This week, PhD Student @dchayes.ca sheds some light on how we talk to spacecraft on and around other planets: york-pvl.blogspot.com/2026/02/talk... The situation on the red planet is particularly complex and therefore particularly interesting! Like any infrastructure, maintenance is critical
A photo taken out the back window of an Eglinton LRT train stopped at Mount Dennis Station. In the foreground is a cool-toned seat, while just out the window is the other train in the two-car set. There is a crowd of people stood on the station platform.
A photo of a TTC paper transfer. It's a small, black and white piece of paper, with the time issue listed as 3:17 PM, and the day as 039, February 8, 2026. At the bottom of the transfer, it states "Not valid at: Mt. Dennis Station."
For many years, researchers were unable to independently verify the alleged existence of Line 5 Eglinton.
Join us June 19–21, 2026 for #ComSciConCAN 2026! 🚨 at U of Waterloo for a 3-day conference dedicated to taking your science communication skills to the next level.
💡 Application deadline EXTENDED to February 16, 2026 at 11:59 PM EST! bit.ly/CSCC2026_App
#SciComm #GradLife #STEMCanada #CSCC2026
Curiosity Blog, Sols 4788-4797: Welcome Back from Conjunction
by Alex Innanen @transmartian.bsky.social, Atmospheric Scientist at York University, Toronto
science.nasa.gov/blog/curiosi...
#Mars 🧪🔭
Still on Mars with Curiosity. Still doing awesome science.
Love this recent "MAHLI after dark" image we acquired last month of our drill in the super cool boxwork region:
science.nasa.gov/resource/cur...
More swirly action here
Not the most pleasant day to go to the store only to find it's been unexpectedly closed, but at least there was some fun snow lifting
🚨 Applications are open for #ComSciConCAN 2026!
📍 June 19–21, 2026 | University of Waterloo
A 3-day conference for grad students to level up their science communication skills. Since 2013, ComSciCon has trained 2000+ scientists!
🗓️ Apply by Feb 9, 2026 (11:59 PM EST) 💡
A photo looking over city lights. The sky is a pretty gradient from orange to teal-y blue, and there's a thin crescent moon with a little bit of earthshine.
Gradient Appreciators Committee
The Curiosity Mars rover photographed these feathery carbon dioxide clouds on Sol 3063 over an outcrop named Mont Mercou. The clouds were much higher than is typical for Mars. www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-curiosity-rover-captures-shin... Panorama assembled from 21 individual Mastcam images. The colors of this image were calibrated to match human perception. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Simeon Schmauß
Carbon dioxide clouds over Mont Mercou, Curiosity Sol 3063 - From Simeon Schmauß (stim3on.bsky.social) - https://flic.kr/p/2oUgFwL
2025 ==> 2026 as seen by the York Observatory all-sky camera.
Kudos to our project scientist who helps advocate for these every ~year when I think the view might work and we've got a little bit of energy and time spare in a plan. Doing the science on the day to day is important. Taking a moment now and again to do something just for art is important as well.
A photo of a snow leopard looking into the distance
A photo of a young orangutan and its mother sitting together
A photo of a blue SRT train in the snow
A photo of a polar bear climbing snow-covered rocks
Love to visit the Toronto Zoo to see all my best friends
Yesterday, we had our last planning day with Curiosity for almost a month before she takes an extended holiday behind the sun
science.nasa.gov/blog/curiosi...
#PlanetaryScience
In the final blog post of 2025, @transmartian.bsky.social reflects on their writing journey as a graduate student. york-pvl.blogspot.com/2025/12/inse... This is a key skill: it's not science until it has been shared!
A photograph of two hand drawn postcards on a corkboard. The first is JUICE with Europa and Jupiter drawn in marker. The second is some light clouds above a cliffface on Mars with the Remote Sensing Mast of Curiosity in the foreground, drawn in pencil crayon.
Postcards from PVL
(by @dchayes.ca and I)
Geographic locations of dust storm instances for the B‐storm season in MY30 from the MDAD. Each instance is outlined separately for each MARCI swath and shaded by solar longitude. The background image is a composite MARCI swath generated from the median of all swaths between Ls=255° and Ls=280° in MY30.
Proud to see the first paper (out in @agu.org JGRPlanets) from Dr. Campbell, the postdoc @sguzewich.bsky.social and I mentor. She did a spectacular job explaining the source of the odd dust activity (called the B-storm) during Mars's SH summer. #planetaryscience #Mars 🪐🧪🔭
doi.org/10.1029/2025...
RIP V3cam 2025–2025 😔
We're so excited to announce the publication of the first issue of our Open Access, peer-reviewed, science communication Journal - The Canadian Journal of Science Communication! 🎉
You can view the issue here: lnkd.in/gQ-DHFwS
We hope you enjoy reading as much as we enjoyed preparing the issue!
The interminable Spadina tunnel would never hurt us like this
P.S. you can read more about clouds like these in this paper:
agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...
This enhanced color panorama was taken by Curiosity's Left Mastcam after sunset on Sol 3724 (27 January, 2023). It shows an iridescent high altitude cloud, likely made from CO2 ices. The sun has already set on the ground, but continues to illuminate this cloud which is likely at 60-80km altitude. The iridescence (rainbow effect) is caused by diffraction at sub µm ice particles. More information: doi.org/10.1029/2024GL111183 This panorama was stitched from 14 MAST_LEFT images from the PDS. The individual images were color calibrated to approximate what the human eye would see. The panorama was further enhanced to emphasise cloud structure and subtle color variations. See here for an unenhanced variant of the panorama: flic.kr/p/2qJwraX LMST: Sol-03724M18:52:13 Sun: Az: 276.2 deg, El: -5.9 deg Rationale: Characterize potentially iridescent ice clouds in twilight Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Simeon Schmauß
Iridescent clouds over Gale Crater (enhanced color) - From Simeon Schmauß (stim3on.bsky.social) - https://flic.kr/p/2qJvryP
A photo of some little yellow flowers covered in snow
First! Snow!
Thrilled to see how many times York will make me redo my name change before I graduate
A photo of an oak tree with entirely green leaves against a backdrop of a pale blue sky
A photo of the same oak tree with almost entirely orange leaves against a grey, cloudy sky
Office tree, October 1 — October 31
A cardboard rendition of the Canadian Lunar Rover with duct tape solar panels and paper cameras. It has a name tag hanging on it that says 'Hello my name is' and then a big 'classified' stamp.
Canadian Space Agency tell me your rover's name or I will keep engaging in extremely overblown crafting activities to make jokes about it
A photo of a very sad harvest of small potatoes covered in soil in a plastic lid of some sort
The thing about attempting to grow potatoes remotely from the opposite side of the city is that it's hard
HiPOD: A Song of Ice and More Ice
This stunning image shows part of the South Polar residual ice cap, a term that refers to ice that lingers well past a seasonal change. Our science goal here is to look for any changes in the ice cap.
https://uahirise.org/hipod/ESP_076435_0940
#Mars #science #NASA
Invested with the unlimited power of my lab's p card with which I will purchase one (1) package of paper towel
God forbid you try to perform....YUcard fraud? by having two extant cards for a whole week
