When your mirror gets dirty at home, you can just grab a cloth and some spray to clean it. But what about the ultra-precise, reflective mirrors of telescopes?

Things can get a bit more complex. This image shows you part of the cleaning process for the main mirror of the ESO 3.6-metre Telescope at La Silla Observatory, #Chile.

Discover how it's done: https://www.eso.org/public/images/potw2524a/

Do you want to learn more about how we clean telescope mirrors? Then check out this blog post: https://www.eso.org/public/blog/exploding-snow/

A. Silber/ESO

Astronomers may have found evidence of still-forming planets hidden somewhere in this close-up of the star RIK 113, taken with our Veery Large Telescope in #Chile
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This and previous data taken with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array suggest that the disc around the star may be shaped by hidden planets.⁠
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The data show the presence of gaps and spiral features, which may have been caused by forming planets.⁠

Learn more: https://www.eso.org/public/images/potw2523a/

ESO/C. Ginski et al.

This photo is insane. Dude went to Alaska to capture the #eclipse and the Northern Lights appeared behind it.

(Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/DHTysJtvv4Q/?igsh=YzZ0aWMxYjlzaWF4)

#Introduction Hi #fediverse ! We’re the European Southern Observatory, and we design, build and operate ground-based telescopes.

One of them is our Extremely Large Telescope, currently under construction in #Chile. It will have a 39 m mirror, and its rotating enclosure will weigh 6100 tonnes, or about 700 mastodons!

We’re looking forward to chatting with all of you about #astronomy

ESO/G. Vecchia

Many years ago I registered the astro-ph.co domain because it got turned into a link by various email clients (and even PDF readers) - and I thought it would be useful if rather than dumping you at a "no such domain" error page or a search engine result page, it actually took you to the relevant arXiv page. I never got around to doing more than a simple redirect to https://arxiv.org/list/astro-ph.CO/recent but I hope that's been better than nothing.

Anyway, I've now renewed it for one more year, and because .co domains are relatively expensive and I can't even really remember the problem I was trying to solve with this, I'm going to let it lapse in September 2025. In the meantime, if anyone has any responsible ideas for what to do with this and wants to take it over, let me know.

I'll probably boost/repost about this a few times before the time runs out.

New!! Observations of our Event Horizon Telescope (#EHT) collaboration have uncovered strong & organized magnetic fields spiraling around the edge of the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*). Images in polarized light of the #blackhole in the Milky Way center reveal structures similar to those in M87*, suggesting that strong magnetic fields may be common to all black holes. This also hints toward a hidden jet in Sgr A*!
#astronomy #astrodon #scicomm #physics

https://www.ru.nl/en/about-us/news/astronomers-unveil-strong-magnetic-fields-spiraling-at-the-edge-of-milky-ways-central-black-hole

SpaceX Starlink satellites photobombed my northern lights photos in Iceland!

#space #science #spacex #astrodon #womeninstem

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hTnctQLCIk

Ein Interview mit mir in "Welt der Physik" - zu meinem Engagement gegen die #Klimakrise, zu meiner Wissenschaft und Vulkane werden auch kurz erwähnt :)

https://www.weltderphysik.de/thema/im-portraet/ich-koennte-es-moralisch-nicht-vertreten-still-zu-sein/

Morning.

Here it is, several thousand years in the making: the protostellar jet HH212 as seen in the infrared by #JWST.

We discovered this jet in 1993, glowing in the light of shocked molecular hydrogen at 2.12 microns, as gas emerges symmetrically at about 100 km/s from the two poles of a young protostar not far from the Horsehead Nebula in Orion.

Our new JWST image spans six wavelengths & is ten times sharper than any previous infrared image.

#Astronomy #SpaceScience #Astrodon

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Happy Halloween

Here are the pumpkins I carved this year: An active red dwarf star and its gas giant planet. I call it an exo-pumpkin.

If you prefer to read things instead of listening (as do I myself; not an audio person ... ), Physics World has now turned the podcast with me into a written interview:

https://physicsworld.com/a/victoria-grinberg-the-astrophysicist-sharing-her-love-for-science/

It's about my science, but also about all the things I do as a scientist that are not my science - climate crisis outreach and Astronomers for Planet Earth, my art and outreach in general.

Physics World has talked to me about my science and about all the things I do as a scientist that are not my science - climate activism and Astronomers for Planet Earth (@a4e), my art and outreach in general :)

If podcasts are your thing, you may like this one (also download able on all usual #podcast sources):

https://physicsworld.com/a/astrophysicist-uses-x-rays-to-explore-the-universe-heat-pumps-could-prevent-potholes/

Want to know what my research is about? Follow this thread based on a 10min talk I've drawn for a meeting.

The talk was aimed at non-specialist space science colleagues (not the general public!). The slides were built up step by step, but I'm omitting this here & showing only the final graphs, less this becomes a 34-part thread. 11 is plenty enough!

So: "Understanding Winds of Massive Stars Using High Mass X-ray Binaries"

#astrodon #XraysAreTheBestRays #SciArt #scicomm #VicisAstro
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Congratulations to the team that make up the #Euclid mission on their successful launch! We can't wait to see what mysteries of the dark universe this space telescope will uncover.

For updates and more information, visit the official Euclid website: https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Euclid

#SpaceNews: For the first time, scientists have detected the gravitational wave background of the universe, marking a historic breakthrough.

More information:
• NASA JPL: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/15-years-of-radio-data-reveals-evidence-of-spacetime-murmur
• Caltech: https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/scientists-find-evidence-for-slow-rolling-sea-of-gravitational-waves