Time to update the sign:
It has been 0 days since I last had to use some weird astrophysical quantity measured in centimeters.
#astrodon
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Over 70% complete, our ELT is glowing in the #sunset light of the Atacama Desert in #Chile, surrounded by massive cranes hard at work to get this telescope up and running.
With the first light planned for the end of the decade, the ELT and its groundbreaking 39-metre main mirror will take on some of the biggest challenges in #astronomy and, ultimately, help us understand our place in the #Universe.
Read more: https://www.eso.org/public/images/potw2617a/
📷 ESO/G. Vecchia
#astrodon #astrophysics #space #science
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@CosmicRami@aus.social
·
Apr 21, 2026
CosmicRami
@CosmicRami@aus.social
Astronomer, driving The Dish📡 to study pulsars in my PhD. Also, founded SpaceAustralia.com. Also, love a bit of astrophotography. Also, do everything with my little mate, Max. Also, Ultra-Gay. Also, fuck Elon Musk. He/Him. Header image credit: ESO/L. Calçada.
aus.social
Hubble vs. My Backyard's Scope!
First of all, happy B'day Hubble Space Telescope! Still the OG space-based telescope that changed our perspective of the Universe.
For the B'day, NASA/ESA released an image of a section of the Trifid Nebula (left). You can see a nodule from inside the nebula and a thin stellar jet formed by a young stellar object buried inside the cloud. That's about 0.75 light-years in length.
On the right is my 1-hour photo from my backyard - and the jet appears there too!
Unlike Hubble, my backyard rig only has a 20cm aperture and has a whole lot of atmosphere, as well as city lights, to deal with.
So it is really neat to be able to get that level of detail in 1 hour of observing.
See the original Hubble image here: https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Hubble_turns_36_with_a_dazzling_Trifid_Nebula_portrait
#TrifidNebula #Astrophotography #Science #Hubble #Astronomy #Astrodon
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This isn't a scene from Star Wars.
What you're looking at is the Tarantual Nebula, and those beams come from the lasers installed on the telescopes of our Very Large Telescope Interferometer in #Chile. They create artificial stars 90 km above the ground to correct atmospheric turbulence, allowing the VLTI to observe faint targets.
But why are four telescopes observing the same target? Find out: https://www.eso.org/public/images/potw2616a/
📷 A. Berdeu/ESO
#astrodon #astronomy #astrophysics #space #science
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@pomarede@mastodon.social
·
Apr 18, 2026
Daniel Pomarède
@pomarede@mastodon.social
cosmographer at university paris-saclay | mapping the universe | co-discoverer of #laniakea our home supercluster of galaxies | #dipolerepeller a void contributing to the motion of our galaxy | #coldspotrepeller a void associated to the coldest point of the big bang fossil radiation | #southpolewall a giant galactic filament of the cosmic web | #hooleilana the relic of a baryon acoustic oscillation https://vimeo.com/pomarede | https://sketchfab.com/pomarede | https://youtube.com/@pomarede
mastodon.social
NASA Shuts Off Instrument on Voyager 1 to Keep Spacecraft Operating
The Low-energy Charged Particles experiment has been operating almost without interruption since Voyager 1 launched in 1977 - almost 49 years.
https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/voyager/2026/04/17/nasa-shuts-off-instrument-on-voyager-1-to-keep-spacecraft-operating/
#Voyager #science #news #space #spacecraft #astrodon
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@CosmicRami@aus.social
·
Apr 15, 2026
CosmicRami
@CosmicRami@aus.social
Astronomer, driving The Dish📡 to study pulsars in my PhD. Also, founded SpaceAustralia.com. Also, love a bit of astrophotography. Also, do everything with my little mate, Max. Also, Ultra-Gay. Also, fuck Elon Musk. He/Him. Header image credit: ESO/L. Calçada.
aus.social
ohhhh, this is good!
Using the 3.9m AAT, Sarah Caddy and Lee Spitler (from our school!) were able to track Orion on its return trajectory ...
... when the astronauts were still 200,000 km away from Earth! 🤯
That's at a distance of ~16 Earth diameters away, and Orion is a tiny tiny tiny spaceship at such great distances ....
But a big 3.9m telescope is also a handy toy to play with!
via AAL LinkedIn
#ArtemisII #Astrodon #Australia #Telescopes
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Taxi, please! 🚖👋
ALMA consists of 66 antennas that work together like a single gigantic telescope in the Chilean Andes. They can be rearranged in different layouts to discern various levels of detail.
This is where these yellow trucks come in. Each truck can carry a 100-tonne antenna and put it in place with a precision of a few millimetres!
Read more: https://www.eso.org/public/images/potw2615a/
📷 S. Otarola/ESO
#astrodon #astronomy #astrophysics #space #science
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@pomarede@mastodon.social
·
Apr 13, 2026
Daniel Pomarède
@pomarede@mastodon.social
cosmographer at university paris-saclay | mapping the universe | co-discoverer of #laniakea our home supercluster of galaxies | #dipolerepeller a void contributing to the motion of our galaxy | #coldspotrepeller a void associated to the coldest point of the big bang fossil radiation | #southpolewall a giant galactic filament of the cosmic web | #hooleilana the relic of a baryon acoustic oscillation https://vimeo.com/pomarede | https://sketchfab.com/pomarede | https://youtube.com/@pomarede
mastodon.social
NASA astronaut Christina Koch hugs the Orion spacecraft in the well deck of USS John P. Murtha.
Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls
https://flic.kr/p/2s7aCi3
#Artemis #ChristinaKoch #Orion #spacecraft #orionspacecraft #space #science #news #NASA #astrodon #photography #Artemis2
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It's that time of the year when I stare at Betelgeuse on my walk home, hoping against hope to catch it go off.
#Astrodon
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@astro_jcm__dup_21554@mastodon.online
·
Feb 23, 2026
Juan Carlos Muñoz
@astro_jcm__dup_21554@mastodon.online
• Astronomer and science communicator • Media Officer at the European Southern Observatory - @esoastronomy • Won't shut up about space • #astronomy #astrophysics #science #astrophotography #space • he/him • Toots in English and español • 🇪🇸 → 🇺🇸 → 🇨🇱 → 🇩🇪
mastodon.online
🚨 #JOB ALERT 🚨
Are you passionate about #astronomy communication? At @esoastronomy@mastodon.social we're looking for a Visits & Outreach Coordinator for our Paranal Observatory in #Chile, home to the Very Large Telescope and soon the Extremely Large Telescope.
You must be fluent in English and Spanish, and have experience guiding visitors in a scientific institution, museum, observatory...
Apply here: https://recruitment.eso.org/jobs/2026_0016#
📷 ESO/G. Hüdepohl
#fedihire #getfedihired #astrodon #astronomy #science #scicomm
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Two's company ⭐️⭐️
Just like we humans are strongly influenced by the presence of companions over the course of our lives, so are stars, literally.
The pair of points at the centre of this image, taken with our VLT, are an old stellar couple known as AFGL 4106.
https://www.eso.org/public/images/potw2608a/
📷 ESO/G. Tomassini et al.
#astrodon #astronomy #astrophysics #space #science
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Peek inside ESO's Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), under construction in #Chile 's Atacama Desert. The main structure shown here will host the ELT’s five mirrors, which will gather the light and send it to the instruments at the sides of the telescope.
With its 39-metre-diameter, the main mirror will be the largest ever for an optical telescope: the biggest eye on the sky!
Read more: https://www.eso.org/public/images/potw2605a/
📷 ESO/J. C. Muñoz-Mateos
#astrodon #astronomy #astrophysics #space #science
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@CosmicRami@aus.social
·
Jan 28, 2026
CosmicRami
@CosmicRami@aus.social
Astronomer, driving The Dish📡 to study pulsars in my PhD. Also, founded SpaceAustralia.com. Also, love a bit of astrophotography. Also, do everything with my little mate, Max. Also, Ultra-Gay. Also, fuck Elon Musk. He/Him. Header image credit: ESO/L. Calçada.
aus.social
The power of persistence and community unity! What a great win for #Astronomy
American company (AES Andes) was planning on building an industrial facility in the Atacama desert. This would've produced light pollution affecting the pristine skies where some big telescopes are.
Well .... no more!
Amazingly, this company canned a $10B project and flipped from Green Hydrogen (whatever) to investing in renewables.
That's whiplashing!
#Astrodon
https://www.mpe.mpg.de/8134359/news20260127
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@CosmicRami@aus.social
·
Jan 27, 2026
CosmicRami
@CosmicRami@aus.social
Astronomer, driving The Dish📡 to study pulsars in my PhD. Also, founded SpaceAustralia.com. Also, love a bit of astrophotography. Also, do everything with my little mate, Max. Also, Ultra-Gay. Also, fuck Elon Musk. He/Him. Header image credit: ESO/L. Calçada.
aus.social
Excited to share my first #SpaceAustralia feature article for 2026 about an exciting and ambitious project that is unfolding 1km below the surface in regional Victoria.
Last year, I had the incredible opportunity to visit the Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory (SUPL) with Dr Katie Mack and explore the ambitious efforts of the SABRE South experiment. Shielded from cosmic rays by a kilometre of rock, this lab offers the ideal conditions to search for the faint whispers of dark matter, which still accounts for 25% of all matter in the Universe—and yet remains completely undetected.
Check out the article (and yes, check out our funky boots in the clean room!) and keep a lookout for exciting news of the detectors switching on later in 2026.
https://www.spaceaustralia.com/feature/australias-dark-matter-quest
📸 F. Morrison / SUPL
#DarkMatter #ParticlePhysics #Astronomy #Astrodon #CosmicRays
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@stargazerrob@mastodon.online
·
Jan 05, 2026
Rob Tilsley
@stargazerrob@mastodon.online
Astrophotographer Astrophotography Planetary
mastodon.online
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@stoneymonster@stoney.monster
·
Dec 29, 2025
Chris White finds this vexing
@stoneymonster@stoney.monster
Musician (drums, bass) for @12AX7 and The Stonemonsters. Podcast co-host at embedded.fm, Embedded Software Consultant at Logical Elegance. KM6BHF “Prankster” - Business Insider he/him
stoney.monster
Quick couple nights' worth of integration on NGC 281, The "Pacman" nebula. Had some focus issues or something, but was able to compensate a bit. A fun DSO. #Astrodon #astrophotography
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@pomarede@mastodon.social
·
Nov 18, 2025
Daniel Pomarède
@pomarede@mastodon.social
cosmographer at university paris-saclay | mapping the universe | co-discoverer of #laniakea our home supercluster of galaxies | #dipolerepeller a void contributing to the motion of our galaxy | #coldspotrepeller a void associated to the coldest point of the big bang fossil radiation | #southpolewall a giant galactic filament of the cosmic web | #hooleilana the relic of a baryon acoustic oscillation https://vimeo.com/pomarede | https://sketchfab.com/pomarede | https://youtube.com/@pomarede
mastodon.social
Giant telescope project, long planned for Hawaii, gets cozy with Spain
Spain’s €400 million offer could induce Thirty Meter Telescope to switch sites
https://www.science.org/content/article/giant-telescope-project-long-planned-hawaii-gets-cozy-spain
#TMThawaii #TMT #Astronomy #Hawaii #Maunakea #science #news #Astrodon #Spain
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