Create accountLogin

Recent searches

No recent searches

Search options

Only available when logged in.
shakedown.social is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
A community for live music fans with roots in the jam scene. Shakedown Social is run by a team of volunteers (led by @clifff and @sethadam1) and funded by donations.

Administered by:

Server stats:

257
active users

shakedown.social: AboutStatusProfiles directoryPrivacy policy

Mastodon: AboutGet the appKeyboard shortcutsView source codev4.3.7

#exoplanet

6 posts6 participants2 posts today
Public
Benjamin Simpson
On Exoplanet 34476, when the sun is setting, the soft mournful whale-like cries of the Bandi float over the hills and valleys. Because this planet is small, and the gravity is only half that of earth, the Bandi can look like they are floating despite having the mass of an elephant. Sometimes when I think of all the horror and hate of the world, I can look at this photo, remember that moment, that feeling of calm and hope, and I think it might be ok. Not always, but sometimes.

#scifi #exoplanet #nature #insect #macro
Close view of a bug in contrasty lighting sitting on the edge of a green and purple budding flower. The insect looks like a thick segmented larvae with a hard shell. It is soft purple and randomly spotted orange. It could be on a different planet, be the size of an elephant and create mournful cries. Or it could be a tiny bug on a flower we never notice.
#macro
Public
Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research

The #PLATO mission has reached an important milestone: The optical bench with all 26 cameras as been assembled. Read more here: www.mps.mpg.de/plato-fully-... #PLATODataCenter #exoplanet @uni-goettingen.de

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:e2ernzka7reuaiorc5v2tgsr/post/3lst7ybxko22z

PLATO Fully Equipped with Came...

www.mps.mpg.dePLATO Fully Equipped with Cameras to Search for Habitable WorldsThe European exoplanet mission PLATO, which will be launched into space at the end of next year, has reached an important milestone. The optical bench with its 26 cameras has now been assembled in the clean rooms of the aerospace company OHB System AG in Oberpfaffenhofen (Germany). The cameras are the eyes of the mission. They will enable PLATO to peer at a total of a quarter of a million stars in the Milky Way and detect exoplanets in the stars’ brightness fluctuations. A key part of the mission's scientific ground segment, the PLATO Data Center (PDC), is currently being set up at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Göttingen (Germany). The PDC will process the flood of data delivered by PLATO's 26 cameras to deliver the PLATO science data products. The University of Göttingen is also contributing as a mission consortium member. The overall responsibility of the PLATO mission is under the Institute of Space Research at the German Aerospace Center (DLR).
Public
jbz

🔭 The James Webb Space Telescope Reveals Its First Direct Image Discovery of an #Exoplanet

｢ Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope (#JWST) have identified a faint source of infrared light in a disk of debris surrounding a young star called TWA 7, approximately 111 light-years away from Earth. The source, they say, is probably an exoplanet. If confirmed, it would mark the telescope’s first direct discovery of a planet outside our solar system ｣

smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/

Public
Benjamin Simpson
Attacked!
Attacked! I say!
I was most innocently walking through a forest on Exoplanet 55346 when a giant carnivorous Duchessfoul surprised me! Boy was I shaking! But luckily I was carrying my camera flash, which startled it’s night vision, allowing me to escape into a small cave. Their young like to eat the prey while still squirming!
I needed a Zarni and Tonic that night, I must say.

#ladybird #ladybug #scifi #exoplanet #insect #nature #macro
Ladybird, or Ladybug, depending on which side of the Atlantic. Detail view of sitting on a brown dying flower. Black legs, black face and red dotted back. The view is straight on a looks like it could be a huge monster coming to eat me! Or a cute little bug. Depending on your mood.
#macro
Public
Mikko Tuomi

Cassini’s observations of #Titan’s #atmosphere are exemplary benchmarks for #exoplanet atmospheric studies.

Multiple hydrocarbons can be “retrieved” depending on the selections made ahead of a retrieval but the estimates of parameters such as the abundance of key absorbers like methane can be biased by a factor of three.

This shows that the implicit molecular detections made pre-retrieval to avoid retrieving for hundreds of molecules at a time can bias a large range of parameters.

Molecules may have many lookalikes, so essentially spectral identification tends to yield what scientists are looking for.

#astrobiology #astronomy
astrobiology.com/2025/06/the-d

Molecules may have many lookalikes. Overview of the absorption cross sections for hydrocarbons taken from PNNL (Sharpe et al. 2004) and included in HITRAN2024 database (Hargreaves et al. 2025). The y-axis provides the logarithm of intensity, with each absorption cross section offset for display purposes. A minimum intensity of 1.0×10−21 cm2 /molecule has been applied for each molecule.
Continued thread
Public
Mikko Tuomi

Meanwhile, another paper: "A systematic search for trace molecules in #exoplanet K2-18 b".

The paper claims: "We find three molecules, including #DMS, which appear promising across the datasets considered.

The two molecules besides DMS are diethyl sulfide and methyl acrylonitrile, which are more complex than DMS, biogenic on Earth, and have no significant sources known beyond Earth."

And I am so sorry, but I don't believe any of this because Madhusudhan is a co-author of the paper.

#exoplanets #astronomy
astrobiology.com/2025/05/a-sys

Astrobiology · A Systematic Search for Trace Molecules in Exoplanet K2-18 b - AstrobiologyThe first transmission spectrum of the habitable-zone sub-Neptune K2-18 b with JWST has opened a new avenue for atmospheric characterisation of temperate low-mass exoplanets.
Public
Mikko Tuomi

The recent claims of #biosignature detection in the atmosphere of #exoplanet K2-18b does not convince anyone.

A new paper femonstrates that other non-biological interpretations can also explain the data.

Reanalysing the dataset used in the original biosignature detection paper through multiple other models reveals good fits for models that abiological processes could entirely explain.

One particular model that included the hydrocarbon propyne fit the data better than the model containing DMS and its cousin, dimethyl disulfide (DMDS), which was interpreted as biosignature detection April.

#astronomy #exoplanets
phys.org/news/2025-05-ways-atm

phys.orgThere are many ways to interpret the atmosphere of K2-18bExtraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. That truism, now known as the "Sagan standard" after science communicator Carl Sagan, has been around in some form since David Hume first published it in the 1740s. But, with modern-day data collection, sometimes even extraordinary evidence isn't enough—it's how you interpret it.
Public
Mikko Tuomi

Much smaller than gas-giants and typically cooler than hot Jupiters, sub-Neptunes were extremely challenging to observe before the launch of #JWST.

Though they appear to be the most common type of #exoplanet in our galaxy, you won’t find them in our solar system.

Astronomers are trying to understand how these planets formed and evolved, why they are so common, and why they don’t orbit our Sun.

#astronomers #exoplanets
webbtelescope.org/contents/new

ExploreLive feeds
About