Riding With Robots
LightNews LightNews
banner
ridingrobots.bsky.social
Riding With Robots
@ridingrobots.bsky.social
1.8K followers 1.1K following 970 posts
Robotic solar system exploration, night sky photography, exasperating earnestness. My day job is impersonating some of your favorite planets and spacecraft on social media for one of your favorite government agencies. Opinions here are my own.
Posts Replies Media Videos
ridingrobots.bsky.social
Bad: Tried this spot again last night after three years, but the impenetrable clouds had different ideas.

Worse: In this 2023 shot, these snow banks were about six feet tall. I had to snowshoe in to get to my final spot. Last night, there was. No. Snow.

Better: Flurries in the forecast this week.
A starry winter night under clear skies. A road plowed through deep snow leads to a forested mountain side. Photo: Bill Dunford
February 16, 2026 at 6:54 PM
ridingrobots.bsky.social
Amid the clouds
A pine forest on a snowy hillside in the mist. Stars are visible through the fog. Uintah Mountains, Utah on Feb. 13, 2026. Photo: Bill Dunford
February 16, 2026 at 2:50 AM
Reposted by Riding With Robots
theplanetaryguy.bsky.social
Kīlauea is doing its thing again

Watch live:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk0t...
LAAAAVVVAAAAAAAA
February 16, 2026 at 2:05 AM
Reposted by Riding With Robots
sciencesocks.bsky.social
If you want to get lost in Pluto's heart-shaped Tombaugh Regio, check out the full-size 64-megapixel image taken by #NewHorizons in 2015 😍

🔗 assets.science.nasa.... [54 MB download ‼️ ]

📸 NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI/Alex Parker

🔭🐡🧪🎨
True color photograph of Pluto taken by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, showing its tan and brown surface with the prominent heart-shaped Tombaugh Regio feature in the lower right.
February 14, 2026 at 5:22 PM
ridingrobots.bsky.social
I take some pride and, more importantly, hope in living in that big blue circle in the west, in the middle of all that white. Ok, ok, that's closely tied to the population map. Still, know that we have friends EVERYWHERE.
chenoweth.bsky.social Erica Chenoweth @chenoweth.bsky.social · 4d
The volume & geographic distribution of protest nationwide during year 1 of Trump's second term was extraordinary.
Map showing tens of thousands of protests across the US between Trump's inauguration last year and January 31, 2026.
February 15, 2026 at 9:16 PM
Reposted by Riding With Robots
kevinmkruse.bsky.social
Elon's racist little post made me mad enough to write about it at CAMPAIGN TRAILS.
Diversity Is Our Strength
This morning, Elon Musk – the world's richest man and a key ally to the president of the United States – posted the content below to the white nationalist chat room and CSAM emporium he owns There's ...
campaign-trails.ghost.io
February 15, 2026 at 8:32 PM
Reposted by Riding With Robots
andrealuck.bsky.social
Mars - Cloud over Promethei Terra

Full size 5k image and more info: flic.kr/p/2rWMYkb 🔭🧪
Credit: ESA/DLR/FUBerlin/AndreaLuck CC BY

@esa.int Mars Express 2025-05-24
ID: HR000_0000 (ND+RED+GR+BL)
View of Mars from orbit, showing a curved horizon against the blackness of space. The dusty tan surface is marked by scattered impact craters and rugged ridges. Along the horizon, a thin pale bluish atmospheric layer creates a misty glow, and a single distinct white cloud is visible near the upper layers of the atmosphere.
February 15, 2026 at 7:05 PM
ridingrobots.bsky.social
Ghosts

Uintah Mountains, Utah on Feb. 13.
A silhouetted forest of burned trees in a dense fog at night, illuminated by distant city lights. Photo: Bill Dunford A forest of tall, snow frosted pine trees under a starry night sky, illuminated by distant headlights. Photo: Bill Dunford A silhouetted forest of pine trees in a dense fog at night, illuminated by distant city lights. Photo: Bill Dunford A forest of tall, snow frosted pine trees under a starry night sky, illuminated by distant headlights. Photo: Bill Dunford
February 15, 2026 at 6:31 PM
Reposted by Riding With Robots
goodtrailcams.bsky.social
February 15, 2026 at 1:59 PM
ridingrobots.bsky.social
Got you a waning crescent moonrise for Valentines.
Hope you like it. A thin crescent moon rises in a blue and orange pre-dawn sky, behind silhouetted forest tree line. Uintah Mountains, Utah. Photo: Bill Dunford
February 14, 2026 at 6:42 PM
Reposted by Riding With Robots
cacomixpod.bsky.social
Incredible how resonant "It doesn't have to be this way" is with almost everyone. A better world is possible, and it's on its way.
February 14, 2026 at 3:00 AM
Reposted by Riding With Robots
owlsintowels.org
From discombobulated on admission, to vocal and feisty on release, this Northern Hawk Owl at Bird TLC returned to the skies with a clean bill of health. Want to donate to Bird Treatment and Learning Center? birdtlc.org/donate Source: fb.com/961444549357... #owlsintowels 💛🦉
A Northern Hawk Owl wears a watermelon pink towel and a stern expression. His head is wide and oblate, sporting pale beeswax yellow eyes that match his beak, and feathers in shades of lunar rock and obsidian. His face is punctuated with black markings in the shape of harps - curved around the eyes, rising to peaks at the temples, and flanked by thick pillars where the sideburns should be. The rehabber holds him in a purple glove.
February 4, 2026 at 11:20 AM
Reposted by Riding With Robots
marygillis.bsky.social
M&Ms CEO: 'most, if not all' meals can be replaced by M&Ms within 12-18 months
Microsoft AI CEO: 'Most, if not all' white-collar tasks can be replaced by AI within 12-18 months
Mustafa Suleyman, Microsoft's AI chief, says AI can automate white-collar jobs within 12-18 months, as tech reaches human-level performance in tasks.
www.businessinsider.com
February 13, 2026 at 7:49 PM
Reposted by Riding With Robots
pomarede.bsky.social
2026 NASA Science Calendar Image of the Month

February - Curiosity’s Climb for Climate Clues

science.nasa.gov/multimedia/2...

Credit: NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)-Caltech/University of California, Berkeley/University of Arizona

#Mars 🧪🔭 @uahirise.bsky.social
These beautiful variations in rock along Mars’ Gale Crater hold significant clues to understanding how the planet’s climate has changed over millions of years and whether it ever had the conditions to support small life forms called microbes. (Spoiler alert: it did, maybe.) Formed by an impact some 3.7 billion years ago, the crater and adjacent Mount Sharp contain rocks and other sediment with the key chemical elements required by life. NASA’s Curiosity rover explored the composition of these rocks and sediment, and it discovered signs that the crater held liquid water millions of years ago. The visualization here, created in March 2024 by the HiRISE (High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) camera and other instruments on NASA's MRO (Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter), shows the steep slope climbed by Curiosity to reach the Gediz Vallis channel, visible in the upper part of the image. The area is particularly rich in sulfates, which are salty minerals that form as water evaporates.
February 13, 2026 at 6:47 PM
Reposted by Riding With Robots
uahirise.bsky.social
February 13, 2026 at 6:32 PM
Reposted by Riding With Robots
jacquelyngill.bsky.social
If somewhere, everywhere, and nowhere are words, then somewhen, everywhen, and nowhen also get to be words.
February 13, 2026 at 6:32 PM
Reposted by Riding With Robots
smpritchard.bsky.social
This funding is legally required to be disbursed as directed in the budget. It is illegal for this money to be withheld like this. Russell Vought and the entire Trump admin are in violation of the law and need to be prosecuted and the funding released. This is screwing over so many workers!
February 13, 2026 at 7:30 PM
ridingrobots.bsky.social
Perfect Trump style: stupid and illegal. Throttles a bunch of important Earth and climate missions, of course, but also wastes OSIRIS-APEX, a smart re-use of an existing spacecraft to fly by Apophis, a big asteroid that will pass near Earth and generate huge scientific and public interest.
February 13, 2026 at 7:26 PM
Reposted by Riding With Robots
exploration.esa.int
📻 It's #WorldRadioDay, and Earth is calling.

🗣️ Students from all over the world can speak directly to astronauts on the International Space Station via radio for about 10 minutes at a time.
Infographic showing how the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station or ARISS programme works.
February 13, 2026 at 1:55 PM
ridingrobots.bsky.social
The hottest, brightest, and most massive singles in your region
stsci.edu Space Telescope Science Institute @stsci.edu · 3d
#NASAWebb uncovered the full population of brown dwarfs (objects more massive than Jupiter but smaller than stars) in star cluster Westerlund 2. Many of our Milky Way galaxy's hottest, brightest, and most massive stars also exist in this region.

Credit: ESA, NASA, CSA.
A cluster of stars inside a large nebula of gas and dust. The gas and dust are predominantly bright red and wispy, and are clumped along the left and bottom corners. Other clouds, deeper in the cluster behind many of the stars, appear pale pink toward center-right. The stars are concentrated in the top half of the image and are mostly small, bright white and eight-pointed. They cast blue light over the bulk of the scene. A few stars with very long spikes surrounding them lie in the foreground.
February 13, 2026 at 4:57 PM
Reposted by Riding With Robots
valklavans.bsky.social
February 13, 2026 at 4:50 PM
Reposted by Riding With Robots
jfallows.bsky.social
1) Great WSJ piece about Noem's diva/clown/Cruella show at DHS.

2) We spent lots of time in SD during/after her time as gov. Little residual home-state love.

3) WSJ at least tiptoes around elephant-in-room: Kristi-and-Corey saga.

4) Pilot/blanket story is classic.

www.wsj.com/politics/pol...
A Pilot Fired Over Kristi Noem’s Missing Blanket and the Constant Chaos Inside DHS
Secretary faces fire for confrontational immigration crackdown and self-promotional style; White House to wind down Minnesota operations.
www.wsj.com
February 13, 2026 at 4:17 PM
Reposted by Riding With Robots
andraste.fuckbgp.com
forgot the most important of the genre
fuck the moon @fuckthem00n fly me to the moon let me kick it's fucking ass let me show it what i learned in my moon jujitsu class
February 12, 2026 at 11:31 PM
Reposted by Riding With Robots
uahirise.bsky.social
HiPOD: Stacked!

Sedimentary layers are stacked one atop another in this view of Danielson Crater, north of Meridiani Planum. The deposits, that cover most of the crater floor, have been deeply eroded, exposing regular layers that resemble stair steps.

https://uahirise.org/hipod/ESP_089198_1885
Enhanced color cutout shows large, sedimentary layers that have a stair-step appearance within Danielson Crater on Mars. The scene is less than 1 km, under 1 mile across.
February 13, 2026 at 3:01 PM
Reposted by Riding With Robots
eliasisquith.blog
this is comically evil. brazenly anti-social. just absolute black-pilled nihilism. we will not have a republic, we will not be free, until we regulate these companies to the point where — at a bare minimum — they're too afraid to put stuff like this down on paper.

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/t...
Meta’s internal memo said the political tumult in the United States was good timing for the feature’s release. “We will launch during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns,” according to the document from Meta’s Reality Labs, which works on hardware including smart glasses.
February 13, 2026 at 2:54 PM