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Daniel Fischer
@cosmos4u
Space Communicator
Science writer about all things space. Also @cosmos4u@scicomm.xyz on Mastodon, @cosmos4u on Twitter, dan.fischer.393 on Facebook and danielfischerbochum on Instagram - and blogging e.g. as skyweek.wordpress.com
526 Posts
How to select an astronomer for a job position ...
Service Announcement for Human Resources ... if you cannot make up your mind which astronomer to hire for the one open position, have the candidates read the title of the paper without mistakes: "Doubly substituted isotopologues of HCCCN in TMC-1: Detection of D13CCCN, DC13CCN, D Planetarium Centennial spans TWO CAPJ special issues!
The last TWO Issues of the CAP (Communicating Astronomy with the Public) Journal have been devoted to the centennial of the modern #planetarium , and - just out! - How to treat your dragon ... when the comet comes! ;-)
BREAKING: Mystery manuscript from centuries ago found to detail recommended procedures when comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS blazes from the sky - as we all hope, don't we - in the fall ... such als helping your pet dragon with binge drinking red wine. (See for what we actually know - or Ingenuity retired on Mars after 72 flights
NASA’s history-making Ingenuity #Mars #Helicopter has ended its mission at the Red Planet after surpassing expectations and making dozens more flights than planned: - while #Ingenuity remains upright and in communication with ground controllers, imagery of its Jan. 18 flight sen Where the ill-fated Peregrine lunar lander will go down ...
Probability ellipses for the #Peregrine reentry on 18 January around 21:00 UTC following numerous tiny orbital tweaks: in the 20th update Astrobotic is now providing details about what it did and what it is planning. TV appearace coming up ...
In a few minutes - at 20:22 UTC - I will be live on (the International channel of) Deutsche Welle TV discussing the James #Webb Space Telescope: you can watch the stream at or A Sunday nite (EST) / Monday wee hours (CET) spectacular #Webb image drop at 1:00 UTC, a NIRCam image of the #SuperNovaRemnant #CasA : The next lunar landing attempt (by Japan): 19 January
The dates for the next Japanese lunar landing attempt with #SLIM have been set: - lunar orbit insertion on 25 December, descent to the surface on 19 December UTC. Big citizen science paper - with me as a co-author - out
Wir zählen Lichter, weil die Nacht zählt - Transdisziplinäre Zusammenarbeit im #Nachtlicht -BüHNE Projekt: with appendices in - a huge paper in German (of which I'm both a co-author and one of the research subjects, no kidding :-) - about a major #CitizenScience project related Cosmology history research - help welcome!
100 years (and a few weeks) ago the #Universe began to expand vastly as with the discovery of a variable star in Messier 31 which would turn out to be a #Cepheid astronomers began to realize that the Universe doesn't end at the edge of our #Galaxy . But the detailled history of ho Super-large telescopes = super expensive, too ...
In which it is claimed that for the two U.S.led super-large #telescope projects #GMT und #TMT "the cost of each has now risen to around 3 billion US dollars" and argued that they should be merged into one after all: commentary Super Heavy and Starship flew again: the outcome
Tons of pictures and videos of the #SuperHeavy / #Starship test launch #2 are either inlined in or linked from now, plus links to some early analysis of what happened. In a nutshell: they got much farther than with #1 and several key problems ruining the latter have apparently b Comet Lemmon - accessible for low-tech sky photography
Yay, caught myself comet C/2023 H2 (Lemmon) - according to currently around 6.7 mag. - with a bridge camera from my balcony in Bochum, Germany, half an hour ago: a single shot of 2.5 seconds at f/2.8 and ISO 3200 with 436 mm full-format-equivalent (and 78 mm real) focal length. Frank Borman of Apollo 8 fame has passed away
Apollo 8 was not only the first crewed mission to reach the Moon but also the last one of which all three crew members were still alive ... not anymore, with the death of Frank Borman: In a few 5 minutes on ESA is releasing the first full-colour images of the cosmos captured by its recently launched space telescope #Euclid . Monkeying around in a dilapidated observatory ...?
This dark scene at 1:16 of the first trailer of "Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes" - brightened a bit here - sure looks like an ape next to a rotten optical telesope in a decaying observatory ... Ken #Mattingly , who launched to the moon on #Apollo 16, dies at 87: - in 1970 he was pulled from the Apollo 13 crew due to being exposed to the Rubella virus, but Mattingly went on to fly to the moon and then led two #SpaceShuttle missions. Lucy sees double - suprise! - during its first asteroid visit
The first images returned by #Lucy reveal that the small main belt #asteroid #Dinkinesh is actually a binary pair: - the larger body is approximately 790 m at its widest, while the smaller is about 220 m in size. And images like this "indicate that the terminal tracking system The best picture (I know) of comet Nishimura in the "evening" sky, near perihelion
Whoa - easily the best image of #comet #Nishimura in the kinda-evening sky I've seen so far, taken only hours from #perihelion : "2023 sep. 16 18.00 UT 40x1 sec 30x0,5-0,8sec Leica-Apo-Telyt 280/4.0 Nikon Z6mod Michael Jäger" (original caption). No outburst of brightness thus (wel Indias solar research mission launching today!
Counting down to the launch of India's #Aditya L1 solar research spacecraft: the webcast should begin at 5:50 UTC today. Ample information about the mission can be found at which links to three different brochures and in the paper from last year. - shows launch preparations.
