Dr. Nick Attree
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nickattree.bsky.social
Dr. Nick Attree
@nickattree.bsky.social
1.4K followers 640 following 740 posts
Planetary scientist @iaacsic.bsky.social, working on @esa.int's Rosetta & @cometinterceptor.bsky.social. Prev @TUBraunschweig, @LAM, @QMUL & @UoLeicester 🇬🇧🇪🇸🇪🇺
https://sites.google.com/view/nickattree
ORCID: 0000-0003-3344-6693
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nickattree.bsky.social
Dr. Nick Attree @nickattree.bsky.social · Jul 3
In other #PlanetSci news, my latest paper on modelling ☄️ #comet #67P's activity is now online #OpenAccess in Monthly Notices of the @royalastrosoc.bsky.social.
We found sublimating ices can overcome the weak material strength and eject particles, roughly matching...
academic.oup.com/mnras/advanc...
Constraints on the ejecting-crust activity model on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko
Abstract. Reproducing the observed activity of comets with thermophysical models remains a primary challenge of cometary science. We use a pebble-based the
academic.oup.com
Reposted by Dr. Nick Attree
andrealuck.bsky.social
3/3

Time to update the Gas Giant Portrait I created, now including the new versions of Saturn and Uranus I recently processed.

Full size & more info: flic.kr/p/2oUkYSY 🔭🧪
Credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/AndreaLuck

Jupiter is next on the list to be updated :)
The image is divided into four sections, each showing one of the gas giants against a black background. Top left: Jupiter. It appears as a large, round sphere with horizontal bands in shades of brown, tan, and white. A bright white oval storm sits on the lower right side. A faint ring is visible alongside Europa, one of its satellites, which appears very bright with a star-shaped artifact. Top right: Saturn. It has a pale beige surface with soft horizontal shading. Surrounding it is a wide, bright ring system tilted diagonally. The rings look thin and sharply defined, with multiple subtle bands of light and dark. Bottom left: Uranus. It appears as a smooth blue-green sphere with some whitish circular clouds around the pole that is facing the observer. Surrounding it is a bright circular ring system made up of thin white lines. The rings form a bright, symmetrical halo around the planet. Bottom right: Neptune. It is a blue sphere with slightly brighter and darker circular features on its atmosphere. It also has a thin ring system, dimmer and less defined than Uranus’s in this image, appearing as a faint double oval around the planet. Each planet has its name printed below it in white capital letters.
November 29, 2025 at 1:03 PM
Reposted by Dr. Nick Attree
comet-toolbox.com
ESA's RAMSES mission is funded ! We are going to visit asteroid Apophis in 2029 :D
www.esa.int/About_Us/Cor...

#planetaryscience
ESA Member States commit to largest contributions at Ministerial
The largest contributions in the history of the European Space Agency, €22.1 bn, have been approved at its Council meeting at Ministerial level in Bremen, ...
www.esa.int
November 28, 2025 at 8:04 AM
Reposted by Dr. Nick Attree
esa.int
🔴 LIVE NOW: Follow our #CM25 Press Conference livestream by the Hosting Minister, Chair and the ESA Director General, on #ESAWebTV

👉 📺 watch.esa.int/two
esa.int European Space Agency @esa.int · 3d
Watch live: #CM25 Press Conference by the Hosting Minister, Chair and the ESA Director General, today on #ESAWebTV from 12.00 GMT/13.00 CET.

👉 📺 watch.esa.int
November 27, 2025 at 12:59 PM
Reposted by Dr. Nick Attree
spacemarschall.net
Today and tomorrow we’re having the science team meeting of the CoCa instrument on @cometinterceptor.bsky.social. CoCa (Comet Camera) is the main high resolution camera on the mission. We‘ll be discussing calibration and how to get maximum science return.
November 27, 2025 at 8:58 AM
nickattree.bsky.social
Remote attending a @cometinterceptor.bsky.social CoCa team meeting, and finding my Lego model to be very useful for orientating myself around the spacecraft!
A Lego comet interceptor spacecraft held up in front of a blurry computer screen showing a zoom call.
November 27, 2025 at 8:58 AM
nickattree.bsky.social
Introduce yourself with four spaceships.
NASA's Cassini flies over Saturn's rings. I did my PhD on this mission! ESA's Rosetta spacecraft to a comet. The subject of most of my research. NASA'a InSight mission to Mars being assembled. I did a postdoc related to this mission. ESA's Comet Interceptor. I am currently working on this mission and in the Science Working Team, preparing for launch soon!
November 25, 2025 at 10:20 PM
nickattree.bsky.social
It's the last week of our intern's projects here @iaacsic.bsky.social and they are giving presentations in our #JournalClub. Pieter has been working with me on predicting orbits of comets for @cometinterceptor.bsky.social, while Maxime showed some cool seismic wave simulations inside #asteroids!
November 25, 2025 at 11:15 AM
Reposted by Dr. Nick Attree
charles.littlegreenfootballs.com
i’m not crying you’re crying

xkcd: Fifteen Years

Fifteen Years
xkcd.com
November 25, 2025 at 1:58 AM
nickattree.bsky.social
Amen to that!
jradavenport.com James Davenport @jradavenport.com · 5d
They’re such interesting objects, dynamic and ever changing. That’s why we should study them, observe them over and over and over!
allplanets.bsky.social Franck Marchis @allplanets.bsky.social · 5d
Fantastic work by Ariel Graykowski and our @setiinstitute.bsky.social citizen scientists.
Comet C/2025 K1 (ATLAS) is breaking apart — and some of you caught it live. After passing 0.3 AU from the Sun, it erupted, and three days later a third appeared.

K1 is now officially in pieces.
November 25, 2025 at 8:17 AM
Reposted by Dr. Nick Attree
spacemarschall.net
Hey #planetSci friends, the end of the year is nearing. Does anyone want to help me put together an Image of the Year Bracket?

If you want to propose your favourite planetary science image of 2025, place it below with a link to the source and when it was published.
Bracket for "BSky Planetary Science Image of 2025" contest, featuring small icon of 16 boxes with question marks grouped into four quarter-finals. There are finalist placeholders against a lunar surface backdrop.
November 24, 2025 at 4:04 PM
Reposted by Dr. Nick Attree
apod.shinyakato.dev
🔭 Comet Lemmon and the Milky Way

Image Credit & Copyright: Lin Zixuan linzx23 at mails.tsinghua.edu dot cn) (Tsinghua U.)

apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25112...
A night skyscape is shown over snowcapped mountains. On the left is the band of the Milky Way Galaxy, while on the right is a bright comet with two tails -- a white tail going up and trailing to the right and a longer blue tail going up and trailing off to the left. Please see the explanation for more detailed information.
November 25, 2025 at 8:00 AM
Reposted by Dr. Nick Attree
hourlycosmos.bsky.social
Cometa McNaught y Antena 2 - From Ángel López-Sánchez - https://flic.kr/p/zbEFo
Cometa McNaught junto a la Antena 2 del interferómetro ATCA (Narrabri, Australia), fotografiado la noche del 29 de enero de 2007 a las 10h TU. Combinación de 18 imágenes de 30 segundos de exposición a sensibilidad de 800 ASA. La combinación se realizó con el programa ImagesPlus y luego tratada con Photoshop para incluir la mejor imagen de primer plano de la secuencia.
November 24, 2025 at 2:00 PM
Reposted by Dr. Nick Attree
geologoenapuros.bsky.social
La imagen tomada hoy (22/11/25) por el satélite Terra de la NASA 🛰️🌍 muestra cómo las nevadas han llegado a la península ❄️🇪🇸. Este episodio frío nos deja una estampa totalmente invernal 🏔️🌨️🧊.
November 22, 2025 at 6:30 PM
Reposted by Dr. Nick Attree
kevinmgill.bsky.social
A very close view of the craters that cover the surface of Saturn’s icy moon Rhea. NASA’s Cassini mission made this flyby in January 2011, passing within 76 kilometers (47 miles) at a speed of 8 km/sec (18,000 mph). This image had a resolution up to 22.6 meters per pixel towards the closer terrain.
A cratered and fractured terrain. NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/CICLOPS/Kevin M. Gill
November 23, 2025 at 1:31 AM
Reposted by Dr. Nick Attree
apod.shinyakato.dev
🔭 Dione and Rhea Ring Transit

Image Credit & Copyright: Christopher Go

apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25112...
Seen to the left of Saturn's banded planetary disk, small icy moons Dione and Rhea are caught passing in front of the gas giant's extensive ring system in this sharp telescopic snapshot. The remarkable image was recorded on November 20, when Saturn's rings were nearly edge-on when viewed from planet Earth. In fact, every 13 to 16 years the view from planet Earth aligns with Saturn's ring plane to produce a series of ring plane crossings. During a ring plane crossing, the interplanetary edge-on perspective makes the thin but otherwise bright rings seem to disappear. By November 23rd Saturn's rings will have reached a minimum angle for now, at their narrowest for viewing from planet Earth, but then start to widen again. Of course, Dione and Rhea orbit Saturn near the ring plane once every 2.7 and 4.5 days respectively, while the next series of Saturn ring plane crossings as seen from Earth will begin again in 2038.
November 22, 2025 at 8:00 AM
Reposted by Dr. Nick Attree
uahirise.bsky.social
Here’s an annotated version of our comet image.

We also want to thank our downlink and uplink teams who spent a huge amount of time working on this. Our camera was not designed to image interstellar objects 19 million miles away, but their hard work and planning paid off.
November 19, 2025 at 9:31 PM
Reposted by Dr. Nick Attree
captainitswednesday.com
Wednesday, November 19, 2025
Adventures of Tintin panel. Captain Haddock asks, 'What a week, huh?'. To which Tintin replies, 'Captain, it's Wednesday.' while Snowy the dog attempts to drink some beer.
November 19, 2025 at 3:00 PM
nickattree.bsky.social
After a few days of rainy weather in #Granada, the clouds lifted to reveal... A glorious snow dump on the #SierraNevada!
Snow capped mountains behind rows of building roofs. An avenue with tram tracks and surrounded by large apartment blocks frames a distant view of snowcapped mountains.
November 19, 2025 at 2:53 PM
nickattree.bsky.social
I had three meetings schedules for the rest of the week, and two have just been moved! Happy days.
However, the big grant writing deadline just got moved forward. Boo :( #OverlyHonestMethods
November 19, 2025 at 11:10 AM
nickattree.bsky.social
Spectacular view from Cassini *inside* Saturn's rings 🪐
kevinmgill.bsky.social Kevin M. Gill @kevinmgill.bsky.social · 13d
In June 2017, immediately following passage low above the cloudtops of Saturn, Cassini used its Cosmic Dust Analyzer instrument on a study of the rings. Because their pointing matched, the cameras were able to take one of humanity’s first views from inside the vast ring system.

flic.kr/p/2jArJeo
Mosaic of images stitched together to form an inside perspective of a slice of Saturn’s rings. NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/CICLOPS/Kevin M. Gill
November 17, 2025 at 5:43 PM
nickattree.bsky.social
*looks up a comet fit in JPL small bodies database*
Fit producer: Otto Matic... right... this an in joke at JPL right?😅
November 17, 2025 at 3:37 PM
nickattree.bsky.social
#PlanetaryResearch is not just a 💎 #OpenAccess journal (submissions soon)! It's supported by the Planetary Research Cooperative, a free-to-join association that is also running a blog. Register to publish posts, sign up for the weekly digest, or just visit to read posts here #PlanetaryScience
coop.planetary-research.org Planetary Research Cooperative @coop.planetary-research.org · 13d
Have you ever wanted to post a summary of a paper you published, post an announcement for the entire #PlanetaryScience community, or write a blog? If so, you probably realized that there are few good solutions for our community.

The Planetary Research Blog aims to fill this void.
Landing page of the Planetary Research Blog (https://blog.planetary-research.org).
November 17, 2025 at 8:23 AM
nickattree.bsky.social
Wow, stunning picture of ☄️ #comet Lemmon! 🤩
And taken just down the road from #Granada too!
November 17, 2025 at 8:14 AM
Reposted by Dr. Nick Attree
astrokiwi.bsky.social
3I/ATLAS is the first interstellar object bright enough for amateurs to image: so fabulous to see the delight ☄️😍
stuartatkinson.bsky.social Stuart Atkinson @stuartatkinson.bsky.social · 14d
I got it... I actually got it... Interstellar comet 3i, imaged from the middle of light-polluted Kendal, at 6am this morning, using my Seestar S50... This comet was already billions of years old before our Sun was even *born*... Very chuffed with this!
November 16, 2025 at 8:51 AM
nickattree.bsky.social
Observations from #Mars helping to constrain the orbit of ☄️ #3IATLAS, including the first (surprising to me) entry into the Minor Planet Centre database from another planet!
Hopefully this kind of thing can also be done for an incoming @cometinterceptor.bsky.social target...
#PlanetSci
esa.int European Space Agency @esa.int · 16d
#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 10:35 AM