Meredith Rawls

One was an engineer who built air-cooled radial aircraft engines for Pratt & Whitney, and one owed a book and record store and later became an Episcopal priest.

Pedestrianize a street in every neighborhood!

More and better School Streets, Home Zones, traffic diverters, and curb bulb-outs!

🤩

Seattle, know what you need this afternoon?

That's right, Girl Scout cookies! 🍪

2-4pm, Ballard Fred Meyer, $6/package

Come see some Brownie scouts (my kiddo's troop will have booths at both doors 😅), try the new Exploremores, and support their plans to go camping at Mt Rainier this summer!

Puget Sound Symphony Orchestra

Seattle, know what you need tonight?

That's right, classical music!

7:30pm, Town Hall, $15 at the door

Come hear me play altogether too many notes, maybe even the correct ones at the right time 🎻 and enjoy our conductor's jokes

Family friendly! (best for folks who can sit quietly & stay up late)

So good - sorry I should have tagged you too!

To come full circle, you may logically be wondering, well wait, if Rubin Observatory is turning on, and the sky is filling with satellites, isn't that a problem?

SURE COULD BE

And addressing that is literally what my job is, right now, most of the time. Back to it. 🔭

You don't have to be a professional astronomer to do this, and you don't have to have your talking points perfectly sorted out. You can just write a short letter telling the FCC why you think granting a licence to operate the proposed satellites is a bad idea. Another how-to: aas.org/posts/advoca...

Satellite proposals threaten the night sky In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the agency responsible for authorizing satellite launches and operations…

Right OK so what can you do? Great news, especially if you're in the US (insert feelings here), both @darkskyintl.bsky.social and @aas.org have handy guides for how to write an FCC comment.
This is sort of astronomers' equivalent of "call your elected officials" kind of call to action, for context.

This is getting long so here's a few more

www.csmonitor.com/USA/2026/022...

www.newscientist.com/article/2516...

skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-ne...

Sorry, SpaceX: It’s Getting Too Crowded Up There

*permanently (obviously)

Anyway, the NYTimes is also writing about it www.nytimes.com/2026/02/26/c...

SpaceX's Ambitious Plan for 1 Million Satellites Faces Growing Environmental Criticism SpaceX's proposal to launch one million satellites into orbit has ignited a fierce debate between technological innovation and environmental preservation

What's that? You don't have enough tabs open to learn about how billionaires want to permently alter Earth's orbital space environment? OK then

Column | We’re about to turn night into day. Is that a good idea? Proposals before the FCC involve mirrors that could bathe entire cities in sunlight and, from SpaceX, a million satellites to serve as data centers.

Meanwhile, the mainstream news media is actually paying attention, because the FCC comment deadlines for both 1 million AI orbital data center satellites (yes, you read that right) and a demonstration space mirror reflector (also sadly correct) is March 6 and 9, respectively

The future of astronomy is both on Earth and in space The future of astronomy is both on Earth and in space

If that has you down, well, welcome to the resistance or something, read this one next. It's a response to an impressively incorrect piece titled "It is time to take astronomy off Earth" and it's by a whole host of @aas.org past presidents and it is perfect spacenews.com/the-future-o...

A new space race could turn our atmosphere into a ‘crematorium for satellites’ Planned ‘megaconstellations’ of satellites could cause unforeseen harm to the ozone layer and climate systems. Global regulation is needed before it’s too late.

And here's the other one theconversation.com/a-new-space-...

Too many satellites? Earth’s orbit is on track for a catastrophe – but we can stop it Cultural, spiritual, and most environmental impacts aren’t taken into account when launching thousands of satellites.

Meanwhile, since January, some 1.6 million satellites have been proposed. This is bonkers, and it's getting mainstream media attention thanks to the hard work of many wonderful colleagues

@sundogplanets.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy coauthored a pair of articles

theconversation.com/too-many-sat...

Alert Stream | Rubin Observatory Explore how Rubin Observatory will identify changes in the night sky—and let the world know about them within minutes.

This week has been a long year

First, ICYMI, @vrubinobs.bsky.social hit a HUGE milestone with our live alert stream going public. I've worked on various aspects of this since joining UW and @dirac-institute.bsky.social in late 2016. Learn more about how this works, including how to access the data:

The boot-shaped Rubin Observatory with open dome beneath a dazzling night sky. Arching overhead is the dense glowing band of the Milky Way. To to the upper left of the observatory, the small smudges of the Milky Way's two largest companion galaxies appear prominently against the starry sky.

Detecting a cosmic change is only the start 👀

So what happens next? 🔭🧪

1️⃣ Once NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory detects a change in the cosmos, it generates an alert: a packet of information with when & where it happened, how bright it was, reference images, and other observations.

🧵

Happy ZooTunes presale day to all who celebrate, may the odds be ever in your favor, hope to see you on a non-rainy, non-smokey, music-filled grassy lawn this summer

NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory Launches Real-Time Discovery Machine for Monitoring the Night Sky | Rubin Observatory NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory has issued its first scientific alerts, marking a historic milestone in astrophysics. Expected to increase to seven million alerts per night, these first alerts start a new e...

Here's the PR

"The near-real-time public nature of Rubin’s alert system enables scientists using other […] telescopes […] to coordinate follow-up observations like never before. This collaboration will enable fast and detailed studies of unfolding phenomena."

rubinobservatory.org/news/first-a...

Last night astronomers were glued to screens looking at new data coming in publicly in ~real time for the first time 🤩

Now the PR is out—read all about it! It was amazing to be part of the whole astro community excitedly online watching new PUBLIC data stream from this amazing facility we built 🥹 🔭

A 3-by-5 grid of grayscale astronomical images zoomed in on single objects, specifically active galactic nuclei. From left to right, the columns are labeled Template, New image, and difference. From top to bottom, the rows are labeled active galactic nucleus 1-5.

A 3-by-5 grid of grayscale astronomical images zoomed in on single objects, specifically solar system objects. From left to right, the columns are labeled Template, New image, and difference. From top to bottom, the rows are labeled solar system object 1-5.

A 3-by-5 grid of grayscale astronomical images zoomed in on single objects, specifically supernovae. From left to right, the columns are labeled Template, New image, and difference. From top to bottom, the rows are labeled supernova 1-5.

A 3-by-5 grid of grayscale astronomical images zoomed in on single objects, specifically variable stars. From left to right, the columns are labeled Template, New image, and difference. From top to bottom, the rows are labeled variable star 1-5.

These first alerts use early, pre-survey observations while Rubin finishes preparations to begin its decade-long survey. 🔭🧪☄️

This is just the start for a system that is expected to produce up to ~7 million of these alerts per night! ✨

🔗: rubinobservatory.org/news/first-a...

Illustrated graphic with the boot-shaped Rubin Observatory atop its site on Cerro Pachón beneath a sparkling night sky and the glowing band of the Milky Way stretching from lower left to upper right. Sprinkled throughout are many "Data alert!" popups, labeled with icons that represent supernovae, asteroids, hungry black holes, and more.

A 3-by-4 grid of grayscale astronomical images zoomed in on single objects. From left to right, the columns are labeled Template, New image, and difference. From top to bottom, the rows are labeled supernova, variable star, active galactic nucleus, and solar system object.

The largest spot-the-difference effort EVER has begun!🚨

On the night of Feb 24, NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory officially released its first ~800,000 public alerts of detected changes in the night sky!🔍

A new era of discovery is here✨ 🔭🧪☄️

🔗: rubinobservatory.org/news/first-a...

it only took [redacted] hours for [redacted] to show up in the [redacted] stream, there is not enough [redacted] in the world

there's only one live stream I'm watching tonight and it certainly isn't that one

Alerts are flowing from Rubin Observatory!

There will be a proper press release in the coming hours, please see all the details then, and meanwhile, your favorite alert broker probably has public data available to peruse *now*!

We are up to well over 20k alerts after 20 min on sky 🔭

Today, I was on the ghost bus

It was on time and AOK until a disruptive individual got on

The driver refused to go with them on board

So we all waited the full 15 min evening RapidRide headway and piled onto the next bus when it came

Now I'm late to rehearsal 🎻

And that's how you spawn a 👻 bus

Great news, your local Girl Scouts have plenty of other options!

Exploremores seem to appeal to folks who like Cocoa Puffs. I'm more partial to Samoas and Adventurefuls. It also depends on which bakery your local GS Council uses! Little Brownie Bakers makes slightly different 🍪 than ABC Bakers.

I continue to think that if light rail ran 24/7 there would not be an opportunity to steal wires when they are not in use

Oh okay then, seems functional

Map of SEA airport security checkpoints. There are 6 of them. 5 of them have General screening and 4 of them have PreCheck. One of them is in fact only PreCheck. There's also the CLEAR nonsense at a couple of them and other special options like Service Members, Spot Saver (a program that reserves you a time for general screening), Premium (whatever that means), Family (why is that a separate thing), Visitor Pass, and the new touchless variant of PreCheck which is actually kind of nice when it works since they already have my face in every database anyway AMA

I'm not implying security theater ever makes sense but… shutting down PreCheck and Global Entry won't save any labor and, like, some of the checkpoints at my airport are only/majority that?!
This is the least important thing but it's just so on brand and needlessly inconvenient, I cannot