Apropos space missions studying the Sun's poles, here's a little something from 6 October 1990.
The deployment of the ESA/NASA Ulysses mission from space shuttle Discovery as part of STS-41.
The spacecraft is at top left of the IUS/PAM-S combo, which powered it towards Jupiter.
There it used a big gravity assist to get out of the ecliptic & orbit over the north & south poles of the Sun.
My slight reprocessing of this JPG scan of the film original: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/22587754
Currently doing battle with a truculent million year old baby protostar below the belt of Orion, moving behind clouds some eighty million au away 
As a brief distraction, here’s a several billion year old grown-up star just one au away, playing with the water and ice in the atmosphere of one of its planets 
The #mainstream media doesn’t cover #SpaceExploration and #SpaceScience with the same questioning rigor that they reserve for #politics. People writing about space exploration are mostly #cheerleaders 
for the cause, rather than independent observers keeping a watchful eye 
on how our national monies 
are spent https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucedorminey/2022/06/23/new-book-paints-bleak-picture-of-nasas-human-spaceflight-program
In just under a fortnight, on 19 June, my book "111 Places in Space That You Must Not Miss", will be published by Emons in Germany, followed by the UK on 21 July & the US on 2 September 
It's a tour guide of interesting places in our Solar System, the Milky Way, & Deep Space beyond, & describes what you'd find & learn if you were able to visit them 
Here's a preview of the cover & a few chapters – it's available to order in all the usual places 
A nice cross-over this evening: I gave a talk about the technology & science of JWST to the 25th European Light Microscopy Initiative (ELMI) conference, held at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (@EMBLEvents) in Heidelberg 
Thanks to the very kind audience, to Timo Zimmerman & Aline Schnieder of EMBL for the invitation & organisation, & to the folks from Teledyne who made the JWST near-IR detectors that have taken most of my data
Today marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of the European Space Agency 
I'm privileged & honoured to have spent 15 of the intervening years working in the Science and Human & Robotic Exploration Directorates.
There are many great experiences on many missions working with many amazing people to share
But 12 November 2014, the day that Rosetta deployed Philae to the surface of Comet 67P/C-G, will forever be my most cherished memory 
Time warp 
At the MPIA in Heidelberg @mpi_astro today, Nienke van der Marel describing the reference science case for protoplanetary disks with the METIS mid-infrared instrument being built for the 39-m diameter European Extremely Large Telescope
The diagram she’s using to illustrate the stages of star & planet formation was made 30 years ago
By me, when I was a staff member here at the MPIA 
More ideological vandalism across the ocean – the Tangerine Tyrant shutters NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York & sends everyone to work from home. For "efficiency" reasons 
Seems like a prelude to eliminating GISS altogether, given the seminal work done by Hansen, Schmidt, & others on climate change science there, & the ignorant denialism the far-right specialise in as they profit from burning our planet.
Appalling.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/may/21/nasa-giss-lab-trump-shut-down-james-hansen
If you have clear skies & a way to observe the Sun safely, perhaps with eclipse glasses or by projecting through binoculars as I’ve done here, have a look: the huge sunspot group AR4079, is putting on a lovely show
A multi-spot group with dark umbral cores & a very large penumbra around them 
The smaller AR4076 is visible too.
Pretty dusk skies over over the Peterstal this evening, making for a nice view of the crescent Moon, its 'dark side' illuminated by Earthshine, sunlight reflected off the Atlantic Ocean.
Above & to the right of the Moon is Elnath, Beta Tauri, & to the lower left is Jupiter, with its moon Callisto visible to its upper left. Io & Ganymede were visible closer to the planet in higher-resolution images.
Nikon D7000 + 85mm lens at f/2, 2 sec, ISO 100.
The colours of Sirius 
️
When the blue-white star is close to the horizon, atmospheric turbulence causes rapid changes in the line-of-sight refractive index, causing the star to twinkle, changing brightness & colour.
It’s easy to catch with a mobile phone camera & an app that allows manual control (I use ProCam): this is a 30 sec exposure, 1/40 sec frame rate, 3 x lens defocussed, WB set to 5800K, moving the phone throughout
The very definition of a clickbait headline.
If you read the article, you’ll soon discover that the only scientists “hailing” this result are the authors of the paper.
Everyone else interviewed for comment is way more sceptical.
A 3-sigma detection of dimethyl sulphide is interesting, if well below the significance used in particle physics, say.
But as others have said, it could readily have non-life origins too.
Caveat emptor.
I'm saddened to have just heard the news that Svetlana Gerasimenko passed away last week, on 8 April.
She was the co-discoverer in 1969 of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko with fellow Ukrainian astronomer, Klim Churyumov (1937-2016).
This is the comet that was explored by ESA's Rosetta spacecraft from 2014-2016 & landed on by the Philae probe in November 2014.
A comet & events that changed my life
Ad astra, Svetlana
Amid geopolitical uncertainties, international leaders stress cooperation at Space Symposium https://www.byteseu.com/921114/ #ColoradoNews #ColoradoSprings #Geopolitics #Science #SouthernColorado #Space #SpaceScience
The peak of solar maximum is behind us now, but the Sun is still putting on a decent show of sunspots
Here’s the current status, images by projecting through my binoculars on to some white paper & then photographing with my iPhone 
From top right (east) to bottom left (west), we have Active Regions 4055 & 4058, then 4056, 4061, & 4060.
Current snapshot from https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en/solar-activity/sunspot-regions.html in the next toot.
A nice conjunction during dusk this evening between our Moon at 30% illumination, and Jupiter and its four Galilean moons.
I post this as an apology to Callisto, which was the last location to be axed from my forthcoming book, "111 Places in Space You Must Not Miss" during final edits last night
I mean, it's a fascinating place & the chapter I'd written had some good stuff in it, but since I'd written 118 chapters, something had to give 
Since this morning, the NASA/ESA/CSA #JWST has been taking near-IR images of Sharpless 305, a star-forming region in the outer reaches of the Milky Way
Below is an image taken with the ESO VLT many years ago in poor weather – the JWST images should be better 
When finished in a couple of hours, that'll be the last of my Guaranteed Time Observations, granted when I was selected as a member of the JWST Science Working Group in 2002
It has been a privilege
To further mark the retirement of the ESA's amazingly successful #Gaia Milky Way surveyor spacecraft yesterday, some pictures taken of it during my visit to EADS Astrium in Toulouse on 3 May 2013, 6.5 months before launch.
1. Me in front of the large silicon carbide torus with its two large rectangular telescope primary mirrors;
2. The torus from below;
3. The huge focal plane with its 106 CCD detectors;
4. The large "top hat" that covers it all.
Some memorabilia from yesterday’s event at ESOC as the ESA #Gaia spacecraft was deactivated after running out of propellant & moved off L2 into an Earth-trailing solar orbit.
One of these objects might last until the Sun turns into red giant five billion years from now; the other will be lucky to last the weekend 
Thanks to my ESA colleagues for the former & the fine folk at Oedipus Brewing in Amsterdam for the latter
