The SETI Institute

An unforgettable night of sci-fi, mystery, and big questions awaits. ✨ Experience #DisclosureDay with the SETI Institute on June 12 at Cinemark Century 16 in Mountain View, California. Enjoy a private screening, popcorn and drink combo, and a post-film Q&A conversation with a SETI Institute scientist after the credits roll. Tickets available at disclosureday.eventbrite.com This is an in-person event, and a ticket purchase is required. Seating is limited. #SETIInstitute #movie #scifi #movienight #sciencefiction #eventbrite

Every day, remarkable things happen overhead: meteors, satellites, drones, atmospheric events, and sometimes phenomena we cannot yet explain. Too often, they are captured as blurry videos with missing context — or not captured at all. @Skymapperspace is launching SkySphere, an AI-powered all-sky observatory designed to continuously monitor and analyze the sky in real time. Built for citizen scientists, educators, researchers, observatories, and skywatchers, #SkySphere combines wide-sky imaging, edge AI, scientific metadata, and cryptographically secured records, enabling events to be detected, documented, and studied with confidence. The SETI Institute is supporting this effort because better sky observations mean better data — for science, education, and discovery. SkySphere is more than a camera. It is a step toward a citizen-powered global network of trusted sky monitoring. Help bring SkySphere to Life on Kickstarter: kickstarter.com/projects/allpl…

#PPOD: Martian South Pole 🧊 This is the highest-resolution view of the water ice-rich south polar cap of #Mars captured by NASA’s Psyche mission after it made its close approach with the planet for a gravity assist. The image scale is around 1.14 kilometers per pixel. The cap itself extends across more than 700 kilometers. The image was acquired with Imager A on May 15, 2026, at about 1:53 p.m. PDT. With Mars in the rearview mirror, the spacecraft will soon resume use of its solar-electric propulsion system to make a beeline to the main asteroid belt, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. When it arrives in August 2029, it will insert itself into orbit around the asteroid Psyche, which is thought to be the partial core of a planetesimal, a building block of an early planet. Credit: @NASA @NASAJPL @Caltech @ASU #planetaryscience

#PPOD: Crystal Ball Nebula 🔮 NGC 1514, nicknamed the Crystal Ball Nebula, is showcased in this enchanting image captured by Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS) on the Gemini North telescope, located on Maunakea in Hawai‘i. Gemini North is one half of the International @GeminiObs, partly funded by @NSF and operated by NSF NOIRLab. German–British astronomer William Herschel discovered the Crystal Ball Nebula in 1790. It’s located in the constellation Taurus, near the border of Perseus. While, culturally, crystal balls are known for divining the future, the Crystal Ball Nebula provides us with a snapshot of the final stages of a star’s life from long ago. It sits around 1500 light-years from Earth. This means the light captured in this image left its source around 1500 years ago, traveling across the Universe before finally reaching Gemini North. Credit: International Gemini Observatory / @NOIRLab / NSF / @AURADC; Processing: J. Miller & M. Rodriguez (International Gemini Observatory/NSF NOIRLab), T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/NSF NOIRLab), D. de Martin & M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab) #astronomy

If you missed the 2026 #DrakeAwards — or just want to relive it — the recording is now available. Dr. Lori Marino on cetacean cognition, the next generation of SETI scientists, the Great Recognition, and an evening that reminded us why this work matters. Watch here: youtu.be/Hc-cy8fjWvA

Before @Skymapperspace, I was already arguing that UAPs need better data, better instruments, and less stigma. SkyMapper is the infrastructure we are now building with the @SETIInstitute to make that possible. youtube.com/watch?v=-WPUPW…

#PPOD: A Lyrid From Orbit ☄️ The Expedition 74 crew on the International @Space_Station turned into #meteor chasers as Earth passed through a cloud of dust and small debris left behind by comet Thatcher in 1861. ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot set up a camera to automatically record thousands of images in the hope of catching a shooting star, an elusive event that often lasts only a fraction of a second. “In scientific terms, a shooting star is actually a meteor: a tiny fragment of rock or dust from space that disintegrates as it enters Earth’s atmosphere, after traveling astronomical distances. For those with their heads full of dreams, seeing a shooting star often feels like the perfect moment to make a wish… just in case!” says Sophie. Credit: @NASA @ESA @Soph_astro #planetaryscience

This month’s newsletter explores evolving ideas of life across art, astrobiology, and speculative futures. We are excited to announce the six nominees for the inaugural Speculative Life BioArt residency, a new initiative examining questions surrounding genetics, identity, bioengineering, and the infrastructures that sustain life itself. These themes also resonate in Xin Liu’s newly unveiled work at the 61st Venice Biennale, where dissolving sculptural forms made from woven post-consumer plastics imagine speculative ecologies shaped by microbial transformation. Across exhibitions, workshops, and publications, SETI AIR artists continue to challenge how we define life and our relationship to planetary systems. Clear skies, Bettina Read more: seti.org/news/seti-air-… #science #art #sciart

The sky above us never stops. Drones. Meteors. Satellites. Rocket launches. UAP. We built Skysphere in collaboration with @SETIInstitute as a new AI-powered all-sky observatory to continuously monitor and analyze the sky in real time. Let's transform skywatching into a global citizen-powered network. Join the Kickstarter 👇 kickstarter.skymapper.io

TONIGHT, Wednesday, May 20, 2026, at 7 pm (PDT), Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi, the CEO of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, will give a free, illustrated, non-technical lecture entitled: "Why Do We Exist? The Nine Realms of the Universe that Make You Possible." in the Smithwick Theater at Foothill College, in Los Altos (see directions below) The talk is part of the Silicon Valley Astronomy Lecture Series, now in its 27th year. Learn more: seti.org/events/why-do-…

#PPOD: Curiosity Shakes Loose a Pesky Rock 🪨 After NASA’s Curiosity #Mars rover drilled a sample from this rock on April 25, 2026, it withdrew its robotic arm and pulled the entire rock off the surface with it. Engineers spent several days repositioning the arm and vibrating the drill to try to loosen the rock. When it finally detached on May 1, the rock broke into pieces. This close-up image of the rock was produced by Curiosity’s Mast Camera, or Mastcam, on May 6. Nicknamed “Atacama,” the rock is estimated to be 1.5 feet in diameter at its base and 6 inches thick. It would weigh roughly 28.6 pounds on Earth (and about a third of that on Mars). The circular hole produced by Curiosity’s drill is visible in the rock. Credit: @NASA @NASAJPL @Caltech #MSSS #planetaryscience

Researchers led by Fred Sharpe, a biologist affiliated with the SETI Institute, will report at #AbSciCon this week that humpback whales produce a sound never before described in scientific literature: a deep thrum that can travel at least five miles through the air. To Sharpe, part of the lesson lies in what the thrums reveal about human perception, especially our tendency to miss signals that do not match what we expect to hear. “If conspicuous sounds from our beloved whales are falling on deaf ears,” he said, “goodness knows what cosmic signals might fall under the radar.” Learn more: thetimes.com/uk/science/art…

For decades, scientists have searched the cosmos for signs of extraterrestrial life — and despite the silence so far, many researchers say we’ve barely begun to explore the possibilities. In a new feature from @AstronomyMag, experts discuss why the search for alien civilizations still matters, what the so-called “Great Silence” might mean, and whether humanity should continue "listening" for signals from the stars. The article includes an interview with @Chenoachem, who explains that modern SETI efforts are advancing rapidly thanks to improved computing power and telescope collaborations — and that researchers have only “scratched the surface” of the search so far. Learn more: astronomy.com/features/shoul…

#PPOD: A Galactic Hybrid 🌀 This NASA/ESA @HubbleTelescope image showcases the remarkable #galaxy UGC 12591. UGC 12591 sits somewhere between a lenticular and a spiral. It lies just under 400 million light-years away from us in the westernmost region of the Pisces–Perseus Supercluster, a long chain of galaxy clusters that stretches out for hundreds of millions of light-years — one of the largest known structures in the cosmos. The galaxy itself is also extraordinary: it is incredibly massive. The galaxy and its halo together contain several hundred billion times the mass of the sun, four times the mass of the Milky Way. It also whirls round extremely quickly, rotating at speeds of up to 1.8 million kilometers per hour. Observations with Hubble are helping astronomers determine the mass of UGC 12591 and whether the galaxy formed and grew slowly over time or grew unusually massive by colliding and merging with another large galaxy at some point in its past. Credit: @ESA / Hubble & @NASA; Text: ESA #astronomy

'EXPLORING MARS' AT NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES Happy to announce the National Acad of Sciences has acquired my painting EXPLORING MARS (Oil on board, 24 x 12 in., 2021), which will now form part of its permanent collection in Washington D.C. I painted EXPLORING MARS as an homage (& update) to the painting w/ same title by Chesley Bonestell (1988-1986), the father of spaceflight art. Bonestell's EXPLORING MARS first appeared in the book "The Exploration of Mars", authored by Wernher Von Braun & Willy Ley, w/ paintings by Chesley Bonestell (Viking Press, 1956). The caption of Bonestell's illustration read: "The ground station had been set up on Mars, and the explorers are beginning to investigate the vicinity of the landing site". In 2021, during covid, I had the hubris of working on a makeover of Bonestell's painting. I wanted to pay tribute to the grand master of space art & his creation of an iconic classic, but also update elements of the landscape & hardware in light of new scientific knowledge gained about Mars in the intervening 65 yrs, & evolutions in our thinking about future Mars exploration systems & human surface operations. Bonestell's original EXPLORING MARS (Oil on board, 28 1/2 x 14 1/2 in., 1956) is in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.. So, as incredible as it seems to me, our two paintings are now hanging side by side, separated by the Washington Mall. I am very grateful to Cultural Programs of the National Academy of Sciences (CPNAS) for this acquisition & honor, in particular to J.D. Talasek, Director of CPNAS, and to Dr. Marcia McNutt @Marcia4Science, President of the National Academy of Sciences. @SETIInstitute @MarsInstitute @KeplerUni @CeresRobotics @NASAAmes @nasa @theNASEM @theNASciences @CPNAS @airandspace @nss @ArtOfAstronomy @CKBonestell @spacetimeartist

Dr. Kayla Iacovino studies how life-essential elements like carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur drive magmatic processes that help form atmospheres, maintain climate, and create chemical disequilibria that life can exploit. Volcanoes deliver life-essential chemistry from the Earth's deep interior to its surface, where life can grow and thrive. Dr. Iacovino conducts experiments to understand why Earth magmas are so good at this—and whether planets outside our Solar System might be too. Not Just Aliens is the SETI Institute’s weekly series featuring scientists exploring astrobiology, heliophysics, planetary science, and more — expanding the search for life beyond Earth. And sometimes, we feature scientists looking for technosignatures! #Volcanology #Space #Science #SETI #NotJustAliens

How ready are we for the next pandemic? Journalist @sciencecohen has interviewed top epidemiologists around the world and followed virus hunters into damp and daunting bat caves to assess our pandemic readiness. This week on @bipisci, it's "Preventing Future Pandemics." Listen here: bigpicturescience.org/episodes/preve… #science #podcast

What would change if we knew we weren't alone? On June 12th, join us for an opening-night screening of Disclosure Day, a film that imagines the moment when humanity must face undeniable proof of extraterrestrial life. Stick around for a live conversation with a SETI Institute scientist working on the real search. Tickets available next week.

#PPOD: Adapted for Extremes 🏜️ This image features two distinct families: a collection of ALMA antennas and a trio of vicuñas, a camelid related to llamas and alpacas. Unlike in almost every other way, the subjects of this image are linked by their extremely hostile home environment, high in the Chilean Andes. The Chajnantor plateau, site of the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA) shown here, is 5000 meters above sea level, making it one of the driest places on Earth. The aridity is ideal for ALMA observations, which search for cosmic signals from the cold Universe that are readily absorbed by moist air. But the low number of cloudy days, along with a thin atmosphere, produces harsh conditions, pushing the limits of both engineering and evolution. Credit: S. Otarola / @ESO #planetaryscience #space

@SETIInstitute At the Drake Awards!