellites in them, often in similar orbits 🛰️🛰️🛰️

It doesn’t take a genius to realise that most of these belong to one guy who’s commandeering the public commons to further enrich himself.

Screenshot credit: fernanfegal @ Instagram

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DAl5QWMSLBR/?igsh=bm9qc2l3cmphMTM1

#comet #comet2023a3 #starlink #lightpollution

@thisnorthernboy FWIW, I’ve written to them asking for the picture to be removed / replaced.

I wish we had clearer skies here – not sure if I’ll have a chance to see it this evening.