Quote from: Blackstar on 01/09/2026 03:59 pm-attendance at the American Geophysical Union conference in December was down 33%One item of note: the metric of physical conference attendance is declining in every industry (for example, law conferences, human resources, water mgt, engineering, cybersecurity, US national labs, manufacturing, and others). Much of that traditional collaboration is being replaced by focused online collaboration, virtual sessions, asynchronous delivery of presentations, online collaboration forums, etc. So perhaps the stated 33% decline is not troublesome, but is indeed in alignment with every other industry?
-attendance at the American Geophysical Union conference in December was down 33%
Quote from: Star One on 01/08/2026 08:28 amNSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory spots record-breaking asteroid in pre-survey observationsQuoteAs part of the NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory First Look event in June 2025, Rubin announced that it had observed thousands of asteroids cruising about our Solar System, about 1900 of which have been confirmed as never-before-seen. Within the flurry, a team of astronomers has discovered 19 super- and ultra-fast-rotating asteroids. One of these is the fastest-spinning asteroid larger than 500 meters (0.3 miles) ever found.QuoteThe fastest-spinning main-belt asteroid identified, named 2025 MN45, is 710 meters (0.4 miles) in diameter and it completes a full rotation every 1.88 minutes. This combination makes it the fastest-spinning asteroid with a diameter over 500 meters that astronomers have found.https://www.artificial-gravity.com/sw/SpinCalc/Plugging in a radius of 355 m and angular velocity of 0.5319 rotations/minute, gives a centripetal acceleration of 0.11 G... future space station?
NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory spots record-breaking asteroid in pre-survey observationsQuoteAs part of the NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory First Look event in June 2025, Rubin announced that it had observed thousands of asteroids cruising about our Solar System, about 1900 of which have been confirmed as never-before-seen. Within the flurry, a team of astronomers has discovered 19 super- and ultra-fast-rotating asteroids. One of these is the fastest-spinning asteroid larger than 500 meters (0.3 miles) ever found.
As part of the NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory First Look event in June 2025, Rubin announced that it had observed thousands of asteroids cruising about our Solar System, about 1900 of which have been confirmed as never-before-seen. Within the flurry, a team of astronomers has discovered 19 super- and ultra-fast-rotating asteroids. One of these is the fastest-spinning asteroid larger than 500 meters (0.3 miles) ever found.
The fastest-spinning main-belt asteroid identified, named 2025 MN45, is 710 meters (0.4 miles) in diameter and it completes a full rotation every 1.88 minutes. This combination makes it the fastest-spinning asteroid with a diameter over 500 meters that astronomers have found.
For over two centuries, we have watched the red giant R Leonis dim and brighten with regularity, but this 'heartbeat' is beginning to speed up near the end of the star's life.
Turns out the expression "you can't have it all" also applies to black holes. Astronomers have discovered that although feeding black holes can produce powerful cosmic winds and blast out high-energy jets, they can't do both at the same time.Instead, this new research suggests that black holes actually act like "cosmic seesaws," switching between these two distinct outflow modes. Not only does this discovery have implications for how black holes grow, but it could also help us better understand how they influence star formation, and thus how they shape their entire home galaxies."We're seeing what could be described as an energetic tug-of-war inside the black hole's accretion flow. When the black hole fires off a high-speed plasma jet, the X-ray wind dies down, and when the wind starts up again, the jet vanishes," team member Jiachen Jiang of the University of Warwick said in a statement. "This tells us something fundamental about how black holes regulate their energy output and interact with their surroundings."
Using images from cameras on Mars orbiters, an international research team led by the University of Bern has discovered structures on Mars that are very similar to classic river deltas on Earth. These are traces of rivers that have deposited their sediments into an ocean. This shows that Mars was a "blue planet" around three billion years ago.
A new study shows that mysterious “Little Red Dots” seen by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope are likely supermassive stars, shedding light on the earliest days of our universe
At half the size of Earth and one-tenth its mass, Mars is a featherweight as far as planets go. And yet, new research reveals the extent to which Mars is quietly tugging on Earth’s orbit and shaping the cycles that drive long-term climate patterns here, including ice ages.
A potentially large member of the Kreutz family comets is speeding its way to a perihelion encounter during the first week of April this year. The object was discovered on 13 January 2026. Although not fully confirmed yet, if it is a Kreutz family comet, it will be an unprecedented discovery.
The new comet is listed on the Minor Planet Center’s ‘possible comet’ confirmation page. It is registered as 6AC4721 and will be given a formal designation once it is fully confirmed as a comet. Current images show a diffuse coma and small tail, so it is expected that it will be confirmed soon and that the designation will likely become C/2026 A1.Initial orbital simulations show that it is highly inclined from the plane of the Solar System, at an angle of 144°. This is typical for Kreutz family members and its location in the constellation Caelum, the chisel, in the southern skies also indicates an origin towards Sirius, the known aphelion point for this family of comets.
So-called ‘pre-covery images’ (on which the comet has been found with the benefit of hindsight) dating back to December 2025 show its brightness to be around magnitude +20, at which it remains presently. At its closest to the Sun on 5 April it will be just 0.021 AU from the Sun with an elongation of just 0.5° (the width of the full Moon) but it could become visible in a daytime sky as did Ikeya-Seki.
Spectacular clouds swirl across the surface of Jupiter. These clouds contain water, just like Earth’s, but are much denser on the gas giant—so thick that no spacecraft has been able to measure exactly what lies beneath. But a new study led by University of Chicago and Jet Propulsion Lab scientists has given us a deeper look at the planet by creating the most complete model to date of Jupiter’s atmosphere. Among other things, the analysis addresses a longstanding question about how much oxygen the gas giant contains: It estimates that Jupiter has about one and a half times more oxygen than the sun. This helps scientists narrow down the picture of how all the planets in the solar system formed.
Recent observations of our corner of the universe suggest we have been living inside a hot, less dense region, and that there may even be a strange “cosmic interstellar channel,” or tunnel, connecting us to distant stars.
There's no other entirely relevant thread, but last week NASA indicated that it was no longer providing budget support to the planetary assessment/analysis groups (the AGs). These include MEPAG, LEAG, SBAG, VEXAG, OPAG, and a few others.
Geomagnetic Storm Category G4 or Greater Predicted Highest Storm Level Predicted by Day:Jan 20: G4 (Severe) Jan 21: G1 (Minor) Jan 22: None (Below G1)Issue Time: 2026 Jan 19 1203 UTC
Region 4341 produced an X1.9/3b flare (R3-Strong) at 18/1809 UTC.
I have been writing about the Giant Magellan Telescope for a long time. Nearly two decades ago, for example, I wrote that time was “running out” in the race to build the next great optical telescope on the ground.At the time the proposed telescope was one of three contenders to make a giant leap in mirror size from the roughly 10-meter diameter instruments that existed then, to approximately 30 meters. This represented a huge increase in light-gathering potential, allowing astronomers to see much further into the universe—and therefore back into time—with far greater clarity.Since then the projects have advanced at various rates. An international consortium to build the Thirty Meter Telescope in Hawaii ran into local protests that have bogged down development. Its future came further into question when the US National Science Foundation dropped support for the project in favor of the Giant Magellan Telescope. Meanwhile the European Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) has advanced on a faster schedule, and this 39.5-meter telescope could observe its first light in 2029.This leaves the Magellan telescope. Originally backers of the GMT intended it to be fully operational by now, but it has faced funding and technology challenges. It has a price tag of approximately $2 billion, and although it is smaller than the European project, the 25.4-meter telescope now represents the best avenue for US-based astronomy to remain competitive in the field.Given all of this, I recently spoke with University of Texas at Austin astronomer Dan Jaffe, who is the new president of the telescope’s executive team, to get an update on things. Here is a lightly edited transcript of our conversation.
Yesterday, sunspot 4341 unleashed an X-1.95 strength flare, accompanied by a large coronal mass ejection and so-called “flare ribbons”. Although far from record-breaking in power, the flare was unusually long-lasting and occurred over a vast area of the Sun. With the radiation unleashed being directed towards the Earth, the flare may have sent a shiver through the astronauts on the forthcoming Artemis II mission, although mission engineers are not showing alarm.
G4 (Severe) geomagnetic storm levels were reached again at 08:23 UTC (3:23 am EST).
Update: G4 (Severe) geomagnetic storm levels were reached again at 10:21 UTC (05:21 EST).
The Sun emitted a strong solar flare, peaking at 1:09 p.m. EST on Jan. 18, 2026. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, which watches the Sun constantly, captured video of the event.
”Dark matter can be red hot when it is born, but still have time to cool down before galaxies begin to form."
Just as avalanches on snowy mountains start with the movement of a small quantity of snow, the ESA-led Solar Orbiter spacecraft has discovered that a solar flare is triggered by initially weak disturbances that quickly become more violent. This rapidly evolving process creates a ‘sky’ of raining plasma blobs that continue to fall even after the flare subsides.
This is a time-lapse video. I tried filming the scene of Lemon Comet rising. It's a short video, but please enjoy it along with the movements of the artificial satellites flying about!
