David Wilson
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astrodave2.bsky.social
David Wilson
@astrodave2.bsky.social
900 followers 390 following 350 posts
Astronomer at CU Boulder. I look at small stars with space telescopes. In my spare time I run medium distances, build and paint various tiny plastic people and visit old ships. He/Him
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Reposted by David Wilson
chanda.blacksky.app
Double supernova 🤩

🔭

www.eso.org/public/image...
Lots of stars and at center a roughly circular form that is orange (hydrogen)on the outside and blue (calcium) on the inside, the blue looking like paint was splashed
November 1, 2025 at 2:00 PM
Reposted by David Wilson
astrokat.bsky.social
Are you a grad student interested in writing for Astrobites, or do you know one? We're recruiting! Apply by November 26 :)

astrobites.org/2025/10/31/a...
Apply to Write for Astrobites 2025!
Love astronomy, astrophysics, and science communication? Come join the Astrobites team! Applications due November 26th.
astrobites.org
October 31, 2025 at 6:40 PM
Reposted by David Wilson
merrdiff.bsky.social
Driving tomorrow?

SLOW DOWN

Kids and pedestrians deserve to live
ryanwithboulder.bsky.social Ryan Schuchard @ryanwithboulder.bsky.social · 11d
Your annual reminder that US streets and vehicles are generally not designed to keep pedestrians, especially small ones, safe.

So wonderful Halloween is the most likely day you’ll kill a child with your car, and someone will kill a child you care about with theirs.

www.vox.com/future-perfe...
October 31, 2025 at 2:46 AM
astrodave2.bsky.social
Owl on a pole #birds
A brown owl on a white pole against a pale blue sky, looking towards a tree on the right
October 31, 2025 at 1:15 AM
astrodave2.bsky.social
This talk brought to you by Sad Trombone Noises 🔭
A slide showing a light curve of a star. The slide title reads "Then nothing happened". The light curve shows the brightness over time of the nova T CrB in 1946 (purple)and over the last year (blue). Notably missing from the current light curve is the expected outburst (any day now?).
October 27, 2025 at 7:43 PM
Reposted by David Wilson
maggiebeth.space
Who robbed the Louvre? Right answers only …
October 20, 2025 at 3:14 AM
Reposted by David Wilson
andrasgaspar.bsky.social
So, we are tracking well above Cycle 4. Figure by @mpudoka.bsky.social and Yongda Zhu. 🔭
Figure showing the proposal counts for Cycle 5, tracking above Cycle 4 by a few hundred.
October 15, 2025 at 8:16 PM
astrodave2.bsky.social
"Goodwick" is the simple answer
astrodave2.bsky.social David Wilson @astrodave2.bsky.social · Oct 8
Every place name in the entire country
merriam-webster.com Merriam-Webster @merriam-webster.com · Oct 8
What’s the word where you’re from that, when pronounced exactly as it looks, identifies a tourist immediately?
October 8, 2025 at 9:22 PM
astrodave2.bsky.social
Every place name in the entire country
merriam-webster.com Merriam-Webster @merriam-webster.com · Oct 8
What’s the word where you’re from that, when pronounced exactly as it looks, identifies a tourist immediately?
October 8, 2025 at 9:01 PM
Reposted by David Wilson
mcnees.bsky.social
Astronomer Ejnar Hertzsprung was born #OTD in 1873. 🧪 🔭

H-R diagram:

🔵 🟦 🟥
🔵 🟧
⚪️ 🟨
⚪️
🟡🟡
⚬ ⚬ 🟠🟠
⚬ ⚬ ⚬ 🔴
⚬ 🔴
⚫️
October 8, 2025 at 5:55 PM
Reposted by David Wilson
hogg.bsky.social
Excellent piece by @briles34.bsky.social on writing in the discipline. It’s depressing that we think that theoretical physics expertise is not just more important but INFINITELY more important than writing to… *writing* PhD dissertations (on any subfield of astro, say). arxiv.org/abs/2510.03493
Surveying the State of Writing Education in Physics and Astronomy
Writing is a critical skill for modern science, enabling collaboration, scientific discourse, public outreach, and more. Accordingly, it is important to consider how physicists and astronomers are tra...
arxiv.org
October 7, 2025 at 10:24 AM
Reposted by David Wilson
mcnees.bsky.social
VAR!

In the early morning hours #OTD in 1923, Edwin Hubble took a photo plate of M31 that showed a Cepheid variable star.

Using Henrietta Swan Leavitt’s distance-luminosity relationship, Hubble concluded that M31 is another galaxy outside the Milky Way. 🧪 🔭 ⚛️

Image: Carnegie Observatories
Photo plate of Hubble's famous "VAR!" discovery. This is a photonegative plate of an image of the Andromeda Galaxy, with several small annotations made in grease pencil. One of them was previously marked "N" for "nova," but the N has been crossed out and replaced with an excited "VAR!" to indicate a Cepheid Variable.
October 6, 2025 at 2:58 PM
astrodave2.bsky.social
Wow this star's got places to be (2006 v. this morning) 🔭
September 24, 2025 at 5:55 PM
Reposted by David Wilson
nplinnspace.bsky.social
We *absolutely* should celebrate it. Do your part by enjoying the 200+ page masterpiece in its entirety on ADS! ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1925PhDT... 🔭

Special shoutout to Figure 2, an incredible piece of art that I want on my wall (and suspect could even make an excellent tattoo if executed well?)
Figure caption: Figure 2. The hydrogen atom. The ten innermost orbits possible for the single electron of the atom of hydrogen are diagrammatically represented. All possible quantum transitions are included as follows: — short dashes, Lyman series, terminating at a 1-quantum orbit; full lines, Balmer series, terminating at a 2-quantum orbit; long dashes, Paschen series, terminating at a 3-quantum orbit. Transfers are only possible between orbits with azimuthal quantum numbers differing by ±1.
September 23, 2025 at 8:03 PM
Reposted by David Wilson
nsousanis.bsky.social
Finished spread! The lives of different types of stars, the various ways they give back all they had taken in changed, and the new forms they give rise to! This took me some time to say the least! It's a lively place out there! On to the next spread (finale of this chapter!!)
#Nostos #Unflattening 2
a spread for a comics page, black background, with white panel borders and most the drawings white on black. upper left of the spread, a swirl of the start of a star - emanating out from it in radiating arms, a number of different paths in brick-like interconnected panel border shapes. First radiating down and to the left the life of a brown dwarf - which never quite becomes a start. the next branch goes mostly down - a red dwarf which burns longer than the current life of the universe, but the path forks near the bottom, because some of these alternately flare up during their life. the next path is a dwarf star - much like our own - which is stable until it puffs up late in its life, then burst off much of its material to become a white dwarf. Here the path forks - in one branch it lives on as a white dwarf and nebula, in the other, when it has a partner star, it steals material from it and eventually becomes a type 1A supernova. Overlaid a bit on this set of paths and the red dwarf is an example of a binary star system and a six star system. Emanating from the middle of these paths from upper left and going across the spine of the book to the lower right, is a path filled with galaxies - the path loses its border in the middle showing a collection of galaxies. Upper right path is a blue super giant as we move right it goes nova becoming in one forking path a black hole, in another a spinning neutron star - and that forks to either continue or if paired, collide to go supernova and create heavy elements. Middle of right side, molecules formed by chemistry with these atoms forged in stars. new swirls form, and then we see another generation of stars in a grid set of panels and the Planets! formed around them. This is a generational cycle and the text reflects that
September 20, 2025 at 4:23 PM
astrodave2.bsky.social
Nope (2022)
Picture of trees, mountains and sky through a window. There is a large oval cloud in the sky.
September 19, 2025 at 6:06 PM
astrodave2.bsky.social
That's the faint sound of the word "almost" being changed to "over" in hundreds of overleaf drafts
aussiastronomer.bsky.social Dr. Jessie Christiansen @aussiastronomer.bsky.social · Sep 17
Sometimes 2025 just feels like a lot, and you need an excuse to celebrate your fabulous team (and the whole exoplanet community!) reaching a new milestone…

Happy 6,000 Confirmed Exoplanets Day, everybody!!!!

(You may recognize the narrator of the video at the link! 🫣)

www.nasa.gov/universe/exo...
A close-up photo of a box of cupcakes with gold candles spelling out ‘6000’. A group of smiling people - scientists, engineers, data analysts and writers - standing behind a table of goodies.
September 17, 2025 at 9:02 PM
Reposted by David Wilson
aussiastronomer.bsky.social
Sometimes 2025 just feels like a lot, and you need an excuse to celebrate your fabulous team (and the whole exoplanet community!) reaching a new milestone…

Happy 6,000 Confirmed Exoplanets Day, everybody!!!!

(You may recognize the narrator of the video at the link! 🫣)

www.nasa.gov/universe/exo...
A close-up photo of a box of cupcakes with gold candles spelling out ‘6000’. A group of smiling people - scientists, engineers, data analysts and writers - standing behind a table of goodies.
September 17, 2025 at 6:22 PM
Reposted by David Wilson
mattkenworthy.bsky.social
My periodic reminder for #astrosci #astrodon #exoplanets Early Career Researchers to please, please, please have a simple web site with your current email address on it - rationale here: kenworthy.space/advice/
A pen sketch of a web page for an astronomer, showing name, email, optional phone number, and professional contact details, with a one sentence summary of their research and an ADS link.
September 12, 2025 at 4:22 AM
Reposted by David Wilson
goldwagnathan.bsky.social
381. Not one of the most famous Discworld books but I think quietly one of the best; a genuinely heartbreaking story about the value of labor and self-worth that's also a hilarious and thrilling detective story that also treats its fantastical/supernatural ideas with complete seriousness.
September 10, 2025 at 2:21 AM
Reposted by David Wilson
cosmicrami.com
"Astronomers have detected an explosion of gamma rays that repeated several times over the course of a day"

um .... wot?! They're repeating now?!
eso.org ESO @eso.org · Sep 9
Astronomers spot mysterious gamma-ray explosion, unlike any detected before! 💥

Our VLT revealed that its source lies outside our galaxy. Yet its cause is still unknown 🤔 Read more: https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso2514/

🔭 🧪 ☄️
#extragalactic
#highenergyastro
September 9, 2025 at 1:13 PM
astrodave2.bsky.social
Paper submitted! Quite proud of this one, the plots are pretty 🔭
Two panels showing spectra of stars in different colors, compared with the Sun in black.
September 5, 2025 at 9:49 PM
Reposted by David Wilson
setiinstitute.bsky.social
#PPOD: That bright speck isn't a star – it's Earth! And the dot above it is the Moon. The Psyche mission captured this image from 290 million kilometers away while calibrating its cameras. The spacecraft is en route to a metal-rich asteroid between Mars and Jupiter. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU 🧪 🔭
Annotated images. The main image shows a bright spot labeled as Earth with a smaller dot above it that is the Moon (not labeled). Four stars in the constellation Aries are also labeled -- 43 Ari, 37 Ari, 36 Ari, and AM Ari. Inset: Zoomed in image of the Earth and Moon, both labeled.
August 25, 2025 at 3:01 PM
astrodave2.bsky.social
I really like this ship, especially how small it is in contrast to the general trend of every ship being gigantic in 21st century sci-fi
gaghyogi49.bsky.social Jörg Hillebrand @gaghyogi49.bsky.social · Aug 15
#StarTrekSNW's "The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail" features some beautiful shots of the Bellerophon class USS Farragut. Here are a few from the first shot of the ship in the episode. :-)
August 15, 2025 at 6:05 PM
Reposted by David Wilson
thomasthecat.bsky.social
I'm waiting!
A parody of the opening titles to the film MASTER & COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD. The text reads: April - 2373. Dukat is Master of the Alpha Quadrant. Only the Federation Starfleet stands before him. Star Systems are now Battlefields. A parody of the opening titles to the film MASTER & COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD. The background is an image of the Bajoran Wormhole from STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE. Title reads: EMISSARY AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORMHOLE A parody of the opening titles to the film MASTER & COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD. The image shows the USS Defiant flying high above the surface of a planet. Captions read USS Defiant. 6 Guns. 50 Souls. Bajor Sector, ALPHA QUADRANT A parody of the opening titles to the film MASTER & COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD. The USS Defiant is flying above the surface of a planet. The text reads: ADMIRALTY ORDERS To Capt. B. Sisko. "Intercept Cardassian Cruiser VETAR en route to Romulus INTENT ON CARRYING THE WAR INTO THAT SYSTEM ...Destroy, Scuttle, or take her a Prize."
August 15, 2025 at 3:57 PM