I'm quoted mis-quoting the Princess Bride in this CNN article on Li et al.'s discovery of a galaxy that appears to be 99% composed of dark matter. #extragalactic
"Mostly dark is slightly bright"
www.cnn.com/2026/03/03/s...
Lucifer means bringer of light, so I would think it was the person who carried or lit the candles (it’s also a dangerous early sort of match, prior to modern safety matches, and the planet Venus as the morning star – thus Lucifer in Isaiah 14:12 (KJV) is “morning star” in the NIV and NRSVue)
I chanted the EOW version today. It's good and has got rid of the "ick" of the Rite 1 version. I did the Rite 1 a couple of years ago, the first time I chanted it, and had to change some petitions on the fly, so I've done EOW since then.
These connections influenced when Easter is. Our church calendar is, for better or worse, historically based on the northern hemisphere seasons, so I think it’s fine to draw the links.
Very thin crescent moon to the left of a mountain silhouetted against the evening.
Crescent Moon, with the old Moon visible in the arms of the new. A bright dot just below and to the right of the Moon is the planet Mercury.
A man with an ash cross on his forehead.
Moon, Mercury, M-Mountain and … ashes?
Not entirely a coincidence – Easter is always the Sunday after a full Moon, so Ash Wednesday is always within a few days of the new Moon. Mercury was just a random interloper though!
#AshWednesday #Conjunction ⚓️
Pancake on a plate with a sliced lemon Ona smash plate and a sugar bowl
If life gives you lemons (and sugar, flour, milk and eggs) make sugar and lemon pancakes!
#ShoveTuesday #PancakeDay ⚓️
Looks like it needs to be just #Extragalactic. Go to the original post to read the thread describing the results
We did not find any evidence for dark galaxies or the pressure-supported turbulent spheres proposed to explain these sources.
From the VLA observations: The ones that were compact (so long lived) turned out to have optical counterparts;
the others look to be short-lived, transient clouds probably formed by ram-pressure stripping or tidal interactions, and we remeasured them as having narrower velocity widths.
Long story short: we looked with the VLA at six “dark” neutral hydrogen clouds (ones without identified optical counterparts) we’d previously found with Arecibo in the Virgo cluster. While clouds in Virgo aren’t new, these particular clouds had high velocity widths, making them rare in simulations.
Paper day! No, you’re not seeing double, it’s a second paper this month! This one is:
“High resolution observations of 'dark' neutral hydrogen clouds in the Virgo cluster with the Very Large Array” (Minchin et al. 2026, ApJ, accepted) #RadioAstronomy #ExtragalacticAstronomy
arxiv.org/abs/2601.19011
Church with snow on the ground with an Episcopal Church flag and a Progress Pride Flag in front and a notice board saying “Epiphany”
Church in the snow this morning in Socorro. ⚓️
The New Mexico Space Trail—a roadtrip of 52 historic sites related to space—includes the NSF #VeryLargeArray! 📡🌌
via AOL
#Astronomy #RadioAstronomy #NewMexico
That should be #Extragalactic.
Paper day!
“Ultra Diffuse Galaxies in clusters : the peculiar gas loss of VCC 1964”, Taylor, Partík & Minchin (2026), A&A, accepted.
arxiv.org/abs/2601.05948
(Actually came out on Monday, but I was down with a post-#AAS247 cold)
#Extragalctic #Radioastronomy
Marian blue for the Magnificat?
TEC certainly receives as priests people who have resigned their ministry in the RC church (I would assume this also applies to other churches with the historic episcopate), so I would say no.
National Radio Astronomy Observatory: Radio Telescopes Uncover “Invisible” Gas Around Record-Shattering Cosmic Explosion public.nrao.edu/news/radio-t... #AAS247
Award being handed to Maura
Maura speaking with slides on a large screen to the left
Maura McLaughlin’s plenary talk on low frequency gravitational wave astronomy (ie, pulsar timing arrays) getting under way at #AAS247, preceded by the award of the 2025 Bruno Rossi Award to Maura and Xavi Siemens for NANOGrav
If you didn’t manage to catch me at the poster, you can see it online at aas247-aas.ipostersessions.com/default.aspx...
Man in front of a TV screen showing a poster
I’m by my poster on the nuclear outburst in NGC 660, at terminal 110 in the #AAS247 exhibit hall.
Notice pinned to board, giving the information given in the post
Christian Astronomers dinner at #AAS247. Meet at the notice board at 18:30–18:45 or 19:00 at Majerle’s sports bar (2nd and Washington), in a back room.
Graph on a slide, showing how much better ngVLA will be than the current VLA or the SKA1 for this work
Slide off conclusions ending with: “A next generation Very Large Array promises a major step forward in all of these areas. “This work is possible because of the U.S. national radio facilities. Thank you to the NRAO, ALMA, and NSF staff who make them work!”
Plenary ends with what ngVLA will add in terms of extending this work and a shout-out to the @thenrao.bsky.social, @almaobservatory.bsky.social and NSF
staff.
I used to call it the “countdown galaxy” when we were looking at it with SOFIA. We made some nice [CII] maps of it (and many of the other nearby galaxies Adam showed).
Speaker on stage to the right with a slide on a large screen to the left
Adam Leroy’s plenary talk on PHANGS and the VLA Local Group L-band Survey getting underway at #AAS247.
NASA Discovers Distant Planet With Conditions That Could Sustain Rocks
NASA Discovers Distant Planet With Conditions That Could Sustain Rocks https://theonion.com/nasa-discovers-distant-planet-with-conditions-that-could-sustain-rocks/
Poster for the townhall outside the room, with a man standing behind it
The @thenrao.bsky.social townhall is about to start at #AAS247, in room301c. Brian is giving out the drink tickets!
Slide on the GOTHAM survey
Science highlights include Green Bank’s “GOTHAM” molecular line survey
Also reorganisation: Astronomy now a section within the MPS (mathematical and physical sciences) division. But facilities (including the observatories) are now under a separate, centralised office, not under astronomy.
Slide with a picture of the old NSF office and an arrow to a picture of the USPTO
NSF townhall at #AAS247 – they’re moving to the USPTO, but it’s not ready yet so everyone is teleworking
