Corey S. Powell
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coreyspowell.bsky.social
Corey S. Powell
@coreyspowell.bsky.social
8.9K followers 970 following 1.7K posts
Fascinated by things very big, very small, and beyond the limits of the human senses. Founder of OpenMind: www.openmindmag.org Creator of the Invisible Universe column: https://invisibleuniverse.substack.com/
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coreyspowell.bsky.social
Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · Nov 15
In honor of all the new arrivals, I'm sharing one of my favorite videos.

It shows 24 hours of Earth's rotation, with the camera locked to the sky instead of the ground. We're all hanging out on this spinning rock.

Brilliant work by Bartosz Wojczyński. 🧪

artuniverse.eu/gallery/1907...
coreyspowell.bsky.social
A 6-year survey mapped the biggest structures in the universe. The results are beautiful...and, annoyingly, they fit nicely with the current model of cosmology.

We know there's something missing from that model, but figuring out *what* is not easy! 🧪🔭

news.uchicago.edu/story/scient...
A new study catalogues the universe by mapping huge clusters of galaxies—some of the largest known objects in the universe—offering new insight into how the universe first formed and the rules that govern it today. Image courtesy of the Dark Energy Survey
November 23, 2025 at 3:18 PM
Reposted by Corey S. Powell
aussiastronomer.bsky.social
It's Friday, and apparently bluesky is ready for this fun revelation:

Dinosaurs lived on the other side the Galaxy.
November 21, 2025 at 5:11 PM
coreyspowell.bsky.social
A metaphor for holiday family gatherings?

By studying relationships between distant objects, astronomers have reconstructed our solar system's early upbringing. Their conclusion: The Sun left its birthplace early, before its siblings could stir up much trouble. 🧪🔭

aasnova.org/2025/11/14/t...
The Hubble Space Telescope’s view of a collection of young stars still embedded within their natal nebula. [NASA, ESA, G. Duchene]
November 23, 2025 at 1:45 AM
coreyspowell.bsky.social
One of the most exciting discoveries from JWST is "Little Red Dots": ultra-distant galaxies rapidly forming new stars & spawning a giant black hole

They tell us that galaxies grew up a lot faster than we thought. We don't know how--but new observations offer clues. 🧪🔭

esawebb.org/news/weic2522/
This image shows the location of galaxy CANUCS-LRD-z8.6 in galaxy cluster MACS J1149.5+2223, as seen by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam). CANUCS-LRD-z8.6 is part of a class of small, very distant and strikingly red galaxies called Little Red Dots (LRDs), which have been spotted in increasing numbers by Webb’s surveys of the early Universe. It is located in the constellation Leo (the Lion), and is seen by Webb just 570 million years after the Big Bang.
November 21, 2025 at 6:30 PM
coreyspowell.bsky.social
The sky is a blank slate for us to project images buried deep in our minds. I look at this gorgeous new JWST image & see a human embryo.

(It's actually two dying stars circling each other, casting out shells of dust. Which is a pretty cool image, too.) 🧪🔭

science.nasa.gov/missions/web...
Left: Webb’s mid-infrared image shows four coiled shells of dust around a pair of Wolf-Rayet stars known as Apep for the first time. Previous observations by other telescopes showed only one. Webb’s data also confirmed that there are three stars gravitationally bound to one another. Image by NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI. Right: a human embryo.
November 20, 2025 at 4:52 PM
coreyspowell.bsky.social
NASA's newly released images of interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS come from across the solar system: Mars surface, Mars orbit, and the L1 point. They are dividends from investing in exploration & pushing the bounds of knowledge. 🧪🔭

science.nasa.gov/solar-system...
n annotated version of the image of 3I/ATLAS captured by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows the trajectory of the interstellar comet along with a scale bar. The image was captured by the spacecraft’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on Oct. 2, 2025. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona A faint image of comet 3I/ATLAS as observed by ESA/NASA’s SOHO mission between Oct. 15-26, 2025. The comet appears as a slight brightening in the center of the image. Image Credit: Lowell Observatory/Qicheng Zhang
November 19, 2025 at 9:43 PM
Reposted by Corey S. Powell
kevinmgill.bsky.social
The crests of two ridges to the west and northwest of the Mars Perseverance Rover. Imaged using MastCam-Z yesterday on Sol 1687.

flic.kr/p/2rGnEUB
flic.kr/p/2rGmsw9
November 19, 2025 at 4:34 PM
coreyspowell.bsky.social
3 years ago, NASA crashed the DART spacecraft into an asteroid at 22,000 kilometers per hour. The event changed the asteroid's orbit and tilt & sent it tumbling.

A nearby cubesat captured these remarkable images of the asteroid immediately after the impact. 🧪🔭

aasnova.org/2025/11/03/s...
November 19, 2025 at 4:12 AM
coreyspowell.bsky.social
The evolution of life is intimately linked with the pulse of our planet.

A new geophysical models shows that the breakup of an ancient super-continent called Nuna may created the conditions that led to the first complex living cells. 🧪🔭

www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion...
November 18, 2025 at 8:35 PM
coreyspowell.bsky.social
Today I learned: There are more unspent pennies in the United States than there are stars in the Milky Way. 🧪

www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/...
This is a new artist’s impression of our galaxy, the Milky Way, based on data from ESA’s Gaia space telescope. Gaia has changed our impression of the Milky Way. Even seemingly simple ideas about the nature of our galaxy’s central bar and the spiral arms have been overturned. Gaia has shown us that it has more than two spiral arms and that they are less prominent than we previously thought. In addition, Gaia has shown that its central bar is more inclined with respect to the Sun.
November 17, 2025 at 6:07 PM
coreyspowell.bsky.social
Marvelous new image of interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS, taken by photographer Satoru Murata before dawn this morning.

On the right you can also see galaxy NGC 4691. There should be a lot more pictures coming in soon. 🧪🔭

www.facebook.com/groups/22700...
Interstellar comet ATLAS seen early this morning as a thin crescent moon passed immediately next to it. Still was able to capture three separate jets of ionic tail, and an anti tail? Or the dust tail? The comet was also passing by the galaxy NGC4691, which really gave the impression of the object being from another world.
November 16, 2025 at 9:20 PM
coreyspowell.bsky.social
I will never get tired of watching meteorites blast new craters on the Moon.

This likely lunar impact flash appeared today. Like a space firefly. 🧪
ericlagadec.bsky.social Eric Lagadec @ericlagadec.bsky.social · 7d
Vous assistez, quasiment en direct à la formation d'un cratère sur la Lune, avec un impact filmé ce matin !
November 16, 2025 at 8:51 PM
coreyspowell.bsky.social
NASA's just-launched ESCAPADE mission is trying out a novel trajectory to Mars, one that's slower but allows much more flexible launch dates. The flight path also provides a bonus science session at the L2 equilibrium point near Earth. 🧪🔭

skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-ne...
ESCAPADE will first travel to the Lagrange point beyond Earth's orbit, then a trans-injection burn will take it swinging by Earth and then inserting into orbit around Mars. Credit: Space Sciences Laboratory / University of California, Berkeley
November 14, 2025 at 4:46 PM
Reposted by Corey S. Powell
esa.int
#3IATLAS update: we've just pinpointed the comet's path with 10 times more accuracy, using data from our #ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter spacecraft. 😎🧪🔭

www.esa.int/Space_Safety...
November 14, 2025 at 10:25 AM
coreyspowell.bsky.social
My apologies to all: That was an image of Comet K1 ATLAS, not Comet 3I/ATLAS. Sorry about my error. (That's what I get for posting as I'm running out for a beer.)
stim3on.bsky.social Simeon Schmauß @stim3on.bsky.social · 10d
As noted in the image, this is C/2025 K1 Atlas, an entirely different comet.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C/2025_...

Last I checked 3I/Atlas was still in one piece - and still not a spaceship :)
C/2025 K1 (ATLAS) - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
November 14, 2025 at 12:35 AM
coreyspowell.bsky.social
Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS is fragmenting on its way back out from the Sun. 🧪🔭

www.virtualtelescope.eu/2025/11/13/c...
The image of Comet ATLAS comes from the sigma-clipping combination of 15, 60-second unfiltered exposures, remotely taken with the Celestron C14+Paramount ME+SBIG ST-10XME robotic unit available as part of the Virtual Telescope Project in Manciano, Italy. To keep the highest detail, we shortened the exposure time and, looking at the results, we are happy with that choice.
November 13, 2025 at 9:21 PM
coreyspowell.bsky.social
New images of interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS are coming in as it moves out of the Sun's glare and (barely) back into view.

This shot, by Michael Buechner and Frank Niebling, shows an intriguing anti-tail and a "smoking" tail. 🧪🔭

britastro.org/observations...
Interstellar Comet 3I Atlas at 09.11.2025 shows nice tail structures Despite interference from moonlight (82 % illuminated) and a small height of around 9 to 12 degrees a try on comet 3I Atlas. The picture is heavily processed to show the antitail and the "smoking" tail. Combination of a picture series with 2 telescopes, piggyback mounted and tracked on comet: TEC 140 at f5 and ASI 6200MM, 5x180s L Askar 300
November 12, 2025 at 12:26 AM
coreyspowell.bsky.social
I find this remarkable:

The Dresden Codex, one of the few surviving Mayan manuscripts, contains tables that give highly accurate timings of solar eclipses over more than 700 years, from 350 CE to the 12 century. 🧪🔭

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Sheets of the Dresden Codex depicting eclipses, multiplication tables, and the flood.
November 11, 2025 at 12:49 AM
coreyspowell.bsky.social
Wishing you all a happy Carl Sagan Day (born this day in 1934).

Fascinating to see his note summarizing the key topics he planned to discuss during his 1977 meeting with President Carter. ("Wonder"!) 🧪🔭

www.loc.gov/collections/...
A handwritten note Carl Sagan used to brief President Jimmy Carter and Vice President Walter Mondale. The note is written on Watergate Hotel stationery. It includes the terms exploration, wonder, the origin of life, the Voyager Golden Record, the scale of galaxies, cosmic pulsars, quasars, and black holes, and symbols for the planets Jupiter, Saturn and Mars. Carl Sagan, with all kinds of worlds in the background.
November 10, 2025 at 2:15 AM
coreyspowell.bsky.social
This is what the band of the Milky Way would look like at night if your eyes could see radio waves. A hidden beauty.

It's a new image created by the Murchison Widefield Array, which scanned the sky in 20 radio "colors" over frequencies from 72 to 231 megahertz. 🧪🔭

www.icrar.org/gleam-x-gala...
Astronomers from the International Centre of Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) have created one of the largest low-frequency radio colour images of the Milky Way ever assembled. This spectacular new image captures the Southern Hemisphere view of the Galactic Plane – the disk of our Galaxy, which appears to human eyes as the glowing band of the Milky Way – now revealed across a wide range of radio wavelengths, or ‘colours’ of radio light.
November 9, 2025 at 6:19 PM
coreyspowell.bsky.social
Nature makes weird planets, and now this is among the weirdest: As big as Jupiter, made of carbon, blasted by high winds, and heated to 1900 degrees C by a dying, fast-spinning pulsar.

No matter how bad things get here, we live on the best of all possible worlds. 🔭🧪

arxiv.org/abs/2509.04558
Model of a pulsar planet. The companion light curve in two continuum bands interpreted with a pulsar direct heating model. The models are shown by the curves and the data are shown by the points. The model does not capture the strong orbit-to-orbit variations at minimum (ϕ ∼ 0 and ϕ ∼ 1), but provides a good description of the flux from the heated face and constrains the binary parameters. Schematics of the Earth-view of the heated companion’s surface temperature are shown below the light curve.
November 8, 2025 at 1:53 PM
coreyspowell.bsky.social
Meanwhile on Mars...

The planet is covered with odd gullies that look like they were carved by running water. A cool new experiment demonstrates that they were probably carved by sliding, spitting chunks of dry ice. (Sorry, still no signs of life.) 🧪🔭

www.uu.nl/en/news/myst...
November 6, 2025 at 11:18 PM
Reposted by Corey S. Powell
mcnees.bsky.social
The X-10 graphite reactor at Oak Ridge went critical #OTD in 1943.

Built as part of the Manhattan Project, it was the second artificial nuclear reactor (after Fermi's Chicago Pile 1) and the first to operate continuously. 🧪 ⚛️

Image: Ed Westcott
This black and white photo by Ed Westcott shows workers remove a control rod from the face of the X-10 graphite reactor. The face of the reactor is a large wall, perhaps 30 feet high, covered with small openings where rods could be inserted.
November 4, 2025 at 7:48 PM
coreyspowell.bsky.social
This mysterious object, called Capotauro, might be the earliest, most distant galaxy ever seen, containing some of the universe's first stars.

Or it might be a mundane, nearby brown dwarf floating through our Milky Way.

Nobody said cosmology was easy. 🧪🔭

arxiv.org/abs/2509.016...
CEERS U-100588 (named provisionally as "Capotauro") is an astronomical object detected by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) on the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) Survey, which could be an extremely distant Lyman-break galaxy with a photometric redshift (z) of 32, a dusty interloper galaxy with a redshift (z) of 6, a rogue planet or a Y2–Y3 spectral type brown dwarf.
November 4, 2025 at 7:21 PM
coreyspowell.bsky.social
You can almost reach out and touch it. What a shot of Comet Lemmon!
debraceravolo.bsky.social Debra's Astrophotography @debraceravolo.bsky.social · 22d
Comet A6 Lemmon's closest approach to the Sun is on November 8th, 2025. I took this image on October 29th showing a huge increase in activity around the core. A very zoomed in shot using a 16 inch telescope f/18, 7400mm focal length with Canon R6.

#astrophotography #astronomy #comets #cometlemmon
Comet Lemmon showing bow shocks at the green core and streamers of dust and gasses flowing behind it as it approaches the Sun.Taken with a 16 inch telescope.
November 2, 2025 at 12:07 AM