As of this week (Oct. 28), the Vera Rubin Observatory staff has declared the project “construction complete”, and begun operations (“Early Operations”, to be explicit). In physical terms, this doesn’t mean much. In legal terms, this means that telescope checkouts… Read More »Vera Rubin Ready!
Of late, in Planetary Science Journal (all vol.6): Salazar Manzano, L. E. Gerdes, D. W. Napier, K. J. et al. Prospects of a New L5 Trojan Flyby Target for the Lucy Mission 213 adf5c2Dorsey, R. C. Hopkins, M. J. Bannister,… Read More »Note, Paper: PSJ Particle Population Post
In case you hadn’t already marked your calendar: the Rubin Users Committee will meet on Monday: https://rubinobservatory.org/events/rubin-users-committee-2025a-meeting Rubin Users Committee 2025B Meeting, Oct 27, 8 AM – 10 AM PDT This is your chance to give feedback on initial performance,… Read More »Vera Rubin Users Meeting, Monday
No less than Nature (actually Nature Astronomy, still within the Nature family) states: -, Big realities for small bodies 1407 s41550-025-02701-9 Couldn’t have put it better myself. This is an editorial introduction to the October issue (vol. 9), in which… Read More »“Big Realities for Small Bodies”
Just posted by JAXA: a polite but thorough debunking of a conspiracy theory. In Japanese culture, a rumor/viral media suggested a catastrophe, to occur on July 5. Admittedly, Japanese culture is marked by catastrophes (ask any geologist… or tropical-cyclone meteorologist).… Read More »JAXA Lays Down the Landscape
In the current issue of MIT Technology Review (Sep/Oct, vol. 128 #5): Tereza Pultarova p. 12 Job titles of the future: Satellite Streak AstronomerRobin George Andrews p. 42 Inside the hunt for the most dangerous asteroid ever Yes, we have… Read More »MIT Tech Review Times Two
Astronomy and Computing is more relevant recently. In Oct’s issue (vol. 53): N. Golovich, T. Steil, A. Geringer-Sameth et al. Survey-wide asteroid discovery with a high-performance computing enabled non-linear digital tracking framework Art 100987 .2025.100987 Synthetic tracking (or track-before-detect, or… Read More »Note, Paper: Supercomputer Survey Consumer
The LSST@Europe7 meeting will be this Sep 15-19, 2025, Poznań, Poland. What’s the business of Europe in a NSF–DOE telescope, you say? Explicitly, the UK and France will (are?) contribute supercomputer cycles to the analysis effort- the petabytes of analysis… Read More »LSST@Europe7 Meeting (Vera Rubin)
The Europlanet-AAS Division for Planetary Science meeting for Friday, Sep. 12 (see also Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu): https://www.epsc-dps2025.eu/ https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EPSC-DPS2025/meetingprogramme MITM10Laboratory experiments in support of ground observations and space missions (sample return, analogs, analytical workflow etc.) Low-temperature reflectance spectra of meteorites:… Read More »2025 Joint EPSC-DPS Meeting, V
The meeting for Thursday, Sep. 11 (see also Mon, Tue, Wed): https://www.epsc-dps2025.eu/ https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EPSC-DPS2025/meetingprogramme MITM8Imagery, photometry, and spectroscopy of small bodies and planetary surfaces The potential of in-situ THz-spectroscopy to resolve the subsurface structure of Comets – Linus Stoeckli et al.… Read More »2025 Joint EPSC-DPS Meeting, IV