Dr. Craig DeForest ☀️

I do heliophysics professionally, and geek about many subjects on my own time. Knowledge is power — it's also fun to create, have, and share. I run a #heliophysics feed on BSky. Elsewhere I lead the PUNCH mission to observe the #corona and #solarwind. Ask me anything, I'll probably have an answer.

Looks like The Turbulent Sun is available from Amazon and other booksellers now. if you haven't seen it, you should. It's a fabulous piece of scientific storytelling. www.amazon.com/Turbulent-Su...

After 18 months in space, these Teledyne (formerly E2V) #CCD detectores are still working great! When we planned the #PUNCH mission we assumed we'd need to carry out quartic-polynomial calibration of the detectors. But the devices are so linear, we don't. 🛰️🔭🧪

☀️🚀🛰️ #lego #afol

Moose in the garden this morning

I am pretty excited about this movie. The PUNCH data processing really is state-of-the-art. We're on the cusp of a new release of the processed data, and this is part of it. ☀️🔭🛰️🧪

@philplait.bsky.social have you seen Leon Golub's latest ("The Turbulent Sun")? You should. It's good.

A final draft is just a rough draft that's stopped complaining.

For 20 years I've carried a Timbuk2 messenger bag daily as a laptop-case/man-purse/carry-on. It's time for a change. This is my new @sfbags.bsky.social Waterfield Air Porter. It's smaller than the T2MB, but almost magically well organized. The design is extremely well thought out.

OK, I watched it. It was every bit as fluffy as I thought, but still a good romp. Not sorry I saw it in the theater. It's no *Roger Rabbit*, but was definitely a good time.

Who doesn't love that hopeful, hapless canid? I can't wait to see the new movie tomorrow. A bit of escapist fluff would go down well just about now.

Here's what I'm listening to right now. Most of us can only dream of leaving such a strong, positive mark on the world. music.apple.com/us/album/the...

Comets! ☄️☀️🔭🧪🛰️

Congratulations to @philplait.bsky.social for winning the #AAS Solar Physics Division prize for popular media! (Missed this when it happened -- I just found out at the AAS/SPD business meeting). Article link here: tinyurl.com/plait-award 🧪☀️ & bad-🔭

If you're forecasting the time of space weather events, modeling and extrapolation are good ... but data are better. ☀️🧪🔭🛰️🚀

@swri.org just posted this fun interview I did a few days ago, talking about the PUNCH mission (@punch-mission.bsky.social). More PUNCH results coming soon! ☀️🛰️🔭⚛️

If you use FITS files and have a Mac, check out this cool app from the inimitable @gillyspace27.bsky.social ! You install it and instantly Finder previews FITS files properly. If they're #heliophysics data from a known instrument, you even get the official color scheme. Very cool! ☀️🔭🧪🛰️

As we approach the eclipse in Spain in just three weeks, it's time to re-post this safe solar viewing guide I wrote way back in 2023. Eyepiece projection with binoculars is a simple, fun, safe way to look at the solar disk as totality approaches. ☀️🔭🚀

The most novel part of the PUNCH mission (@punch-mission.bsky.social) is its three WFIs. Deeply baffled, with optics from @televueoptics.bsky.social, they make polarized images of the entire inner solar system every 4 minutes. The Solar Physics article just dropped! Read it here: rdcu.be/fvaSc ☀️🧪🛰️🔭

Spotted this #EV prototype at the top of #PikesPeak on Monday. It's an interesting body design, reminiscent of chopped-top, chunky refits of 1940s classics. Looks like it can't decide whether to be an SUV, a station wagon, or a hatchback.

Definitely! After all, who would call the White House a starter home?

Comet Pan-STARRS provided a nice reminder that the solar wind is not just a stream of disconnected particles. It is a fluid -- with flows, turbulence, and all the other things that fluids do. ☀️🧪🛰️🔭🚀🪐⚛️

This probably comes as a shock to nobody, but #unitedairlines has really sucky wifi. 700ms ping , few-percent packet loss, peak speeds well under 1Mbps, several-minute lag on popular websites like this one. #Panasonic is bringing us forward into the 1990s!

☀️🧪🛰️🚀

Visualizing the Artemis-Mission CMEs with PUNCH | PUNCH mission | WhiteWind blog How can you visualize/display a CME when you need to see both the lower corona and a huge 90° wide swath of the inner solar system? Nonlinear stretching! ☀️🧪🔭🛰️ whtwnd.com/punch-missio...

I'm at this meeting right now. It is phenomenal. Really great overviews of the field Monday morning from both established scientists and early-career geniuses. Excellent job from the SOC and LOC! ☀️🧪🚀

Recently had the pleasure of reading Babcock's paper again, describing the first solar "magnetograph" (new word, ehtn) in 1953. The instrument and the paper are things of beauty. Amazing what could be done, and how, using the technology of the 1950s. 🧪☀️⚛️🔭 ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/scan/manifes...

Years ago, I made this map of Boulder Canyon, to prove a point (each side of the 15-mile stretch of road has >35 turnouts, which slow drivers almost never use). It metastasized to include many landmarks. Surprisingly, it still works. #boulder #colorado #google www.google.com/maps/d/u/1/e...

I spent #MemorialDay doing stuff around the house. Deployed the summer outdoor furniture, weed-whacked the verge around the house, sliced up a pine that blew over this winter, and brought down (and cut up) 12 aspen corpses. Now I'm pleasantly sore. Not too old (yet) for #home #forestry.

Holy cow! Feast your eyes a while, on this gorgeous solar spectrum by the Sol'Ex instrument (assembled by Váradi Nagy Pál). It extends to UV and IR as well as the visible band. Marvel at the F lines, the fine structure, the IR doublets and repeating lines, and the molecular bands. Wonderful! ☀️🧪⚛️🔭

Glad to see helioviewer is working! We're planning at least two more data releases in short order. Current version is v0k, which lets you see the solar wind with stars "moderately" suppressed. Upcoming is v0l, which will be an order of magnitude better. ☀️🧪🛰️🔭

Girl Scouts earn the PUNCH Ancient & Modern Sunwatching Patch! We are working with the #girlscouts to teach kids about #heliophysics and the amazing world around us. A few will become scientists, and all will carry their knowledge into society. ☀️🧪🛰️🔭 whtwnd.com/punch-missio...

OMG thank you @alexwitze.bsky.social! So glad you're taking notes.

Totally awesome video by Hank Green. I generally avoid YouTube commentary, but this visual segment (roughly 6:45-10:00) is well worth seeing. It's a tour of the hand-held camera photos from the Artemis astronauts, showing #aurora, #lightning, and #satellites. 🧪🛰️🔭☀️

It's not every day your sketch gets featured on #Wikipedia's featured-image page. I still love that chimerical-color template. 5-May only: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ After that, look for 5-May here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped...

J-maps are something I have used for over 30 years. They are a great example of how slicing and rearranging data can turn them into something more, by bringing their information to the fore. ☀️🔭🧪

A Celestial Staring Contest (across 1 AU) PUNCH observes Parker Solar Probe continuously. But Parker Solar Probe also observes PUNCH from time to time! Click the WhiteWind blog link for a nice visual of this celestial "staring contest" between the two missions. ☀️🧪🔭🛰️ whtwnd.com/punch-missio...

Cool to see so many #heliophysics missions participating in the tracking of Comet C/2026 A1 (MAPS). It's a shame it didn't survive. The coronagraph movies are pretty awesome, showing the approach and the departure (as a disintegrated puff of material newly entrained in the solar wind). 🧪☀️🛰️🔭🪐☄️

This is very cool! Interesting new driver for better CME arrival-time forecasting.

Man oh man, #matplotlib sucks at memory management. PDL::Graphics::Gnuplot was an unholy terror to write, but it at least it didn't hork up memory like a rabid weasel. Currently leaking 50MB per plot I render to a file -- apparently because I had the audacity to want a colorbar.

Time to register for PUNCH-7, if you haven't! You won't want to miss this one if you're a #heliophysicist. PUNCH data are turning out to be spectacular. (More on that soon). ☀️

This is a really neat result – the #UCSD group are using PUNCH data to drive 3-D models of the entire solar wind flow. Jackson (UCSD Co-I on #PUNCH) invented this field in the early 1980s, using a spinning photometer to make "images" of CMEs. Amazing that we get to work with him today! ☀️🧪🔭🛰️

DON’T MISS: next lecture in our lecture series “Im Feuerwerk der Sonne” on April 16th, 7 PM. Volker Bothmer from @unigoettingen will speak about the effects of dangerous #SpaceWeather on terrestrial infrastructure. In German. More here: www.mps.mpg.de/im-feuerwerk... ☀️🌍🔭 @thegoecampus

Here's a fun (for me) overview talk I gave last month, about making the invisible solar wind visible with PUNCH. Thanks to @swri.org for hosting! It was a great time. ☀️🛰️🧪🔭⚛️🚀

This was good day, two years ago. We got to see the solar corona, and an enormous arch prominence! @astronamir.bsky.social and @dbseaton.bsky.social organized CATE, a huge array of telescopes that captured the eclipse across North America. One of the sites was right there in the Cotton Bowl. ☀️🧪🔭

Nice to see PUNCH (@punch-mission.bsky.social) getting used to track MAPS. The next day or two will be fateful -- will MAPS survive its perihelion on Saturday? ☀️🛰️🧪🔭https://www.facebook.com/share/p/171r4kMk32/

Space weather is a real threat for lunar astronauts. Apollo crews reported flashes of light that were attributed to Cherenkov radiation in their eyeballs, from passage of solar particles. A solar flare or CME passage could have sickened or killed any of the crews. Good forecasting is essential. ☀️🛰️