Radio astronomer, Python programmer, Spectrum manager, #EBHIS, #HI4PI
Chair of the Committee on Radio Astronomy Frequencies #CRAF
I'll soon move my account to the mastodon.social instance, as astrodon.social is discontinued. Thanks a lot to @sebinthestars for the great efforts in the past years!
Hopefully, everything will go well and my followers will automatically follow me on the new server. For technical reasons, I will have to follow you again, so don't be surprised...
Well, now also in English:
As far as I know, @heiseonline is now the (EDIT:) third media organization with it's own instance on #Peertube to share #videos directly in the #Fediverse.
The first channel to look out for is @ct_3003, but there are more to come.
I hope, we're only the beginning, so let's spread the word!
Amazing news, the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) has run a trial for a global 3km resolution ❗ model! 😮 #NCAR #WeatherData #forecast
https://news.ucar.edu/133024/scientists-launch-experimental-worldwide-forecasts-unprecedented-detail
After two and a half years of building this community, I've made the decision that it's time to shut down Astrodon.social.
Since 2022, around 4,000 users have registered on astrodon.social. However, fewer than 10% of those users are active each month, and fewer than 1% post regularly. Because of the way Mastodon works, the data for every one of the those users, even the inactive ones, has to be kept forever and keeps on growing. There's no way to remove posts or archive them out of the database, and running a large database gets very expensive.
Running Astrodon costs more than €300/month, which means that the costs of running the server are primarily going toward servicing fewer than 50 active users, the most active of whom are organisations. Even with donations, Astrodon has now cost me more than €5000 to run.
While I’ve considered the option of turning Astrodon into a commercial service or creating a nonprofit, I’m reluctant to go down that route. Managing a business comes with a host of overhead tasks like tax reporting and navigating different tax regimes due to our global user base, which is something I want to avoid. My goal has always been to create a free and open space, but the reality is that the free part isn't sustainable.
I'm not shutting down Astrodon immediately. I want to give everyone ample time—likely over the next two to three months—to find alternative service providers and transition smoothly. This isn't a decision I'm making lightly, and I appreciate your understanding and support as we navigate this transition. If you have any questions, concerns, or suggestions, please feel free to reach out to me directly through DMs.
We present the largest survey to date characterising intended and unintended emission from Starlink satellites across the SKA-Low frequency range. This survey analyses ~76 million full sky images captured over ~29 days of observing with an SKA-Low prototype station - the Engineering Development Array 2 - at the site of SKA-Low. We report 112,534 individual detections of 1,806 unique Starlink satellites, some emitting broadband emission and others narrowband emission. Our analysis compares observations across different models of Starlink satellite, with 76% of all v2-mini Ku and 71% of all v2-mini Direct to Cell satellites identified. It is shown that in the worst cases, some datasets have a detectable Starlink satellite in ~30% of all images acquired. Emission from Starlink satellites is detected in primary and secondary frequency ranges protected by the International Telecommunication Union, with 13 satellites identified between 73.00 - 74.60 MHz and 703 identified between 150.05 - 153.00 MHz. We also detect the reflections of terrestrial FM radio off different models of Starlink satellites at 99.70 MHz. The polarisation of the broadband emission shows the flux density of two orthogonal polarisations is anti-correlated with temporally shifting spectral structure observed. We compare our results to previous EDA2 and LOFAR results and provide open public access to our final data products to assist in quantifying future changes in this emission.
The cost of StarLink and other billionaire pet projects is way too high.
"We find that the population of reentering satellites in 2022 caused a 29.5% increase of aluminum in the atmosphere above the natural level, resulting in around 17 metric tons of aluminum oxides injected into the mesosphere. [...] As aluminum oxide nanoparticles may remain in the atmosphere for decades, they can cause significant ozone depletion."
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2024GL109280
"That is the real reason why Starship was doomed to fail from the beginning. It’s not trying to revolutionise the space industry; if it were, its concept, design, and testing plan would be totally different. Instead, the entire project is optimised to fleece as much money from the US taxpayer as possible, and as such, that is all it will ever do."
Wow, this is an interesting piece..
https://www.planetearthandbeyond.co/p/starship-was-doomed-from-the-beginning
The NSF Presidential budget contains huge cuts of Maths & Physics
https://nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/00-NSF-FY26-CJ-Entire-Rollup.pdf
Not good news for gravitational-wave or multimessenger astronomy "In FY 2026 NSF will operate only one of the two [LIGO] sites and will support a reduced level for technology development"
@LIGO is the NSF's biggest investment. It is the result of decades of work by scientists from around the world.
D. Olifant
Star Trek Minus Context
Martin Holland
Sebastian Bubmann
Seb Potter
Pᵉtɘr Wᵉil8acher
Maximilian Wilhelm
Ruth Mottram
Dr Christopher Berry