Dr. Gerard van Belle

A nice interview with me in the Montecito Journal about starting at Las Cumbres Observatory www.montecitojournal.net/2026/10/06/l...

Listen as @toomanyspectra.bsky.social introduces her new book, Cloudy with a Chance of Starships, an entertaining tour of the seemingly simple formula guiding the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Available now! Learn more about this extraordinary book: buff.ly/8ZeOPZK

First observation: SUCCESS! #NASARoman's Coronagraph Instrument has taken its first observation, and “we're all extremely pleased with how well things are working,” said Alexandra Greenbaum, Coronagraph Data Management System Lead at IPAC. roman.ipac.caltech.edu/news/nasa-ch... 🔭

I've updated our STARI website! We are working toward passing starlight between two CubeSats—a step toward space interferometry. New papers, team news, and ways to help. Check it out and let me know what you think! starimission.space #stari #nasa

9 SPOOKY DAYS REMAINING UNTIL WE LEAVE FOR THE MOON OF TERROR.

Thomas Zurbuchen, former head of science at NASA, is joining Blue Origin as SVP of Advanced Concepts. www.linkedin.com/posts/zurbuc... Congrats Thomas!!

Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.

There's a sale at Penney's!

Good morning from the pale gray skies of NYC! Our Equinox Sale is on this week - Buy One, Get One 50% Off almost everything in the shop until Sunday! Shop.STARtorialist.com

Hot off the press! Via the magic of differentiable forward modeling and of non-redundant masking on JWST we may have found a new exoplanet! One of the most challenging papers I've written, but I'm glad its finally out! Submitted to AJ, pending peer review. arxiv.org/abs/2609.10507

We are hiring! We currently have two tenure track positions open: One in high energy astrophysics and one in exoplanet science. Here's the info for high energy astrophysics. Closing date is 4 October werkenbij.uva.nl/en/vacancies...

Meter-sized CERNQ52 asteroid is definitely going to impact the Earth at 16h 07min UT, between Australia and Indonesia: it's the 13th asteroid to be discovered before it entered the atmosphere of our planet!

bair, schleicher, kareta, knight, and kelley, "The Highly Unusual Behavior and Chemical Composition of Interstellar Comet 2I/Borisov", accepted in PSJ and available on arxiv here: arxiv.org/abs/2608.23701

I'm doing everything I can. And stop calling me Shirley

51 years ago I painted a trio of Viking related works for NASA HQ including the widely reproduced one of the landing on Mars. I have reimagined the Landing portrayal in updated form using digital methods of visualization and painting. I chose the same angle but with reality replacing anticipation.

Unusual asteroid unmasked! 🪨 Using our VLT in Chile & the Large Binocular Telescope in the US, astronomers have resolved the shape of (44) Nysa, a peculiar asteroid between Mars and Jupiter. They revealed a structure unlike anything observed before! 🔭 🧪 📹 ESO/K. Minker et al. 1/2

the real open access is arXiv

I love Bluesky serendipity

Admirable clarity @science.org

I testified before a PA House committee about the PSETI Center and got asked about inspiring a new generation of kids to be scientists: www.facebook.com/watch/?v=134...

[528130-sunny-spring-morning].

I'm going to live forever

the most realistic scene in Jurassic Park is when two scientists make a questionable decision — traveling to an undisclosed location with a strange man — on the promise of three years of modest funding

Joey, have you ever been in a Turkish prison?

Reading the photo notes, wow

The first glimpse of the Martian surface was long anticipated. Bonestell's art dominated ideas of what Mars was like, basically the desert Southwest with most air absent. The idea of a dark blue sky on Mars persisted in space art until that morning. Here are those first looks at the Martian surface.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, this is Captain Oveur speaking.

We are all going to have so many kinds of diarrhea

NASA and Draper have terminated plans for a lunar lander mission following significant delays in development of the spacecraft. The cancellation marks a setback for the program’s timeline and underscores continuing schedule risk in lunar surface systems procurement. - More on hype.aero

Hi! I'm Mark, a former astrononer now a full-time illustrator and animator. I do mostly space-related work. Welcome, new followers! Mostly created with #Blender. 🚫 AI #SciArt #spaceart #scifi

For those who missed it at Cool Stars 23 I want to highlight some really awesome posters from my students. Really creative design and awesome science. 🧪🔭⭐ #exoplanets

Ladies and gentlemen, our newest supervillain... Algae Capone

Advertise your Bluesky account with a Simpsons GIF

Hi everybody, I organized the #Artemis2 photos for you. Index pages containing all ~10,000 images in chronological order with time stamps and focal lengths, color coded by which of three cameras was used to shoot them. countlessworlds.com/data/artemis/

ANOTHER JOB AD! #jobs #exoplanets #aas248 NExScI is advertising for a postdoc to come and join our fabulous team in sunny SoCal. The role involves both programmatic support and independent science research, so it's perfect for someone thinking about a career at NASA!!! aas.org/jobregister/...

C'mon speakers ... Fit your talk within the allocated time #cs23

hello film people, journalists, and other purveyors of hot takes: i am the astrobiologist you are looking to talk to about #DisclosureDay 🫡

Obscure Apollo Applications Program designs: Astronomy Interferometer Inflatable Relay Satellite X-ray Telescope Geosynchronous Communication Antenna (more details below)

Jonathan's Space Report No. 856 published at planet4589.org/jsr.html

Again, louder for the people in the back: NOBODY LIKES iPOSTERS

Astrobotic is being acquired by Voyager. www.astrobotic.com/astrobotic-t...

For the new Planetarium show in Sweden's 'Universium', 'Once Upon The Moon', I made new texture maps of the Moon for their Lunar history sequence. Here is my animated presentation of those maps with added material showing milestones over Lunar Geologic time. #Sciart vimeo.com/1197028121

Tonight is a "Blue Moon", a second full Moon in a single month. There's nothing blue about it aside from the name. However. For about one trillion 1-gallon paint cans, totalling say $60 trillion (not counting labour), we could *make* it blue. (calculations in next post)

I strongly encourage US-based astronomers to attend the virtual Astronomy and Astrophysics Advisory Committee meeting tomorrow (Mon June 1st), where the heads of NASA, NSF, and DOE astronomy/astrophysics divisions will be presenting updates & taking questions 🔭 www.nsf.gov/events/astro...