Space Sam

There was an enormous step forward in human capability today. Makes me even more excited for our collective future. Congratulations to all @SpaceX!

The OzGrav team is incredibly proud to celebrate our Director, Professor Matthew Bailes, for being awarded the 2024 Prime Minister’s Prize for Science! Congratulations Matthew, and thank you for your incredible contributions to astrophysics! 🌌👏 #PMPrizes #ProudTeam #OzGrav

London sparkling at night. Nikon Z9, 200mm f2, 1/320 sec, ISO 25600

The uncrewed @BoeingSpace #Starliner spacecraft landed at New Mexico's White Sands Space Harbor at 12:01am ET on Saturday Sept. 7.

👍 We've just completed the world’s first lunar-Earth flyby, sending our @ESA_Juice spacecraft on a shortcut to Jupiter via Venus 👋 🔗esa.int/Science_Explor…

@galaxy_map Done!

The Virtual Starship is now available in the Meta App Lab! meta.com/en-gb/experien…

@galaxy_map I just downloaded this and had a good look around. Awesome work! Totally recommended!

We had a blast with the Tupaia STEAM School at the Matatiki Hornby Centre this afternoon with our Christchurch Rocketeers, running them through building their own Park Flyer rockets with their custom lasercut fins. Looking forward to seeing these fly at our next launch day! 🚀

🌟 Excited about the Giant Magellan Telescope? You're not alone! @CarnegieScience researchers are gearing up to utilize this cutting-edge instrument for groundbreaking discoveries. Get ready for a new era in astronomy! bit.ly/inside-gmt

Global H-Alpha view of the #Sun from yesterday. Very active. Data by Rico Enzmann and processed by myself. Note the huge prominence at the bottom left!

🆕 Webb has captured the sharpest ever infrared images of the Horsehead Nebula! Read more: esawebb.org/news/weic2411/ or 🧵👇

@astro_Pettit @Space_Station Did you get the ruler on your visit to NZ before your ISS mission?

In the weightlessness on @Space_Station I placed a sphere of water with an air bubble on a speaker cone, then drove it with acoustical waves from the speaker. This created a series of standing nodes and anti-nodes that responded to the frequency and amplitude. A zero gravity Lava Lamp! Will post what happens when I drove this with some of my favorite rock and roll! From Expedition 31, 2012.

Here's a rough draft of my latest 1 kpc map. This includes the open clusters from the latest Hunt and Reffert catalog and all the stars (about 100) with mg_gspphot < -6. Basically all the stars from Betelgeuse and brighter. I'm still suspicious of the stars though.

Gaia spots Milky Way's most massive black hole of stellar origin! It's 33 solar masses, dormant, 2nd closest to Earth at ~2000 light years away, part of a wide binary with an old giant star, with estimated age of 11 Gyr: youtu.be/cU00B-6DeSQ #GaiaBH3 cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/iow_2…

Sometimes you just find the right angle 📸 I snapped this low-angle selfie in 2015 on lower Mount Sharp. Want to see more of my best images? Check out this collection: go.nasa.gov/4cR88wr

Christchurch Parents! We’re running a FREE aerospace expo aimed at kids on April 13th for Yuri’s Night at the @AFMuseumNZ Come experience a Planetarium, Mars Rover, Rocket Displays and workshops! How about send a postcard to Space with @clubforfuture ? (Really!) Info below:

As we gear up for the MethaneSAT data product, here's what data to expect: • high-emitting point sources • aggregate emissions from small sources within a km2 area down to 3ppb • methane levels from entire regions, countries, oilfields, covering 80% of global production.

MethaneSAT has successfully separated from the @SpaceX #Falcon9! We're in orbit 🌌 The spacecraft will now boot up its computer and 'detumble', using its actuators to slow down the spinning caused by the deployment.

Too close for comfort. 😳 At ~06:30 UTC today we observed a conjunction at 608 km between two non-maneuverable spacecraft: a derelict Russian satellite and an operational NASA satellite. Miss distance = <20 meters Probability of collision = 3 to 8% at TCA

The ISS in colour in Jan 29th. damianpeach.com/iss/iss_2024_0… The three views here are compiled from frames during the best parts of the video sequence. Captured using ASA 80cm RC with ASI1600MC camera.