Merideth

You can read the rest here (I've removed the paywall, in the hope it persuades five or six people to subscribe to my newsletter): tomcox.substack.com/p/31-notes-i...

🌑 La NASA a présenté une mise à jour du programme #Artemis. Starship HLS, Blue Moon, scaphandres AxEMU, ... Article à venir avec les détails

My Obama Number is 2. My best elementary school friend worked briefly in the university office where he taught Constitutional Law in Chicago, and said lovely things about him. I did once stand in a snowbank and wave while his car passed by a few feet away.

Common awareness of the environment. My bestie’s growing things in her suburban yard to attract bees. My super-gardener grandma tossed the weedkillers. My dad, who used to oppose activists protesting the mine where he worked, disparaged the effects of strip mining. The conversation has changed.

On this day in 1975, Venera 9 returned the first images from another planet. Humanity saw the surface of Venus for the first time.

Three years ago, my dad said that all fish are the same shape. Out of spite, I decided to draw all 478 families of bony fish listed in Nelson 2016. There's still some stuff I need to edit and some fish I want to redraw but, after 985 days, I finished my big dumb fish project last night.

Today again I am hardly myself. It happens over and over. It is heaven-sent. It flows through me like the blue wave. Green leaves—you may believe this or not— have once or twice emerged from the tips of my fingers somewhere deep in the woods, in the reckless seizure of spring.

Off the coast of Patagonia, marine biologists have observed a giant phantom jellyfish with juvenile rudderfish hitching along for a ride down to the deep. This is a rare pairing that has never before been documented in this part of the ocean! 🧪 esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Technically, a dictionary is a book of spells.

Glad to see a mention of "Starry Night Over the Rhone," which I just learned about, and which I honestly is better? Another thing worth saying about both works is that in our light-polluted present we must just be poorly equipped to see them (and the subject matter) through 1889 eyes.

The Great Carina Nebula, also known as NGC 3372, is one of the largest H II regions in the heart of Southern Milky Way, in the Carina constellation. Visible to the unaided eye under the right conditions, it is at a distance of ~ 7,500 ly. science.nasa.gov/image-articl... 🔭🧪⚛️ #galactic

⭐️ SNOOZE ⭐️ The Tiny Angry Witch dislikes mornings just as much as we do. It's authentic stop-motion animation. We'd love to have more time to devote to these, so if you know any eccentric millionaires, let us know! Written, built, animated, voice and scored by 4 x people (and 1 x Witch)

A friend talked me into Shakespeare 2020. He gave up two plays in, but I ended up reading the entire canon of Shakespeare rapid-fire one play after the next, inc. sonnets & apocrypha. Once your brain adjusts you start picking up on all the dirty jokes. Kept me afloat all the way through December.

Short time-lapse of part of this morning’s first pass of ICEYE-X36 (59103) and COSMOS 2612 (68762) over South America under partly cloudy skies.

A filament (or prominence) eruption occurred early on 17 October 2026 UTC day at/behind the southeastern limb of the Sun. Quite a large CME ('solar storm', not heading towards Earth) was produced. (SDO AIA 304, AIA 171, AIA 193 Running Difference)

Randomly, one of the first things I ever read that made me fall in love with astro was about how there didn’t seem to be any green stars. The following discussion of spectral data, human color perception, etc. threw so much into perspective for me I wrote an essay about it. This is SO COOL. 💚

2nd Grimpoteuthis for this dive @schmidtocean.bsky.social dive 974 #samplinggap #MarineLife

Drone photographer Theresa Graham (tgraham.photography on IG) captured this Ornate Eagle Ray (Aetomylaeus vespertilio) off Ningaloo Reef in Western Australia. These rays are called the "unicorn of the sea": fewer than 100 sighting have been documented. We suspect they're critically endangered.

Night weirdo with strong elements of birb.

Comparing Off-World Rover Driving Distances Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech science.nasa.gov/resource/com... #Mars 🧪🔭

Rejected Space Mission Profiles xkcd.com/3310/

Meet the king of the Weird Little Guys, the Butternut Woollyworm (Eriocampa juglandis), native to North America. They're the larval form for a wasp-like sawfly & they secrete tufts of wooly substance from epidermal glands to aid in camouflage. All hail the king! (📷: Robert Gromotka)

In 2021, an international team produced a census of everything we know within 10 pc (about 33 light-years) from the Sun. 540 objects in 339 systems: stars, brown dwarfs, white dwarfs and exoplanets. Animation: galaxymap. org 🔭🧪⚛️ #cosmology #galactic

i have lived here my whole life, and i have never once seen a plane take off from the Willamette… …let alone do THIS. wtf.

Thunderstorms wrapping around the eye of Hurricane Isaias. Few things make me happier than 30-second satellite imagery of hurricanes.

Manatee w no propeller scars ✅ Healthy staghorn coral thicket ✅ Water below bleaching temps ✅ Juvenile grunts and snappers ✅ Life is good in Coral City 😎 ✅✅✅ #manatee #manateesofcoralcity #staghorncoral #acropora #coralcitycamera

“If you don’t like public executions just don’t watch it” says the crowd trying to ban drag shows and books

This is wild - somebody did a deep dive into the real stories behind this famous XKCD: sheets.works/data-viz/hol...

Anti-Prime Day starts…NOW! 🥳 Today through midnight on 10/7, enjoy free shipping site-wide, all while supporting local, independent bookstores.

More #cat costume ideas for Halloween. #cats #caturday

"Your brain determines color by comparing signal strength differences from three types of cone cells that detect short, medium, and long wavelengths, allowing you to perceive up to a million colors including the invented hue of purple". www.popularmechanics.com/science/a714...

I do and everyone should

My camera got a workout this morning. The sky was putting on a show!

I’ll never once pass by these river plates without stopping to admire them at length. They are too wonderful, every time.

Such a pretty place we get to call home.

Yeah, yeah I definitely do

This is a cool photo of Venus! Photographed through the rings of Saturn.

#MinCup26 FINALS!!! We have a pair of geometric beauties as deep red #Cuprite is against versatile #Quartz. VOTE: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re... RESULTS: www.mineralcup.org/2026/vote-re...

Translating an ancient mathematical formula revealed the name of a #Maya mathematician for the first time! #InternationalTranslationDay Sak Tahn Waax (‘White-chested Fox’) was likely responsible for many advanced astronomical calculations. 🆓 doi.org/10.15184/aqy... 🏺 #Archaeology

Inspector Smile is ready for science! 🫡 This is Smile’s first ultraviolet view showing an auroral substorm. With the ultraviolet camera now operational, Smile becomes the first spacecraft since 2008 to capture the full ring of northern lights around the north pole in ultraviolet light. 🔭 🧪 ☀️

I think about this interview with the distinguished philosopher Conan O'Brien a lot. I actually think this is a healthy way to live your life! www.nytimes.com/2019/01/14/a...

This is a photograph of the edge of one of Saturn's rings, looking down from above. Those spiky dark shapes are shadows. Shadows of giant towers of ice and dust grains clumped together that rise up to three *kilometres* above the 10-m thick rings.

In the autumn of 1883, a national paper reported that "an Iowa woman has spent seven years embroidering the solar system on a quilt." Ellen Harding Baker used her stunning quilt to teach astronomy in an era when women could not attend college www.themarginalian.org/2018/12/06/e...