Time to polish the tiara?

Taps microphone: anyone still out there?. If you've been missing my tweets🤔come over to the blue skies - you'll find me there with the same handle. In the meantime here is me getting super excited about the Vera Rubin Observatory!.

A gorgeous sunny day in Edinburgh: perfect for counting all the sunspots! There is a new beast in town, #sunspot AR3780 . I've got a new insta account scot.starry.skies: check out my sunspot-cloud-dance movie! 📽️ ℹ️:

👇A wide-ranging interview, on dark matter, dark energy, @VRubinObs, our Scottish Youth Telescope Network, #scicomm, inequality and #LongCovid. “Science not talked about is science not done as far as I'm concerned” . By @Sarah_McArthur_ 🗞️:

And in fairness to the Labour Party, there are more potholes in the UK than *named* craters on the moon. The @IAU_org has official names for 9176 lunar features, many of which date back to UK astronomer Mary Blagg's catalogue from 1913. ℹ️:

UK Election campaigning hits "silly season" with.#Labour stating "the roads have more potholes than the moon has craters" 🧐 .I'm on BBC 'More or Less' this week: way, way more craters than potholes. Still great if Labour is going to fix them tho! .📻:

I met Jasper in his “retirement” as an Oxford researcher probing the large scale structure of the Universe with radio surveys. We both moved to Vancouver and Jasper effectively adopted me, becoming surrogate grandad to my firstborn. He was v much loved and will be sorely missed.

As the last Director of the Royal Greenwich Observatory, Jasper fought to stop its closure in the 1998 UKGov’s cost-cutting exercise. Prevented from speaking to the media, Jasper said he could write a whole book about this sad period in UK astronomy.

As Director of the Isaac Newton Group Observatory in La Palma 1986-1990, he oversaw the first light of the William Herschel Telescope, the then 3rd largest optical telescope in the world.

Jasper's favourite story was of the time he helped NASA talk to Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on their moonwalk. If you’ve seen the movie “The Dish”, Jasper was the real-life version of the nerdy young physicist at the Parkes Radio Telescope.

Sad news: Prof. Jasper Wall, titan and pioneer of radio astronomy, passed away on the 28th March. He created the 1st large-scale radio surveys to catalogue black hole quasars across the Universe and showed how to statistically analyse them to infer the cosmology of our Universe🧵

#Aurora on Portobello beach Edinburgh 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿. It was so very bright at one point that you could see the slow rainfall of colours across the sky with your very own eyes. Special thanks go to the Sun & atmosphere for putting on such a spectacular show for us tonight!!

Are you a freelance #scicomm evaluator in Scotland/North England? If yes, please apply to work with me, @e_astronomer and our team, to assess the impact of dark sky telescope experiences at Scotland's Outdoor education centres. 🧪🔭🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿. ℹ️:

RT @BBCr4today: The White House has directed Nasa to establish a unified standard of time for the moon and other celestial bodies 🌕. @Astro….

And if you're wondering where I've been - I'm over on Blue Sky now. Lots of scientists and astronomers over there, so do come and join us!.

A brief X-return to say how delighted I am to virtually join WorldCon 2024 #scifi. This will be the 1st time I return to "the stage" since falling ill with Long Covid ~2 yrs ago. Huge🙏 to the Glasgow team for making it possible for me to join in the fun with hybrid events.

The one gift #LongCovid has given me: my dear friend @DrGrounds. And "what a small world" twist! Turns out her Dad wrote the book I taught myself A-level physics from, when I was off-school with #MECFS aged 17! .DrG give me this 🎁today "an oak tree from this little acorn" 🥰❤️

RT @just_shaun: Oddly enough, one of the best ways to learn about dark matter is through its interaction with light. (Gravitationally!). Y….

Super Blue Moons! 🤗 the mismatch between "wow super rare event" media excitement and the prof astronomer "it's not actually blue and only slightly brighter than normal". Whatever whenever the moon is gorgeous so #dolookup - still pretty super tonight!.

To my lovely LC-friends, there is some excellent low-energy vicarious living to be had at the NamibiaCam. Live feed from a watering hole in the Namib Desert!.

Don't forget to turn off all your outdoor lights and give your eyes enough time (~15 mins) to fully adapt to the darkness.