🌸🌹2ck 🌱🐇 @2ck@social.cleverlibre.org

Did you know that many people working on NASA missions are also musicians? Staff at the Space Telescope Science Institute put their talents on display at a show last week in Baltimore!

Fast forward to 2020:

@andrasgaspar and collaborators re-imaged the Fomalhaut system with the Hubble Space Telescope

AND FOMALHAUT b was GONE!!!

https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.08736

https://hubblesite.org/contents/media/images/2020/09/4627-Image

In light of the really impressive JWST observations of Fomalhaut that were released yesterday, I wanted to share my view of the Fomalhaut system. Story time!

Fomalhaut is a bright nearby star that has been known for decades to have a debris disk, a belt of dust caused by asteroids crashing into each other. Sounds very dramatic, but we see them all over the place! Our own Kuiper Belt and asteroid belt are extremely faint/low mass versions of debris disks we observe around other stars.

So, I have to say at this point that it's pretty freaking cool to get to have your theoretical prediction confirmed in your lifetime in astronomy. (And others also independently had this prediction, it's not just me). But yeah, that feels pretty good.

Here's a Sky & Telescope article (where I got to be very excited about the new images): https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/the-james-webb-space-telescope-reveals-fomalhauts-disk-in-unprecedented-detail/

I think I'm also quoted in Nat Geo (but paywalled so I'll wait until I get get it from my library): https://www.nationalgeographic.com/premium/article/nasa-photo-of-planetary-debris-unlike-anything-seen-before

We're currently looking for a PyPI Safety & Security Engineer. If that sounds like something you'd like to do, we hope you'll send us your resume. #opensourcejob

https://www.python.org/jobs/7221/

Finally, a solution to the unfairness of authorship ordering in scientific papers! 😂

"Every Author as First Author"

https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.01393

I don't normally like being Mr. Grumpy old man, but it is currently 68° (20°C) and just about perfect outside, yet I hear a bunch of air conditioners running.

Consider opening yer dang windows, people!

Mass walkout at global science journal over ‘unethical’ fees (Elsevier)

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/may/07/too-greedy-mass-walkout-at-global-science-journal-over-unethical-fees

Also, I am so totally over enforced short form posts. There's nothing big, clever, or useful about having to split shit up into threads. It's just wank.

help my sink is clogged