Andy Casely

Day one of January Cricketpalooza - a net session with @deep-twilight.bsky.social, good to roll the arm over a bit.

Aurora likely tonight as string of solar flares heads for Earth Four big outbursts from the Sun mean skies may light up much further from the poles than usual.

Want to see the aurora? Tonight might be the night!

There have been a bunch of coronal mass ejections (big flares of plasma) from the Sun that are all arriving at Earth today and tonight.

theconversation.com/aurora-likel...

Aurorasaurus - Reporting Auroras from the Ground Up Friends, see my real-time #aurora report on the aurorasaurus.org map! Follow us on www.facebook.com/aurorasaurus.org. Reporting #northernlights and #citizenscience from the ground up since 2012!

Submit them to Aurorasaurus!!! They're an NSF funded project out of University of New Mexico that takes crowdsourced aurora observations for research purposes:
www.aurorasaurus.org

Large Language Muddle | The Editors The AI upheaval is unique in its ability to metabolize any number of dread-inducing transformations. The university is becoming more corporate, more politically oppressive, and all but hostile to the ...

YES! THIS on GenAI!

Please read this absolutely splendid piece of writing that had me cheering, a little bit weepy, and writing in the margins:

"An extraordinary amount of money is spent by the AI industry to ensure that acquiescence is the only plausible response. But marketing is not destiny."

My social media manager for this one is Helen, but I'm pretty chuffed to win the Solar System category at the Malins for the third time in the last five years (move over Brisbane Lions, I'm doing back-to-back wins too 🤣). Congrats to the other winners and finalists too, some great images again

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin ✨ figured out what stars are made of ✨ when she was just 25. 🔭🧪

Her PhD thesis basically established the Harvard astro department — at a time when Harvard didn't officially allow woman students.

I wrote this little profile to mark the 100th anniversary of her thesis:

Three galaxies, aurora, mountains and clouds
A timelapse from a recent trip to Glenorchy, NZ - beautiful dark skies and plenty to look at, with clouds bubbling off the Humboldt Range, broken enough to see the southern lights below the Milky Way and Magellanic Clouds. EOS6Dii, 228 frames, 20s each

A great summary of the start of the #wncl cricket season by @crystallised-cricket.com . Who will be the breakout stars of 2025-26? I'm looking forward to finding out!

Two comets and Mars, 21st Sept
C/2025 R2 (SWAN) is keeping pace with Mars, and fainter C/2025 K1 (ATLAS) is descending towards the Sun. Processing was interesting, correcting for three moving objects against the twilight starfield. Tonight, the Moon joins the party!
EOS 6Dii, 35x1min, 300mm @ f/5.

In a UN speech today, President Trump said that "all of these [climate] predictions were wrong".

Back in 2019 I led a research effort to digitize old climate model projections and assess how well they did. Turns out they got future warming pretty spot on!

Thanks for the repost Rami!

A Galactic frame of reference
What's your point of view? Does the Milky Way set, or does the Earth just get in the way? Been wanting to do this one for a while! ~6hrs, 30s per frame, EOS6Dii, Star Adventurer, Sigma 14-24mm. Processed in PixInsight & PS. #astrophotography #timelapse

I'm pretty sure (like a few others here) these are mammatus, with parts blown into streaks by strong winds towards the camera along the underside of the cumulonimbus anvil. They're in an odd perspective with the good mammatus structure far away and silhouetted against the brighter sky. Nice pic!

Waxing Moon, 3rd Sept
I was playing with camera focus and focal length points on the C14 - 585MM + focal reducer = 7 panel whole Moon mosaic, The full-size processed image is 90 megapixels. Hello, nearest neighbour! Full res view here: photos.app.goo.gl/J5pR2DJYiwrq...

A dusty MIlky Way snap from a short break at Turon Gates, NSW. 29x90s, EOS 6Dii @24mm, Star Adventurer, good skies. Antares region is below centre. #astronomy #astrophotography

2 Huge Storms have erupted on Jupiter YouTube video by Peter R

Peter Rosén has created another great animation of #Jupiter's storms during the 2024/25 apparition, made from thousands of amateur observations and projected in a variety of different ways. Incredible amount of work must have gone into this #planetsci [Credit: P. Rosén]

youtu.be/x1W_Ux_jgaE?...

You have been kidnapped and a character from the last tv show you watched is trying to rescue you. Who is coming to save you?

Chances of survival... slim

The Copilot Delusion Disclaimer: This post was written May 2025, and the arguments apply to AI code capabilities at this time. The arguments around lack of competence are certainly likely to become less prevalent-while th...

“When the system forces you to code with a hallucinating clown, eventually you stop resisting. You let him type. You let him be "productive." You check out. You surrender your brain to the noise and just float.” deplet.ing/the-copilot-...

If your business model doesn’t work without breaking the law, then you’re not in business.

You’re in organized crime.

Dust storm this morning, everything a bit hazy. Our periodic reminder there's a lot of desert away out west!

Images are red filter only, calibrated to be similar in brightness, moons labelled. The line across Saturn is the rings/silhouetted against the planet. F ring would normally be totally invisible, may be brightest part of the rings in images at/just before before equinox. Celestron C14, ZWO ASI585MM.

Sunrise on Saturn's rings
3 images 3rd-8th May (UT) - rings reappearing through Saturn's equinox on the 6th. First image shows the Sun/Earth-facing outer edge only, likely basically the F ring! (brightest equinox ring in Cassini 2009 data) Last image has south face of the rings illuminated again.

Edge on view of the planet Saturn. The rings appear as a thin black line that dissects the disc of the planet. The colours are hues of soft pink and grey-green

If you like then you better put a ring on it! 🪐

@deep-twilight.bsky.social got a really nice pic of #Saturn during the time when it’s ring system is pretty much edge on to our perspective. And a couple of Moons!

Really like the colour of the equatorial and higher latitude belts.

Thanks Rami! Those colours are pretty but a nightmare, some of the belts appear actually slightly greenish (and did last year), but normally green isn't seen much in the sky - adjusting this image wasn't easy and i still don't think I have it right 😬

Indeed - it is significantly easier to catch Mimas, and perhaps even fainter moons just now without the rings glare. It should also be easier throughout this opposition as the rings will be a bit fainter.

Hidden rings, 3rd May
You can see the rings in a longer-exposed, very heavily-stretched view! The ghostly rings are so faint just now that they are far outshone by 13.5mag Mimas (the fainter of the pair of moons on the left ansa). C14, ASI585MM, 6mins IR642nm. Sunrise on the rings is tomorrow...

Saturn, five moons, no rings
What a strange planet! Tomorrow is Saturn's equinox, a rare good look without its famous ring system, far too faint to see in a normally-exposed image, silhouetted against Saturn. Dione, Rhea, Mimas, Tethys and Enceladus too. C14, ASI585MM, 15mins, 3rd May 19:54UT.

Saturn's hidden rings, 2nd May
A snap of the dark side of Saturn's rings, only four days before Saturn's equinox. The silhouette of darkened rings cuts across the planet, and the full extent of the very faint rings themselves are in an overexposed and strongly stretched version. #astrophotography

See the Lyrid Meteor Shower the Night of April 21–22 The annual Lyrid meteor shower should put on a great show this year. Enjoy it with dashes of Venus and the "dark side" of Saturn's rings.

Thanks @astrobob67.bsky.social for using my recent dark-side Saturn imsges in his latest column for S&T! I had another imaging attempt this morning, and they were even less visible, also not visible in the eyepiece in fairly bright twilight. skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-bl...