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  Tonight, Saturn is in opposition, located on the same side of the Sun as Earth. It will rise at sunset and be on display all night, its face fully lit by the Sun. For those with access to a telescope, this is what Saturn and its rings will look like tonight. Perhaps, you can spot the edges of the Decagon over the South Pole, as Saturn performs a full rotation every 10 hours and 33 minutes. https://eyes.nasa.gov/apps/solar-system/#/home https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/saturn-flaunts...

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  Trump says ‘I feel badly’ for the accused Cornell gang rapists because ... 'they won't get a fair shake.' Not feeling badly at all for the victims. What did you expect from this cretin convicted of sexual abuse? https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-cornell-rape-investigation-letitia-james-b3060661.html #UsPol 1/n

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  A recently submitted paper claims that the satellite Shijian-25 successfully refueled the BeiDou-2 G7 satellite with 142 kg of room-temp propellant in Feb 2025. Shijian-25 was launched in Jan 2025. In July 2025, it docked with and reportedly supplied fuel to Shijian-21 in geo orbit. That operation was closely watched around the world, including by U.S. spy satellites that flew in for a closer look. This report and its timing looks unreliable. https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/33...

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  Voyager 1 joke by xkcd. Title: Voyager Instruments Title text: Convincing him to turn off the stupid laser show and useless sound system was such a huge ordeal that no one has wanted to do it again. 🤣 Note that Megan , Ponytail, Cueball and Hairy (Greg) are traveling inside Voyager 1 in the cartoon. https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/3302:_Voyager_Instruments 1/n

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  Two asteroids newly named after well-known personalities - 14330 Tomlehrer 14331 Alyankovic 🥳 These asteroids reside in the main Asteroid Belt between Jupiter and Mars. Many more names in this bulletin from the IAU dated 7 September 2026. https://www.wgsbn-iau.org/files/Bulletins/latest.pdf https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/(14330)_Tomlehrer https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/(14331)_Alyankovic 1/n

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  Trailer of Musk, the documentary, scheduled for released theatrically in the U.S. on October 9. Let's share it far and wide. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eY_8SyndC10 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musk_(film) 1/n

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  Supreme Court blocks Trump-backed Missouri congressional map ... for the 3rd time. This republican election engineering attempt was a step too far even for this Supreme Court where 6 members are beholden to the interests of the fascist party. It is small victory for Democracy given that this same SCOTUS ruled today to allow the trump administration to use the revamped federal database for voter screening. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/26a388_q86b.pdf https://www.npr.org/2026/09...

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  David Attenborough: "The nature of human beings is that they'd far rather face the disaster that is happening tonight than the one that is happening tomorrow." https://worldartutopia.com/new-street-art-with-portraits-creatures-and-wild-letters-20-photos-vol-62/ 1/n

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  NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope by the numbers: # of orbits: 200,000 on Sept. 19, 2026 Orbital period: ~95 minutes Years in orbit: 36.33 Distance traveled: > 8 billion km Observations: > 1.7 million Data archive: 477 TB Peer-reviewed science papers: > 23,000 # of spacewalkers who serviced Hubble: 17 🧑‍🚀 👏 https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/nasas-hubble-seeks-lensed-supernova-marks-200000-orbits/ 1/n

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  Winner of the Ig Nobel Prize in Physics - "We propose novel urinal designs that were generated by solving differential equations derived from the isogonal curve problem to ensure the urine stream impacts at or below this critical angle. Experiments validate that these designs can substantially reduce splashback to only 1.4% of the splash of a common contemporary commercial urinal." Winning designs: Nautilus and Cornucopia. 💦 🤔 https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/4/4/pgaf087/80...

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  The difference between Democrats and Republicans - who they serve. https://bsky.app/profile/mayor.nyc.gov/post/3mw4v5x5owc2o #UsPol 1/n

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  Hurricane Polo, off the west coast of Mexico, is now a Cat 5 hurricane. It exploded from 40 mph to 160 mph in just 36 hours, thanks to extra warm ocean waters, light wind shear, abundant moisture and yes, climate change. Expected to strengthen to 175 mph in the next 12 hours. https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_ep2+shtml/221155.shtml?cone#contents 1/n

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  Massive air-traffic disruption in NY area airports, bleeding into other airports. Cause: A primary circuit connecting airports failed, which "led to the discovery of a backup fiber circuit which had been damaged by construction crews in New Jersey." The 600 ft cut will take 13+ hours to fix. We all periodically test backup systems, right? https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c6j9xpgl8pzwt 1/n

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  Researchers have discovered that the vertebrate brain does not arise from a single progenitor cell, but instead develops from two distinct, mutually exclusive cell lineages that evolved independently, one for the forebrain and midbrain, and one for the hindbrain. It explains why attempts to coax forebrain precursors into hindbrain tissue have failed. The team successfully cultivated human hindbrain neurons in the lab for the first time. https://neurosciencenews.com/brain-separate-organs-evolut...

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  Check out this thread from last year and some interesting discussion on the origins of Fortran, which was first demonstrated OTD in 1954. https://fosstodon.org/@AkaSci/115238670324947940 1/n

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  OTD in 1954, John Backus and his team at IBM successfully ran the first FORTRAN (Formula Translation) program. The spec for the language was developed during 1954 and published on Nov 10, 1954. A Programmer's Reference Manual was published on October 15, 1956. The compiler was developed in 1955-56 and released in early 1957. We presume, on Sep 20, 1954, the program was manually converted to machine language and executed on an IBM 704. https://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/FORTRA...

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  Ominous developments: Trump cuts short trip to Camp David, returns to White House. Netanyahu cuts short U.S. tour, returning to Tel Aviv. Middle East US embassies issue STEP alert warning to Americans in the region. Yemen’s Houthis attack sites across Saudi Arabia. Saudis preparing "massive" response to Houthi attacks. Iran conveyed conditions for ending the war through Qatari mediators. Or this could just be TACO. https://www.rawstory.com/trump-iran-2677895263/ https://www.aljazeer...

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  CA Governor Newsom signs a flurry of bills to protect Californians from the hyenas in the White House. 1. New law prohibiting other state militaries from entering California unless they have explicit permission from the Governor. https://bsky.app/profile/govpressoffice.gov.ca.gov/post/3mvuwq6llks2u https://www.gov.ca.gov/2026/09/19/governor-newsom-signs-bill-to-protect-californias-sovereignty-and-guard-against-unauthorized-military-deployments/ #UsPol 1/n

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  Pluto's tenuous atmosphere will likely collapse as it moves further away from the Sun in its elliptical 248-year orbit and atmospheric Nitrogen freezes and rains down on the surface. Pluto's atmosphere is created by sublimation of frozen Nitrogen on its surface when it gets closer to the Sun. Atmospheric pressure is ~10 microbars, much lower than that on earth (1 bar). Surface temperature -223 to -240 °C. https://eos.org/articles/plutos-atmosphere-may-be-collapsing #Science 1/n

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  I missed this report that SpaceX has decided to retire the Crew Dragon spacecraft, the only American spacecraft capable of ferrying astronauts to/from the ISS; SpaceX wants to focus its energy on Starship (and orbital data centers) NASA is now looking at revving up the Boeing Starliner program, providing additional funding to fix some of its problems. So much for commercialization of space technology. https://gizmodo.com/spacex-is-retiring-crew-dragon-forcing-nasa-to-bet-big-on-boeings-troubl...

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  Scientists found a fossilized poop sample of a dinosaur that ate an aquatic bird that ate a particular type of fish. Study of feathers in the poop sheds light on these early aquatic birds that did not survive the great dinosaur extinction, likely because their fuzzy body feathers did not provide sufficient thermal insulation in the aftermath of the mass extinction event. Other birds with better insulating feathers probably did well. https://www.thebrighterside.news/post/a-feather-found-in-dinos...

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  Is this real? Anyone seen an independent verification? "The United States, Denmark and Greenland have ‌entered into an agreement that will see the US develop a significant military presence on the island, while prohibiting US adversaries from building ​their own bases there, Donald Trump said on ​Friday." https://www.reuters.com/world/china/us-denmark-close-greenland-deal-sources-say-2026-09-18/ 1/n

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  NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is “go” for launch at 7:26 a.m. EDT on Sunday, Aug. 30 from Launch Complex 39A at KSC in Florida. Roman, stationed around the Sun-Earth L2 point, will investigate dark energy and dark matter, conduct a statistical census of planetary systems, and enable a broad range of additional astrophysics research. Below is a pic of Roman atop the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, taken earlier this morning. https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/roman/2026/08/28/nasas-roman-sp...

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  Pic of Nancy Grace Roman with Women of Hubble. Dr. Nancy Grace Roman at the Space Telescope Operations Control Center at NASA Goddard on March 31, 2017, with some women from the Hubble Space Telescope project. Left to right: Beverly Serrano, Morgan Van Arsdall, Nancy Grace Roman, Olivia Lupie, Padi Boyd, and Erin Kisliuk. She was almost 92 years old at that time. Credit: NASA/GSFC/Jim Jeletic More pics at https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasahubble/with/41294385755 17/n

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  Some good news in these trying times - Congress will restore most of the NASA budget cuts sought by the White House. The $24.4 billion budget plan is slightly below the funding level in 2024 and 2025, but $5.6 billion higher than the White House proposal and restores most of funding for the Science Mission Directorate, which the White House had cut by almost half. https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/01/nasas-science-budget-wont-be-a-train-wreck-after-all/ 1/n

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  Anne Applebaum argues in this deeply researched essay that "American foreign policy under Trump is not isolationist. On the contrary, MAGA ideologues want to build an international empire run by far-right political movements who serve the interests of American crypto, mineral and tech companies, especially if they have links to the president. They think of themselves as "the vanguard of a movement that will alter not just America, but the world."" https://www.theatlantic.com...

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  Space debris by the numbers from the ESA Space Environment Report 2026. - The number and scale of commercial satellite constellations continue to increase each year. - Not enough satellites leave heavily congested orbits at the end of their lives, creating a growing collision risk. - 10 new payloads are launched daily. ~3 intact satellites or rocket bodies reenter the Earth’s atmosphere daily. This is just the beginning. 🤔 https://www.esa.int/Space_Safety/Space_Debris/ESA_Space_Environment_...

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  Check out the winning entries of the 2026 International Photography Awards (IPA). https://photoawards.com/winner/?compName=IPA+2026 1/n

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  Lovely defense of AI from the washed out post in response to recent warnings from AI researchers. "The dawn of the AI era cries out for humility and patience. Politicians should not seek to regulate a fast-moving technology they don’t understand. Liability offers better discipline than overbearing legislation, and it’s much more likely to yield results than negotiating unenforceable treaties with the Chinese Communist Party." Did AI write that editorial? https://www.washingtonpost....

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  Update on the USPS mail voting restrictions case. https://bsky.app/profile/democracydocket.com/post/3muzc6xjk6x2q #UsPol 1/n