You know the Vera Rubin Observatory is still a big deal when it make the New York Times. www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/06/19/science/rubin-observatory-camera.htmlJonathan Corum, Kenneth Chang Jun 19 Earth’s Largest Camera Takes 3 Billion-Pixel Images of the Night Sky Not as in-depth as the Science… Read More »Vera Rubin Uptown
Cover of Science. You know the Vera Rubin Observatory is a big deal when it makes the cover of Science magazine. In vol. 388, issue 6753 (19 June 2025): https://www.science.org/content/article/giant-all-seeing-telescope-set-revolutionize-astronomyDaniel Clery 18 Jun All-seeing eye p. 1256 10.1126/science.z3ptiml https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adz8351Daniel Clery … Read More »Vera Rubin Of Late
Just over a week until the Vera Rubin Observatory’s First Look Event, June 23 (online presentation at 11:00 am Eastern Time). Observatory testing and calibration has peaked, and is now wrapping up loose ends, since… the remaining tasks are becoming… Read More »Vera Rubin Update (Mid-Jun 2025)
On the flip side… as part of the “American Women” quarters series, the U.S. Mint has issued a quarter-dollar coin celebrating the life and work of the codiscoverer of dark matter in galaxies, Vera Rubin. buff.ly/lyog709 https://www.usmint.gov/american-women-quarters-2025-rolls-and-bags-dr-vera-rubin-MASTER_AWQVR.html A bit more… Read More »Quarter? More Like Leader
Commissioning of the Vera Rubin Observatory (Simonyi Telescope, LSSTCam, etc.) continues apace. Aside from glitches with a few CCDs in the detector array, and the Camera cooling system, things are looking good. How good? An outside review panel has surveyed… Read More »Vera Rubin Update: First Look Event
A quick story in the journal Science: https://www.science.org/content/article/china-sets-out-sample-unusual-near-earth-asteroid Dennis Normile China sets out to sample an unusual near-Earth asteroid .z2q2idq Normile describes the Chinese Tianwen-2 mission and its target, the Earth-resonant asteroid (469219) Kamo’oalewa. The asteroid has the unusual property… Read More »Out of Ecliptic, In Patch
Congrats to director Wes Anderson, auteur of (among other things- lots of other things) 2023’s Asteroid City. The actual asteroid numbered 689822, formerly designated 2013 PU10, is now officially asteroid (689822) Anderson.
The Off Nominal podcast, episode 195, features Dante Lauretta talking OREx with the hosts: https://offnom.com/episodes/195 “Dirtiest Thing in the Cleanroom (with Dante Lauretta)” Have a listen.
Tonight, May 16 is the International Day of Light. Organized by UNESCO, SPIE, and IEEE Photonics, we celebrate light and all its wonders it brings to our lives. https://www.unesco.org/en/days/lighthttps://spie.org/community-support/international-day-of-light/idl-resourceshttps://www.dayoflight.org/https://www.lightday.org/about Let’s see… we use telescopes to study celestial objects of all sorts. Those telescopes… Read More »Day of Light, Tonight
…see Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4 It’s now Day 5 of a weeklong conference: wrapping up loose ends. Here, the less technical but no less important soft sciences. And posters; lots and lots of posters. Panel Session… Read More »2025 Planetary Defense Conference, Day 5