Pictures just in from the ESA Hera flyby of the Red Planet today – careful image processing by @doddington has revealed a hitherto unexpected (& frankly quite undesired) planet-wide “Face on Mars” 
Marvin the Martian seems as surprised as the rest of us by these developments 
A Telescope Across Three Countries? Yes!
The Square Kilometre Array Observatory (SKAO) is revolutionizing radio astronomy with a telescope spanning three countries! 
Learn how this ambitious project is unlocking the mysteries of the universe:
https://www.skao.int/en/about-us/skao
#Astronomy #SKAO #SpaceScience #RadioAstronomy #Innovation #BigScience
Image source: SKAO website
Following yesterday's defocussed colours of Orion, here's something slightly different:
The Colours of Sirius 
Here the colours don't reflect the temperature of Sirius directly – they're due to atmospheric turbulence changing the refractive index of the air.
That bends different wavelengths towards or away from the line of sight in a constantly changing way, creating this coloured "twinkling" 
Also best seen by defocussing 
The Colours of Orion
It's hard to capture the colours & thus temperatures of stars when your images are sharply in focus, so it's always worth defocussing once in a while 
Many people know that Betelgeuse is cool (3,700K) & orange 
, while Rigel is hot (12,100K) & blue 
But most of the other bright stars in Orion are even hotter & thus much bluer, between 22 & 36,000K 
And the Orion Nebula comes out purple, thanks to its ionised hydrogen 
A very pretty conjunction between the Moon & Venus in clear cold skies this evening
There was some excellent earthshine to be seen, sunlight reflected off the Atlantic lighting up the otherwise dark part of the Moon 
And it was easy to see that Venus was a crescent, with sunlight striking it in pretty much the same as it was hitting the Moon 
Wide-field: iPhone 
Close-ups: DSLR + 200m lens 
A new study finds that Mars’ red color comes from ferrihydrite, a water-containing iron oxide formed during its ancient wet period—not dry hematite, as previously thought. Lab tests show ferrihydrite mixed with basalt matches spacecraft data, reshaping our view of Mars’ history and its past habitability.
Just your regular reminder that if you want to see the full-scale prototype of the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission & its three spacecraft stack, the Science Museum in London is the place.
This is the structural-thermal model, which I helped loan to the museum in 2018. The flight model is currently in the same orbit as Mercury around the Sun & will go into orbit around Mercury in 2026.
#SpaceScience
#SpaceExploration 
#Photography
#iPhonePhotography
After months of planning, preparation, and postponement, the annual #InstituteOfPhysics IOP South West #FestivalOfPhysics is tomorrow! And for the first time it will be taking place in #Cornwall at the University of Exeter’s #Penryn campus.
I'm genuinely so proud that we've managed to pull this together and finally bring this event down to Cornwall, while celebrating the Cornish #SpaceScience industry and local talent. It promises to be an incredible day!
@markmccaughrean This is great news! My PhD work partially used data collected by an instrument on Ulysses. Was really remarkable to have a satellite flying over the poles of the sun...can't wait to see these new images!
Coming up in 100 minutes at 21:48CET: the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter mission is making a flyby at Venus, just 379km above the cloud tops.
Although it has made several Venus flybys before, this one's special: it's the first of a sequence designed to lift the spacecraft out of the ecliptic plane.
Why? Because Solar Orbiter is aiming to take the first clear images of the Sun’s north & south poles.
Will there be a polar hexagon like on Saturn? Stay tuned 
https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Operations/Solar_Orbiter_ready_for_close_encounter_with_Venus
I definitely wasn't supposed to be doing this this afternoon, but ...
A time lapse movie of the northern hemisphere of Saturn, showing a full rotation of the famous polar hexagon, a very cool fluid dynamics phenomenon in the planet's atmosphere 
Taken by the NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini spacecraft over a 12.5 hour period on 3 & 4 April 2014: 35 ISS WAC images 512x512 pixels, CB2 filter at 752nm
Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, SSI, Mark McCaughrean
You might think that the Einstein ring is the large fuzzy halo around the bright white elliptical galaxy nucleus in that wide-field Euclid image, but it’s not.
The ring is small & tight around the nucleus. It’s hardly visible at all with the contrast in the main image, but easy once you play with the original data & extract it, as ESA did for this zoomed-in shot.
Except the Guardian photo editors didn’t use it as no-one made it clear to them.
When PR goes wrong
If you’re going to advertise a nice space discovery, make sure your lead image shows it clearly.
Don’t lead with a context image in which it’s very hard to see and/or which could be misinterpreted.
Because the press will use that first image & everyone will be confused.
Case in point: this @guardian story about an Einstein ring seen by Euclid, PR’d by ESA this morning.
Can *you* see it? 
Even if I couldn't capture Uranus in my "planet parade" iPhone video this evening, it is easily visible in a long exposure image with the same camera.
Neptune, however, remains a little challenging for such a tiny sensor
Planets on parade – seven out of our solar system's eight in one brief video
Starting with Mars in a tree to the right of Castor & Pollux, passing Orion & rising to Jupiter with Aldebaran & the Hyades below, the Pleiades above. Then past Uranus (not visible) to the Moon & Venus, with Neptune (also not visible) below, & faint Saturn close to the local hillside.
Shockingly bad quality, but it was bloody freezing out & I really didn't want to faff using my DSLR
Today's message:
'𝑷𝒂𝒖𝒔𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒂𝒍𝒍 𝒎𝒆𝒆𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒔 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒂𝒄𝒕𝒊𝒗𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒆𝒔 𝒐𝒇 𝑷𝒍𝒂𝒏𝒆𝒕𝒂𝒓𝒚 𝑺𝒄𝒊𝒆𝒏𝒄𝒆 𝑨𝒏𝒂𝒍𝒚𝒔𝒊𝒔 /𝑨𝒔𝒔𝒆𝒔𝒔𝒎𝒆𝒏𝒕 𝑮𝒓𝒐𝒖𝒑 (𝑺𝑨𝑮)'
#NASA ’s Planetary Science Division receives feedback through analysis groups. The AGs are community-organized groups that provide feedback to PSD:
https://science.nasa.gov/science-committee/subcommittees/nac-planetary-science-subcommittee/analysis-groups/
So, one more nail to the coffin of #spaceScience in the #US.
But rejoice! We now have a subsidized #spaceEconomy for oligarchs in its place.
(h/t @PaulHammond51 
!)
The uniqueness of this work is that for the first time #interstellar dust and interstellar gas were analyzed simultaneously. The scientists found out how much #methane is on the dust in the form of ice and how much is in the interstellar gas.
#Chemistry #SpaceScience #sflorg
https://www.sflorg.com/2025/01/sn01282501.html
What a difference a week makes 
Arrived in Helsinki yesterday to blowing snow & temperatures >30°C below those I was in in Bangalore last week
Am at @aaltouniversity in Espoo for the annual Finnish Winter Satellite Workshop, giving an invited talk tomorrow about ESA’s space science missions 
Earlier this week, Comet C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) made its closest approach to the Sun.
While doing so, it made a dramatic appearance sweeping through the wide-field LASCO C3 coronagraph of the ESA/NASA SOHO mission over a few days.
Here’s my take, a triplet of Deep Red, Orange, & Blue filter images taken over an hour around 09:00UTC on 14 January, as an RGB composite.
