Phil Plait+

Hey folks! There's an alllllmost total lunar eclipse this Thursday night, and it

Hey folks! There's an alllllmost total lunar eclipse this Thursday night, and it's visible to all of America. I wrote about it in today's newsletter, and put that article above the fold so everyone can see it. https://badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/watch-the-nearly-total-lunar-eclipse-thursday-night

NASA's LRO spacecraft gets a before-and-after shot of the crater carved out when

NASA's LRO spacecraft gets a before-and-after shot of the crater carved out when SpaceX littered the moon with a Falcon 9 rocket impact. Also: is there liquid still flowing under Pluto's surface? https://badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/before-and-after-spacex-rocket-lunar-impact-crater-spotted-from-orbit

Every time a new Earth-sized planet is found, I have to pinch the bridge of my n

Every time a new Earth-sized planet is found, I have to pinch the bridge of my nose and take a moment before reading the headlines. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earth-like-exoplanets-may-exist-but-we-dont-know-of-any-yet/

The spacecraft that was hoped to boost Swift to a higher orbit has failed, and n

The spacecraft that was hoped to boost Swift to a higher orbit has failed, and now the gamma-ray hunting space observatory is doomed to burn up in Earth's atmosphere later this year. Swift's an AMAZING mission, and I'm really sad to see it go. https://badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/the-swift-spacecraft-reboost-mission-has-failed

In today's newsletter: pop stars and xkcd and community science, though probably

In today's newsletter: pop stars and xkcd and community science, though probably not how you're thinking. https://badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/pop-stars-and-community-science-not-what-you-think

Orange you glad I'm here to point out how grocery stores use deceptive optical i

Orange you glad I'm here to point out how grocery stores use deceptive optical illusions to get you to buy produce? https://badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/an-optical-illusion-that-s-ripe-for-the-picking

So now we're pretty sure Betelgeuse has a binary companion, another star orbitin

So now we're pretty sure Betelgeuse has a binary companion, another star orbiting it. What happens to the star when Betelgeuse blows up? Nothing good, though weirdly it will almost certainly survive the hellish ordeal. I wrote this! https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/when-will-betelgeuse-go-supernova/

I do astronomy stuff *all the time* and even I find it irritating sometimes. The

I do astronomy stuff *all the time* and even I find it irritating sometimes. The pretty pictures really help though. https://badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/astronomy-can-be-annoying-sometimes Plus: Astronomers see Pluto's air thinning as it gets farther from the sun.

The Milky Way, its arms wide https://badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/echoes-of-light-

The Milky Way, its arms wide https://badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/echoes-of-light-show-our-galaxy-s-spiral-arms-are-more-wide-flung-than-we-thought [Premium subbies only today. But you can be one! It's only 6 bucks a month, or 60 for a year! Sign up at the link above]

Also: how to watch the Perseid meteor shower at its peak Wednesday night! This i

Also: how to watch the Perseid meteor shower at its peak Wednesday night! This issue of my newsletter is free! Just like every Monday. You should sign up. For free. Free. https://badastronomy.beehiiv.com/subscribe

In a game of cosmic will-they-or-won't-they, in a few billion years the sun will

In a game of cosmic will-they-or-won't-they, in a few billion years the sun will swell up into a red giant and maybe eat Earth. Or maybe not. The latest is "not", but that keeps changing. https://badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/will-the-dying-sun-eat-earth-or-not

I write a column for Scientific American every Friday! You can keep up by going

I write a column for Scientific American every Friday! You can keep up by going to my author page: https://www.scientificamerican.com/author/phil-plait/

The actual number, to be honest, didn't surprise me *too* much because I have at

The actual number, to be honest, didn't surprise me *too* much because I have at least a somewhat passing familiarity with exponential growth. But the number of folds it takes to stretch ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE OBSERVABLE UNIVERSE? Yeah. That one shocked me.

Quick quiz! When you fold a piece of paper in half it gets thicker, right? Well,

Quick quiz! When you fold a piece of paper in half it gets thicker, right? Well, how many times do you think you'd have to fold one in half until it could reach the moon? Guess! Got a number? Find out if you're right in this here article I wrote: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-many-paper-folds-would-get-you-to-the-moon/

Paid subbies to my newsletter can read today about two VERY cool images of Earth

Paid subbies to my newsletter can read today about two VERY cool images of Earth and the moon taken by a receding Mars spacecraft! Actually, it's warm, not cool. https://badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/earth-and-moon-glow-in-the-heat-of-infrared

Why is so little of the universe antimatter? We don't know. Scientists keep look

Why is so little of the universe antimatter? We don't know. Scientists keep looking for ANY differences (besides the obvious) between matter and antimatter, but keep coming up empty. A new experiment… again shows no difference. It's weird. https://badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/psyche-s-mars-and-another-test-to-see-why-antimatter-is-different-than-matter

Folks, start your telescopes: A SpaceX upper stage booster will impact the moon

Folks, start your telescopes: A SpaceX upper stage booster will impact the moon on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning! It *might* be visible from Earth via telescopes, though it's not clear how bright it will be. https://badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/spacex-rocket-booster-will-hit-the-moon-on-wednesday

Moonabunga! https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-surf-on-saturns-mo

Moonabunga! https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-surf-on-saturns-moon-titan/ [This was super fun to research and write]

Astronomers have almost certainly directly seen a smaller (but still massive!) c

Astronomers have almost certainly directly seen a smaller (but still massive!) companion star to Betelgeuse, making Big B a binary system! This is A Big Deal, and premium subscribers to my newsletter can read all about it: https://badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/astronomers-almost-certainly-find-a-companion-star-of-betelgeuse

ANOTHER spectacular JWST image, this time of an active galaxy, which means it ha

ANOTHER spectacular JWST image, this time of an active galaxy, which means it has a supermassive black hole gobbling down matter at a furious rate. Also, it's numerically appropriate! https://badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/another-spectacular-jwst-image-of-a-nearby-spiral-galaxy

I have an *exceptional* JWST image today for you of a young star struggling to b

I have an *exceptional* JWST image today for you of a young star struggling to be born. https://badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/jwst-takes-a-peek-at-a-star-being-born Bonus: very cool educational emission line periodic table posters

What am *I* personally excited about for the Vera Rubin Observatory's phenomenal

What am *I* personally excited about for the Vera Rubin Observatory's phenomenally immense LSST sky survey? Oh my, lots of things. Lots. Which is good, because there will be TENS OF MILLIONS of things to choose from. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-rubin-observatorys-greatest-legacy-will-be-this-movie-of-the-sky/ [I wrote this!]

Today's BAN (Issue #1066!) tackles the Battle of Hastings and, for a wide enough

Today's BAN (Issue #1066!) tackles the Battle of Hastings and, for a wide enough range of definitions, the impact of a comet on it. https://badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/a-planet-is-bigger-and-too-close-to-its-host-star [Paid subscribers only issue, and assume I put some sort of self-promotional subscription gag here]

When the search for aliens turns up a very specific type of sandwich. https://ba

When the search for aliens turns up a very specific type of sandwich. https://badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/a-search-for-technologically-advanced-aliens-instead-finds-hot-dogs [For paid subscribers to my newsletter, which you can be too. I mean a subscriber, not a newsletter.]

A black hole for Omega Centauri! Astronomers have finally found their first stel

A black hole for Omega Centauri! Astronomers have finally found their first stellar mass black hole in the ridiculously spectacular star cluster… but there could be *ten thousand* more still waiting to be discovered. https://badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/a-black-hole-finally-found-in-omega-centauri

Next month there will be a total solar eclipse, lasting for about two minutes an

Next month there will be a total solar eclipse, lasting for about two minutes and change. But… can you make one last longer? Yup. But it takes a bit of planning. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/whats-the-longest-total-solar-eclipse/ A thing I wrote!

The purloined planet: Astronomers find a third planet around the nearby very you

The purloined planet: Astronomers find a third planet around the nearby very young star Beta Pictoris… and it was hiding in plain sight for over a decade! [with amazing video of the planet's orbital motion] https://badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/a-third-planet-for-the-nearby-star-beta-pictoris

NASA head Jared Isaacman took an Independence Day joyride in a private fighter j

NASA head Jared Isaacman took an Independence Day joyride in a private fighter jet despite FAA warning, and I Have Thoughts. https://badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/nasa-leader-ignores-safety-rules-to-joy-ride-in-a-fighter-jet-over-dc-and-astronomers-find-milky-way Also: Astronomers finally find the long-sought wind of subatomic particles from the Milky Way central black hole!

Astronomers turned to public crowdsourcing to help them find brown dwarfs in spa

Astronomers turned to public crowdsourcing to help them find brown dwarfs in space. It, um, worked. REALLY well. https://badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/citizen-scientists-find-over-3-000-nearby-brown-dwarfs

With a total eclipse coming up next month, I wondered: do other planets have tot

With a total eclipse coming up next month, I wondered: do other planets have total eclipses too? So I did the math… and the answer is, surprisingly, yes! But ours are still way cooler. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-earth-the-only-planet-with-total-solar-eclipses/

And HEY: There is just one more day left on my subscription sale of just $45 for

And HEY: There is just one more day left on my subscription sale of just $45 for a year! Sign up here, if you so desire: https://badastronomy.beehiiv.com/subscribe

Two different space missions from Japan and China have seen two more asteroids u

Two different space missions from Japan and China have seen two more asteroids up very close, and they are both super weird. As usual. Meet Torifune and Kamo'oalewa: https://badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/two-more-asteroids-seen-up-close

Premium subscribers to my newsletter can read about an amazing horde of *31* ext

Premium subscribers to my newsletter can read about an amazing horde of *31* extremely distant quasars found by the Euclid space telescope, two of which are record breakers! https://badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/31-ancient-quasars-found-showing-us-what-the-baby-universe-was-like

Happy aphelion! At 1:30 p.m. Eastern US time today the Earth will be farthest fr

Happy aphelion! At 1:30 p.m. Eastern US time today the Earth will be farthest from the sun as it will be all year. To celebrate, I'm taking 25% off annual subscriptions to my newsletter! https://badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/aphelion-day-and-a-subscription-sale Also: an exoplanet was discovered using relativity. Whoa.

Right now, the moon is receding from Earth at a rate of about 4 cm/yr, roughly t

Right now, the moon is receding from Earth at a rate of about 4 cm/yr, roughly the same speed your fingernails grow. Not much, but over billions of years what will happen to it? What is the fate of our moon? It's probably not what you think. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-will-happen-to-the-moon-in-the-far-future/

… because it's a 1.7 BILLION pixel file weighing in at 9.4 gigabytes! So, yeah,

… because it's a 1.7 BILLION pixel file weighing in at 9.4 gigabytes! So, yeah, a bit of data there. But it's not just the cool image I talk about in this issue of BAN, it's how multiple images make the data much nicer. It's a question of photons, noise, and square roots. Y'know: nerdery.

WOOHOO! The immense Vera Rubin sky survey has begun! And while the first image m

WOOHOO! The immense Vera Rubin sky survey has begun! And while the first image may not look like much at first glance, you can go deeper, and deeper, and DEEPER into it. Assuming your internet connection can handle it… https://badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/the-immense-vera-c-rubin-sky-survey-has-begun

Sometimes, things we see in the sky aren't what we think they are. Sometimes tho

Sometimes, things we see in the sky aren't what we think they are. Sometimes those mistakes are funny. Sometimes they interfere with your love life. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cosmic-imposters-show-astronomers-sometimes-get-things-hilariously-wrong/

Premium subbies to my BA newsletter can read about a weird little galaxy called

Premium subbies to my BA newsletter can read about a weird little galaxy called NGC 1052-DF9 that apparently has no dark matter. But it gets weirder: there are two other wee galaxies nearby that don't have any, either…and they're all on a line in space. https://badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/another-tiny-galaxy-found-without-dark-matter

Are you getting tired of STUNNING JWST images? I'm not. Here's an amazing new on

Are you getting tired of STUNNING JWST images? I'm not. Here's an amazing new one: M82, the not-exploding Cigar Galaxy. As usual, I don't just have the gorgeous pic, I also explain the science behind it. https://badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/another-jwst-jaw-dropper-a-galaxy-that-looks-like-it-s-exploding-but-is-actually-doing-the-opposite

Wolf Rayet Apep Visualization

3D animated rotation of the structure of the bizarre star system called Apep, where two stars orbit each other and blast out a wind of dust. A third star carves a hole in the dust that becomes apparent in as the system rotates in the animation. The oriingal animation and more details can be found at https://science.nasa.gov/missions/webb/webb-first-to-show-4-dust-shells-spiraling-apep-limits-long-orbit/ (CRedit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Simulation: Yinuo Han (Caltech), Ryan White (Macquarie University); Visualization: Christian Nieves (STScI); Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)).

A fun morning calling the insurance company

I spent all morning trying to find out why the insurance company canceled my mail-in prescription order. You will never guess to whom they transferred my call at one point. Never let MC Escher design your phone tree.

Should we put a nuclear power plant on the Moon?

Hot take! On August 4, 2025, NASA Interim Administrator Sean Duffy said he is accelerating efforts to put a small nuclear power plant on the Moon. This generated a lot of skepticism (to say the least) on social media, but some of it is unfair: yes, everything Trump does is a lie or a grift, and Duffy is a trump appointee. But the idea itself? We'll need a nuclear plant on the Moon if we want a sustained human presence here. I just don't think now is the time.

My book Under Alien Skies in French

My book, Under Alien Skies, has been translated into French! It's called Ciels Extraterrestre, and is available in bookstores where you can find French books. My French isn't great — it's been a while since I took it in school — so I provided captions for you. I hope you like it!

Solar Orbiter peeks at the Sun's bottom

The joint ESA/NASA space mission Solar Orbiter changed its orbital tilt using a flyby of Venus, and is now able to see the Sun's south pole. This is the first time we've ever been able to get images of thise region of the Sun! Earth's orbit around the Sun is only tipped by about 7°, but Solar Orbiter is now tipped by 17°, and over the next few years will change its orbit even more to get to 24° and possibly even 33° if the extended mission is funded. These new views will help astronomers better understand how the Sun's surface works, and how the solar wind is formed. Credit: ESA & NASA/Solar

Powerful GRB emits death ray

A gamma-ray burst (or GRB) is the most powerful and violent explosion known to astronomers. Created when a massive star explodes or two neutron stars collide, the explosion is the birth cry of a newly formed black hole. Incredibly intense magnetic fields wind around it, focusing twin beams of high-energy gamma-ray light and jets of matter moving nearly at lightspeed in opposite directions. These are so bright we can see them from BILLIONS OF LIGHT-YEARS AWAY. Original video: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14227 Credit: NASA/Swift/Cruz deWilde More about GRBs at Crash Course Astronomy: https://www.

No Kings protest on June 14, 2025

I went to the HUGE Jue 14 2025 No Kings protest in Charlottesville VA where easily over 1,000 people were protesting Trump's claim to kinghood. I have thoughts, including why attending these events is important as a citizen, but also an individual human: They can help with the feeling of helplessness. [And yes I know the video is vertical; I recorded it for TikTok which does pretty good autocaptioning.]

A black hole rips a star to shreds

This animation, based on an actual event, shows what happens when a star gets too close to a black hole. The tides from the black hole tear the star apart, flinging half the mass away on a long elliptical orbit, while the other half either falls in directly or forms a disk around the black hole. The fierce magnetic fields focus twin beams of matter away from the poles of the disk, and, at the end, a super-high-energy neutrino is flung away toward Earth. Credit: DESY, Science Communication Lab

Lucy spacecraft flies by the asteroid Donaldjohanson

On April 20, 2025, the Lucy spacecraft flew past the asteroid Donaldjohanson at a distance of about 960 km. When it was 1,100 km away it took a series of images that were sticthed together to make this animation. The asteroid is a space potato, elongated and lumpy, measuring about 8 x 3.5 km. It's bilobate, meaning it has two distinct halves, and is likely the result of two asteroids colliding, slowing, and eventually falling together. The animation plays three times. Credit: NASA/Goddard/SwRI/Johns Hopkins APL/NOIRLab Original video: https://science.nasa.gov/image-article/nasas-lucy-spacecr

Andromeda's weird satellite galaxy distribution

The Andromeda Galaxy is a sibling to our own Milky Way. And like our galaxy, it has dozens of smaller dwarf galaxies orbiting it. We'd expect them to be scattered around it pretty much randonly, but they're NOT! Instead, almost all of them are on the near side of the Andromeda Galaxy, between us and it. That's truly bizarre, and for the moment we have no explanation of it. Original video: https://www.aip.de/en/news/andromedas-asymmetrical-challenge-cosmology/

Fighting fascists is true patriotism

I was at the Hands Off protest in Charlottesville VA on April, 2025 to support the fight against Trump, Musk, and the GOP coup. I carried an American flag because I want to take it back from jingoistic nationalists who don't understand what this country should be about.

Fighting fascism is patriotic!

I was at the Hands Off 2025 protest on April 5, 2025 in Charlottesville VA to protest Trump and Musk and the GOP, and at least a thousand folks showed up! I brought an American flag because it's long past time we took it back from the jingoistic nationlists.

Baryonic acoustic oscillations and the early Universe

Baryonic acoustic oscillations are basically sound waves that traveled through the plasma that existed everywhere in the Universe when it was very young, just seconds old, created as protons and neutrons (collectively called baryons) formed. These waves expanded along with the Universe and froze in place a few hundred thousand years later. Matter is slightly more dense at the wave crests, and that's where more galaxies formed. By counting up galaxies at different locations in the sky, we can measure these oscillations and understand what the very early Universe was like. Original video: https

Deimos crosses Mars

The tiny (16 x 12 x 10 km) moon Deimos crosses the face of Mars as seen by the ESA spacecraft Hera on March 12, 2025. As Hera swung past the planet to gain enough energy to meet up with its ultimate target (the binary asteroid Didymos and Dimorphos) it flew within 300 km of Deimos, and took images from as close as 1,000 km. These still images were then strung together to make this animation (which repeats twice). The images were taken by Hera's Thermal Infrared Imager, which will be used to measure the temperature of the asteroids' surfaces. Hera will reach the binary in December 2026. Credit

Why we need to stand up for science

A short video on why doing (and communicating) science is still important even as the news gets grimmer every day. If it weren't important, the fascists wouldn't be attacking it. I made this for the Stand Up For Science Rally which will be on March 7, 2025. Go to standupforscience2025.com! P.S. I made this for TikTok which is why it's vertical.