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Dr. Craig DeForest ☀️

@craig.deforest.org

1.7K followers 960 following 900 posts

Dad, mountain man, heliophysicist. I lead NASA’s PUNCH mission and direct a team at SwRI. I like science, space, communication, and humans. Lowering barriers to science and promoting open science are priorities. My personal account; my opinions.

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Dr. Craig DeForest ☀️ @craig.deforest.org · Nov 20

I do heliophysics professionally, and geek about many subjects on my own time. Knowledge is power — it's also fun to create, have, and share. I run a #heliophysics feed on BSky. Elsewhere I lead the PUNCH mission to observe the #corona and #solarwind. Ask me anything, I'll probably have an answer.

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Dr. Craig DeForest ☀️ @craig.deforest.org · 1d

A lot of things sort of suck right now. I was delighted to find out that, for under $40, you can now buy an instrument that will tell you, with digital precision, just how much things suck.

Provided you can attach a hose to those things.

www.amazon.com/Manometer-Pr...

A digital manometer can also tell you how much things suck, and also how badly things blow, depending on which hose you use.

Dr. Craig DeForest ☀️ @craig.deforest.org · 2d

What's all this fuss about solving for eigenmodes of mechanical systems? Gaussian elimination has been a solved problem since 1835. #math #dadjoke #illseemyselfoutnow

Image of the grave of mathematician Karl Friedrich Gauss, who is buried in the town of Göttingen, Germany

Dr. Craig DeForest ☀️ @craig.deforest.org · 4d

Quick update on the #heliophysics feed. We've had issues with AI spam coming from many related accounts, to prevent blocklisting. Fortunately, regexps work fine. I'm fixin' to transition us back from Skyfeed to the Graze servers. It should be pretty seamless. I'll post when it happens, though. ☀️

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Dr. Craig DeForest ☀️ @craig.deforest.org · 4d

Awesome! Thanks for tagging #heliophysics -- the feed picked up your post!

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Dr. Craig DeForest ☀️ @craig.deforest.org · 5d

Great milestone from the PUNCH SOC team this week -- as we continue refining our data, we've rolled out preliminary Level 3 data, with most of the solar F corona removed. Current data are "v0g"; expect version "v0h" in about two weeks. We'll reprocess everything when we reach v1. ☀️

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Dr. Craig DeForest ☀️ @craig.deforest.org · 5d

IIRC, it was nearly six years between when SOHO launched and its first X flare.

Dr. Craig DeForest ☀️ @craig.deforest.org · 6d

Reposting this with #spaceweather tag so the #heliophysics feed will pick it up.

SETI Institute @setiinstitute.bsky.social · 6d

Next #SETILive: Space Weather Alert
Tuesday, 7 October 2025, 2:30 pm PDT

Heliophysicist Dr. Becca Robinson joins host Simon Steel to explain what coronal holes are, how they form, and what their impacts mean for both our technology and our understanding of the Sun. 🧪 🔭

WATCH LIVE: buff.ly/P9Xk2M4

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Dr. Craig DeForest ☀️ @craig.deforest.org · 6d

David Hathaway and Lisa Upton just released an updated solar cycle prediction. In their words, it's "virtually unchanged since early 2022", an indicator that they're more or less getting it right with empirical prediction. Looks like we're *just* past maximum in the current cycle. ☀️🔭🧪🚀

A plot of the Hathaway/Upton solar cycle prediction and measured sunspot numbers, with a backdrop of the Sun as seen in X-rays by the Yohkoh spacecraft in the late 20th Century. We appear to have (just) passed solar maximum.

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Dr. Craig DeForest ☀️ @craig.deforest.org · 7d

Since you mentioned #SpaceWeather, your post got picked up by the #heliophysics feed! Nice to see an active ham here. If you'd like to follow solar activity and geomagnetic storms, you might like to pin the feed. Cheers!

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Dr. Craig DeForest ☀️ @craig.deforest.org · 8d

(BTW, all PUNCH data are made available automatically via our website as photometric images in standard scientific-imaging (FITS) format, and are available for anyone to download and use -- even now.)

PUNCH: Data Access

All PUNCH data are fully open to the community for use with no restrictions. However, we request that users cite all of the data and tools that they used, along with the relevant reference papers.

punch.space.swri.edu

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Dr. Craig DeForest ☀️ @craig.deforest.org · 8d

PUNCH has tracked Comet 2025/SWAN continuously at 4 minute cadence since early Aug, and 3I/Atlas continuously since 21-Sep. With the U.S. govt. shut down, I've been asked not to publish PUNCH imagery of 3I/Atlas. Instead, here's a tracked image from just before it entered our FOV. ☀️🔭🛰️🚀

A tracked image shows 3I/Atlas's location on 20-Sep-2025 as seen by the PUNCH mission. Axes and title indicate right ascension, declination, and UTC timestamp, indicating this is an astronomical image. The comet was then just outside the PUNCH field of view, so most of the image is dark, with a small circle at the center marking the location of the comet. tiny bit of actual PUNCH data appears at the upper right of the image. The blackness reminds us that the U.S. government is shut down as of today (1-Oct-2025).

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Dr. Craig DeForest ☀️ @craig.deforest.org · 8d

Welcome to Bsky!

Since you mentioned space weather, your post got picked up by the #heliophysics feed! If you actually want to keep up to date on solar activity and space weather, you might like to pin and like the feed.

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Dr. Craig DeForest ☀️ @craig.deforest.org · 9d

Pure coincidence.

CMEs hit #comets all the time, we just don't pay much attention. We've only recently been able to even see them. (Link to Vourlidas et al. 2007, who observed a disconnection in Encke's tail, with the first instrument capable of seeing one.) iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...

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Dr. Craig DeForest ☀️ @craig.deforest.org · 9d

Yes! Right now we're working on suppressing the starfield enough to make 3I clear in a movie, but it's definitely present in the data. We get polarized triplets once each 4 min, and clear (unpolarized) images once every 8 min. Once the clears are ready, we'll work on the polarimetry also.

Dr. Craig DeForest ☀️ @craig.deforest.org · 10d

Today I was reminded of the Isle of Lesbos and their great contribution to the architecture of western civilization. For over 1,000 years the #Lesbian #Rule was part of every Mason's training. Now considered obsolete – but its descendants are still relevant today. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesbian...)

Lesbian rule - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Dr. Craig DeForest ☀️ @craig.deforest.org · 10d

Our limit in Individual images is close to 12th magnitude (though we might be able to get another magnitude based on SNR measurements on orbit). At that level, our resolution (2’-2.5‘) limits detection in stills since the sky is so crowded. We will post movies shortly.

Dr. Craig DeForest ☀️ @craig.deforest.org · 12d

Comet 3I/Atlas is a fun challenge for PUNCH. We're very sensitive, though not a "telescope" (~2.5' resolution: basically naked-eye). At mag 12, the sky is *very* crowded. But we can see Atlas and SWAN in nearly-raw data. We're imaging at 4 minute cadence 24/7; FOV is 90° centered on the Sun. 🧪🔭🛰️☀️

A starfield from the PUNCH mission shows two comets: SWAN and the interstellar comet Atlas.

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Dr. Craig DeForest ☀️ @craig.deforest.org · 13d

Today I've been lucky to attend [remotely] the first Space Weather Observations summit, hosted by NOAA. Lots of great talks on how we (USA) are protecting ourselves from solar activity and "space storms". The SWFO launch yesterday is part of that activity. www.nesdis.noaa.gov/events/space... ☀️🛰️

Space Weather Observations (SWO) Summit 2025

The 2025 Office of Space Weather Observations (SWO) Summit is designed as a collaborative workshop for the SWO team and partners to discuss current and planned projects, particularly focusing on the e...

www.nesdis.noaa.gov

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Dr. Craig DeForest ☀️ @craig.deforest.org · 13d

Welcome, glad to have you here, fellow pilgrim! You can find out more about the Sun on the #heliophysics feed, which picked up your post based on its keywords. bsky.app/profile/did:...

Dr. Craig DeForest ☀️ @craig.deforest.org · 13d

Yes, it is. But the article at sustainability-times is pure hyperbole and lies. They mention APJL and I *think* they're referring to this article. The solar wind is not breaking all records. I know the authors (Marco and Jamie) personally, they're not "terrified". iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...

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Dr. Craig DeForest ☀️ @craig.deforest.org · 13d

This is not real.

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Dr. Craig DeForest ☀️ @craig.deforest.org · 14d

Very nice to see ngGONG move forward! GONG is a decades-old global instrument on which the Sun never sets, to observe the Sun around the clock. It provides very important continuous monitoring of space weather and allows us to image the interior of the star itself. ☀️

NSO Receives Funding from NSF to Design the Next-Generation Solar Observing Network to Advance Solar Science and Space Weather Forecasting - NSO - National Solar Observatory

The U. S. NSF National Solar Observatory will design a Next-Generation Ground-based Solar Observing Network (ngGONG) advancing space-weather forecasting.

nso.edu

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Dr. Craig DeForest ☀️ @craig.deforest.org · 15d

That is what coronagraphs *really* observe most of the time. The coronal images we see online have a steady “glare” component removed. The glare is a combination of instrument stray light and solar system dust. Not sure how this one failed to get processed.

Dr. Craig DeForest ☀️ @craig.deforest.org · 15d

This is complete BS. And I should know.

Dr. Craig DeForest ☀️ @craig.deforest.org · 17d

In order to view the #solarwind, PUNCH also captures literally everything in the sky that is within 45° of the Sun. When Comet 2025 R2 (SWAN) was announced, we looked for it in the data, and there it was! Here's a blog post about it. ☀️🛰️🔭🧪
whtwnd.com/punch-missio...

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