Paul Byrne
@ThePlanetaryGuy
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Associate Professor of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Science at Washington University in St. Louis • Planetary Evangelist • he/him/Sir • 🇮🇪 in 🇺🇸
St Louis, MO
Joined March 2018
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Pinned Tweet
Open this photo up and look for the small, white dot just left of centre.
It looks like Venus, shining brightly in the twilight sky.
But it's us.
It's Earth.
From Mars.
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Videos like this will always amaze me...
Astronomer Jan Koet captured this video in 2007 of Saturn appearing behind the Moon. Nothing like seeing the movement of planetary bodies through space to remind us that we're living in a Solar *System*
Source:
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Every once in a while, if you time it just right, you can see Saturn rise from behind the Moon.
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See that ring?
That's the circumstellar disk around PDS 70, a star 370 light-years from Earth.
And that bright spot to the right is a new planet being born—a planet the size of Jupiter.
Which has its own circumplanetary disk... where moons are being born.
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This is a tiny, tiny part of the new
#JWST
image.
Friends, this is an entire *galaxy*.
There are probably BILLIONS of worlds in this one alone.
#UnfoldTheUniverse
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This is a cliff.
That's a kilometre tall.
On a comet.
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This is probably the last photo the
@NASAInSight
mission will ever send home.
It was taken on Sunday, 30 October 2022 at a local time of 5:20 pm.
Its solar panels covered in dust, Insight isn't expected to last for more than a few weeks.
This is almost the end.
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See those rings?
They're not artefacts of image processing.
They're real.
And
#JWST
just snapped them.
🤏🧵
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See that green dot?
That's a bolt of lightning.
On Jupiter.
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Take 34 seconds to watch Saturn appear from behind the Moon.
And marvel at the fact that we live in a remarkable and beautiful planetary system.
Video source:
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This is a cliff.
It's 1,000 metres tall.
And it's on a comet.
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HOLY SHIT YOU GUYS!!
VOLCANIC ERUPTION SPOTTED EARLIER TODAY ON MARS!!!!
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Open this photo up and look for the small, white dot just left of centre.
It looks like Venus, shining brightly in the twilight sky.
But it's Earth.
From Mars.
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See that small, bluish dot at lower right?
That's us. That's Earth.
Photographed from Saturn.
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EVERYBODY!!
The Chinese rover
#Zhurong
carried a small wireless camera that it placed on the ground TO TAKE A GROUP PHOTO
LOOK AT THE ROVER'S LITTLE FACE 🥰
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Look at these sedimentary rocks!
They're on Mars.
And were photographed today.
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This is an awesome photo.
Like, literally.
I am in awe of the fact that, thanks to the work of thousands of people over millions of hours, humankind has successfully returned a primordial piece of the Solar System that's billions of years old.
#OSIRISREx
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See that bright star at lower right?
That's Earth. That's home.
From Saturn.
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This is worth 35 seconds of your time.
Earthrise.
Earlier today.
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This is what sunrise looked like this morning.
On Mars.
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We now know what a galaxy THIRTEEN BILLION LIGHTYEARS AWAY is made of
#JWST
#UnfoldTheUniverse
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NEW
#JWST
IMAGE JUST DROPPED DO YOURSELF A FAVOUR CLICK ON THE PIC TO MAKE IT FULL SCREEN
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This is an image of the Sun.
Taken at night. With neutrinos. Which travelled through Earth to reach a detector one thousand metres underground.
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Holy shit.
This is a photo from *earlier today* of 2021's only solar eclipse, which took place over Antarctica.
This pic was taken by Petr Horálek from a Boeing 787 some 12.5 km above the Weddell Sea. At this altitude, totality lasted for ~145 seconds.
Look at that shadow 😮
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Take thirty seconds and watch Europa and Io serenely sail by, massive Jupiter their background.
Imagine seeing this with your own eyes.
Envy those who, in the future, will.
Animated composite of Cassini images by
@kevinmgill
; credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/CICLOPS/Kevin M. Gill
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This is an image of the surface of Mars, taken from orbit.
Look closely.
See the faint pair of parallel lines that zig-zag from top right to bottom left?
Look even more closely.
See the
@MarsCuriosity
rover at the end of those tracks?
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It's such an incongruous photo.
Just a bunch of coarse sand grains and stones.
But they're sand grains and stones on Mars, and this photo was taken yesterday.
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This is a photo taken from the surface of an asteroid.
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NEW PHOTO OF THE VOLCANIC MOON IO JUST DROPPED
and
it
is
*magnificent*
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This is a real photo.
Saturn's icy moon Mimas, floating in space 185,000 km above the giant planet itself.
Those lines are shadows cast by the planet's vast ring system.
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Oh, this?
It's an *actual image* of the magnetic field lines surrounding Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy.
That shadow in the middle is the black hole itself.
Credit: EHT Collaboration
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See this thing?
It's a fulgurite, and it's formed when goddamn LIGHTNING hits sand or soil, and the heat from the strike (>27,000°C!) fuses the silica to glass.
Geology rocks.
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BREAKING:
For the first time ever, scientists have identified *active volcanism* on Venus.
The paper, by Herrick and Hensley, has just been published in
@ScienceMagazine
.
🧵
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This is one of my very favourite space photos, and shows what the surface of an asteroid looks like.
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This is a beautiful photo of a cloud crossing the Moon that makes it look like our natural satellite has rings.
It's also what the Moon might look like if we punched something through it really, really fast.
Anyone wanna test that idea?
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This is a view of the surface of Mars taken earlier today.
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This is a photo of the shadow of a robot on another planet, taken a few hours ago.
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I 100% believe that, somewhere in this tiny part of the sky, there are people looking back at us.
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Oh, this?
Just a partial solar eclipse.
As seen on Mars.
Yesterday.
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It's still incredible to me that this photo can be taken on the surface of Mars and, only a few hours later, we can see it on our phones.
This is Jezero Crater, Mars, at a mean local time of 12:09 pm Tuesday, 31 May 2022.
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There is a huge, hexagonal storm system at the north pole of Saturn.
It's 29,000 km across—more than twice the diameter of Earth.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/Kevin M. Gill (
@kevinmgill
)
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The field of view in this image is 36,500 km to a side, or a little bit less than three times the diameter of
#Earth
. Here's an image to show you how big our homeworld is compared with this scene:
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A new
#JWST
deep-field image just dropped.
The six-pointed features are stars.
EVERYTHING ELSE IN THIS IMAGE IS A GALAXY.
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It's just a photo of some rocks.
But these are rocks on Mars.
And the photo was taken today.
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This is what it looks like when you punch an asteroid in the face.
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This is what you'd see, standing on the surface of an asteroid.
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Titan.
With mighty Saturn behind.
This is one of my favourite images from space.
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This is a hole.
That a robot drilled.
On Mars.
And we're gonna try to bring that drilled material back to Earth.
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This is the circumstellar disk around PDS 70, a young star about 370 lightyears from Earth.
The star is in the centre of the ring.
And that bright dot to the right?
That's PDS 70c, a gas giant with its own circumplanetary disk.
This is an image of a planet being born.
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This is a photo taken from the *surface* of an asteroid
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This is a photo of the surface of Mars, taken by a helicopter.
At the lower right, you can see the helicopter's shadow and a nice opposition effect.
Take a look at the upper left.
What do you see?
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This is a photo of some rocks.
But they're rocks on another planet, and they were photographed earlier today.
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This is a photo of Jupiter's moon Io eclipsing the Sun.
Io is in the centre of the image; its shadow is the darker circle to the right.
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It looks like science fiction, but this is a real photo.
Saturn's rings, and four of its moons—one of which is a planet by any other name.
Shot by Cassini.
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See that bright spot?
That's sunlight. Glinting off a lake.
A lake of liquid methane on a world 1.48 billion kilometres from home.
Titan.
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The surface of Mars, today.
Thursday, 21 October, 2021.
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The annual pilgrimage of geologists to bring tithes to their god, Vulcan, in hopes of a bountiful harvest of rocks next season.
(Or, spectators at the Fagradalsfjall eruption, getting as close to active lava as you can without getting singed. Photo by
@brianemfinger
)
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Click on this image. Make it full size.
See that small, white dot, about a third the way in from the left?
That's us. That's home. That's Earth. From Mars.
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This is fucking terrifying.
Indonesia's Mount Semeru has erupted, blasting ash into the sky and sending a pyroclastic density current—or "pyroclastic flow"—down its flanks.
A webcam captured that flow.
This is what it looks like to see a pyroclastic flow coming
right
at
you
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Your periodic reminder that the only other place in the Solar System that's at room temperature and pressure is above the clouds on Venus.
Image: HAVOC concept (NASA)
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This is a photo from the surface of Mars taken A FEW HOURS AGO
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Colonists will be restricted to 600 breaths a day.
Verified colonists will have 6,000 breaths a day, and will see fewer ads in their suit's heads-up display.
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This is the oldest galaxy we've ever seen.
It was spotted with early-release
#JWST
NIRCam data, and is sufficiently red-shifted to have formed only 300 million years after the Big Bang—which means it's 97.8% the age of the Universe.
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For your Friday, friends, a reminder that you live in a universe with places like this:
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I never get tired of this image.
Sunlight, glinting off a lake.
A lake of liquid methane, on an icy world called Titan that's 1.37 billion kilometres away.
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This is an awesome photo of the crescent Venus.
Oh, and the Moon.
Credit: herbraab ()
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This image was taken on the surface of Mars a few hours ago.
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