Kelly Lepo

Migrating this account to [@KellyLepo](https://scicomm.xyz/@KellyLepo ). RIP Astrodon.social.

Website: https://kellylepo.com
Posts about: [#Astronomy](https://astrodon.social/tags/Astronomy ) [#Space](https://astrodon.social/tags/Space ) [#JWST](https://astrodon.social/tags/JWST ) [#Accessibility](https://astrodon.social/tags/Accessibility )

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npub1vdd8l0arat6we9d74w7cga8nna2f580em0jrdsq80wunsjpv8dzq4cwted

NIP-05 Address

[email protected]

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsxxknlh7374a8vjkl2h0vywnee74y6rhuahepkcqrhhwfcfqkrk3qprpmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0d4hhxarj9ecxjmntheve5z

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relay.momostr.pink

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Last Notes

2025-04-07 16:52:43 GMT

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Also, I added a bunch of pretty pictures of Arp galaxies to its database.
Go give @npub1n6v…0963 a follow to get more weird galaxies in your feed.
https://media.astrodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/297/696/169/393/056/original/94175b5f08091b25.jpg

2025-04-07 16:52:43 GMT

Did some work on @npub1n6v…0963 this weekend.
I was trying to figure out why it sometimes failed to post. I never did, but I did manage to break it and then fix it (hopefully?). At least now it should not get confused and double post if something goes wrong.

2025-03-25 19:41:13 GMT

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If you haven't seen it, she is also mentioned in this oral history with Bok.
https://www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral-histories/4518-2
But that's about all I can find.

2025-03-25 18:55:50 GMT

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This is probably the same Edith Frances Reilly who appears as a senior in the 1940 University of Pennsylvania Women’s Yearbook
https://archives.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/womens-yearbook-1940.pdf
If she ever married, she probably changed her name, so finding an obituary will be tricky.
https://media.astrodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/224/580/581/407/355/original/1ece9263262b9127.png

2025-03-14 06:49:50 GMT

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And there it is! A total lunar eclipse from Baltimore, Maryland.
If you were standing on the near side of the Moon right now, you would see the Earth eclipsing the Sun, and see all of the sunsets and sunrises on Earth simultaneously.
#LunarEclipse #TotalLunarEclipse
https://media.astrodon.social/media_attachments/files/114/159/437/455/604/040/original/5bb2c808702b5086.jpg

2025-03-14 06:15:58 GMT

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Almost there ...
#LunarEclipse #TotalLunarEclipse
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2025-03-14 05:32:32 GMT

So it begins ...
The partial lunar eclipse from Baltimore, Maryland.
#LunarEclipse #TotalLunarEclipse
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2025-02-16 03:04:12 GMT

I've been reading some old astronomy papers (as one does on a Saturday night), and was surprised to come across the term "extragalactic nebula" to describe a galaxy in a paper written in 1941.
The famous "great debate" took place in 1920, with Harlow Shapley arguing that the "spiral nebulae" were within the Milky Way and Heber Curtis arguing that they were distant "island universes".
Edwin Hubble solved this debate once and for all in 1929, by measuring the distances to several spiral nebulae like Andromeda and Triangulum, and showing they were too far away to be within the Milky Way.
So then, why were astronomers still referring to these things as nebulae into the 1940s?
1/
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2025-01-15 03:40:55 GMT

Day 2 #AAS245
Dave Pooley had the first plenary lecture: From the Smallest Things to the Greatest Results — The Incredible Power of the Chandra X-ray Observatory
In addition to giving us some history, this talk made the case for Chandra science, and its continued importance in the face of possible mission-ending budget cuts.
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2025-01-14 03:46:51 GMT

More from #AAS245 Day 1
Alexandra Pope's Plenary Lecture: Galaxy Evolution Eras Tour: The Formative Years of Star Formation and Supermassive Black Hole Growth.
Early era – star formation is “bursty”
Cosmic noon - steady star formation is the formative era
After that, the growth rates decline
The back hole accretion rate over time seems to correspond with the star formation rate, but the samples are pulled from different galaxies. Is this trend real?
https://media.astrodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/824/459/293/147/132/original/4366630c2ae0695d.jpg
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2025-01-06 18:07:01 GMT

Need more galaxies in your feed? Of course you do.
Over the break I made @npub1n6v…0963, mostly because I thought the name "Arp Bot" was funny.
It posts an image of a galaxy in Halton Arp's Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies twice a day. Images are from the archives of professional observatories and the original 1966 catalog. I curated the images and wrote the image descriptions and most of the alt text.
Give it a follow!
#Astrodon #space #galaxies
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2024-12-25 19:14:58 GMT

Happy Launch Anniversary JWST!
Also, thanks to Ariane Space for the great ride and for putting cameras on the Ariane 5’s upper stage so we could all say goodbye and good luck as JWST began it's 1.5 million km journey to L2.
https://youtu.be/dRqHlta6lr8

2024-12-18 17:18:18 GMT

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There is so much good early Hubble lore!
Doing so more reading, apparently, this was used on the sun twice during Hubble's Orbital Verification.
Glenn Schneider assembled a mosaic of the "best" images from the WF/PC "Flood Guiding Verification Test" data acquired during OV-1. This shows a rough image of the Sun at 1220 Angstroms. As Glenn noted, these are the "first, and last, images of the Sun ever to be taken with HST."
Thanks to @npub1ctj…de0g for pointing me to this over on BlueSky.
http://nicmosis.as.arizona.edu:8000/UVFLOOD/HST_SUN_IMAGE.html
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2024-12-18 05:14:51 GMT

I appreciate the person who submitted a "Let's Point Hubble at the Sun!" proposal to the HST Cycle 32 Bridge Program.
(Which is very funny, but would also fry the telescope)
#Astrodon
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2024-12-16 17:47:35 GMT

For a while, I had a gig answering astronomy questions online.
When I got "what is that bright thing I saw in the sky?" questions, I'd guess "Venus" and then go look it up, putting their location and the time and direction of the observation into Stellarium. I'd say 98% of the time that guess was right.

2024-12-11 18:11:22 GMT

Six views of Saturn from the Hubble Space Telescope in different filters.
While this looks like a piece of pop art, these images show Saturn in different combinations of filters, mapped to red, green, and blue colors. The planet and its rings shift hues based on how strongly the planet reflects light at different wavelengths. Each filter combination emphasizes subtle differences in cloud altitude or composition.
https://hubblesite.org/contents/media/images/2024/010/01JE3Z7PH0PES72VF2CRG9ED56?news=true
#Space #Astronomy #Hubble #Saturn #SciArt
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2024-12-06 21:39:14 GMT

So, hear me out: Let's strap a telescope to a balloon and send it up to the stratosphere from Antarctica.
This is actually a thing that astronomers do.
Learn more about Astrophysics with High-Altitude Balloons. Link to resources, slides, and a recording of the latest NASA's Universe of Learning Science Briefing: https://www.universe-of-learning.org/contents/events/science-briefings/2024/science-briefing-astrophysics-with-balloons
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2024-11-26 22:30:07 GMT

Zoom into JWST's latest image of the star cluster NGC 602.
Located near the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, the cluster provides us with a good view of an area of relatively isolated star formation.
The local environment of this cluster is an analog of what existed in the early Universe, with very low abundances of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium.
https://esawebb.org/news/weic2425/
https://media.astrodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/551/504/147/323/527/original/1b41e101c311e223.mp4

2024-11-15 20:55:42 GMT

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Location of the detail images in Westerlund 2
3/3
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2024-11-15 20:55:41 GMT

Timeline cleanse
Westerlund 2 is a giant cluster of about 3,000 stars located 20,000 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Carina. These stars sculpt the surrounding nebula, carving out a cavity lined with a fantasy landscape of pillars, ridges, and valleys. The pillars, composed of dense gas and dust, are incubators for new stars. They are a few light-years tall and point to the central star cluster.
1/3
📷 https://hubblesite.org/contents/media/images/2015/12/3519-Image.html?news=true
#space #astronomy #Hubble #TimelineCleanse
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2024-11-15 20:55:41 GMT

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Details from Westerlund 2:
A: The 2-million-year-old star cluster measures about 6 to 13 light-years across and contains many hot, bright, and massive stars.
B: The cluster is surrounded by the star-forming region Gum 29. Ultraviolet light and winds from the most massive stars etch away the enveloping hydrogen gas cloud from where the cluster formed. The brightest stars in the image are foreground stars not associated with Westerlund 2.
C: The pillars in the star-forming region are made of dense gas and dust, are a few light-years tall, and point to the central cluster. The bluish haze is an indicator of oxygen gas in the nebula.
D: The red dots scattered throughout the landscape are newly forming stars still wrapped in their gas-and-dust cocoons. These tiny, faint stars are between 1 million and 2 million years old and have not yet begun fusing the hydrogen in their cores.
2/3
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2024-10-31 17:58:50 GMT

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Here is the #Hubble (left) and #JWST (right) view of the interacting galaxy pair IC 2163 and NGC 2207.
In Hubble's ultraviolet and visible-light view, the galaxies' spiral arms are full of bright blue star clusters and dark dust lanes, while the central core is full of older, yellower stars. In JWST's mid-infrared view, we mostly see the glowing cooler dust in the spiral arms — the bones of the galaxies.
https://media.astrodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/403/193/081/782/187/original/95c558404a346413.jpg

2024-10-31 17:58:49 GMT

Happy Halloween!
In this new mid-infrared image from #JWST, a pair of interacting galaxies, IC 2163 and NGC 2207, look like they are making direct eye contact, which is unsettling to me.
Learn more: https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2024/news-2024-136
https://media.astrodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/403/192/985/021/553/original/426d851da5308dc1.jpg

2024-10-31 15:56:17 GMT

Happy Halloween 🎃
I didn't have time to carve anything this year, so enjoy my 2023, 2022, 2021, and 2020 pumpkins.
#halloween #pumpkin #JackOLantern #JWST #sciart
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2024-10-18 15:37:16 GMT

One of my favorite #JWST images, the Cosmic Cliffs in the Carina Nebula in molecular hydrogen.
This is the edge of a cavity within the nearby star-forming region NGC 3324 in the outskirts of the Carina Nebula, about 7,600 light-years away.
It was carved by a few extremely massive, hot, young stars located just above the frame. This image selects narrowband filters from the original "Cosmic Cliffs" image to highlight the shocks and outflows from forming stars.
https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2022/news-2022-057
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2024-10-02 14:25:31 GMT

New results out of the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope. Astronomers found a planet orbiting Barnard’s Star, the second closest star system to the Earth. The planet Barnard b orbits its star every 3.15 days and has a mass about 0.37 times that of Earth.
There are also hints of planets with 2.34, 4.12, and 6.74 day-orbits, although more observations are needed to confirm the existence of those planets.
https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso2414/
https://cdn.masto.host/astrodonsocial/media_attachments/files/113/234/381/434/355/660/original/704c92ba48427294.jpg

2024-10-02 14:25:31 GMT

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The planet was found by the radial velocity or "wobble" method. As the planet orbits its star, the star tugs on the planet with gravity, and the planet tugs on the star. The star will trace out a small circle — a wobble — with the same orbital period as the planet.
We see the tiny changes in the motion of the star as a red shift as the star moves away and blue shift as it moves towards us. For Barnard b, the shift of the star is about 55 cm/s, a slow walking speed.
🎞️ https://science.nasa.gov/resource/radial-velocity/
https://cdn.masto.host/astrodonsocial/media_attachments/files/113/236/210/589/527/768/original/d2ffacd7626126b6.mp4

2024-10-02 14:25:31 GMT

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Barnard’s Star has the highest proper motion of any star in the night sky. This apparent motion of the star compared to the background means that we can observe its shift in position year to year.
In this image, Barnard’s Star has moved enough between exposures in the Digitized Sky Survey 2 that it shows up as a line of three stars — red, yellow and blue. All of the other stars overlap in position between shots.
📷 https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1837d/
https://cdn.masto.host/astrodonsocial/media_attachments/files/113/234/915/178/252/601/original/4d1ac5dda7407492.png

2024-10-01 15:25:02 GMT

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And in case you are wondering where the supernova is ...
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2024-09-29 21:24:29 GMT

CERN has a "Which elementary particle are you?" particle physics personality test.
I'm not sure if I should feel insulted by my results 🙃
https://scoollab.web.cern.ch/sites/default/files/Particle_v2/index.html
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2024-09-25 20:43:34 GMT

WebbVR from @npub1mem…cmlc just launched the 5.0 update, which adds images and video for 25 new JWST discoveries.
If you have a VR headset sitting around, it's worth checking out.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/891960/WebbVR_The_James_Webb_Space_Telescope_Virtual_Experience/
https://cdn.masto.host/astrodonsocial/media_attachments/files/113/200/101/875/054/805/original/f3bbd87865e9f699.png

2024-09-24 21:18:21 GMT

What has #JWST learned about how stars form, from the cold-dusty molecular clouds where star formation begins to disks where planets form? What's next for JWST?
Check out this new article on WebbTelescope.org.
Also, there are pretty pictures, because star-forming regions are gorgeous.
https://webbtelescope.org/contents/articles/webbs-star-formation-discoveries
#astronomy #space #Astrodon
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2024-09-09 22:31:15 GMT

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Here is a wider view of the galaxy cluster MACS J0417.5-1154 from JWST's NIRCam. Notice the long, thin arcs. Those are all lensed background galaxies.
📷https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2024/128/01J6CXCDNSGF87TZEX379WHDXB?news=true
https://cdn.masto.host/astrodonsocial/media_attachments/files/113/109/854/780/351/302/original/e67e8570638c9ac5.jpg

2024-09-09 22:31:15 GMT

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Gravitational lensing is one of the more bizarre consequences of General Relativity. Mass warps space-time, so that the shortest path between two points is no longer a straight line, it's curved.
The warped space acts like a lousy lens, distorting images of background galaxies into arcs — like looking through the base of a wine glass.
This artist's impression simulates flying past a galaxy cluster and seeing the gravitational lens from different perspectives
https://esahubble.org/videos/hubblecast70c/
https://cdn.masto.host/astrodonsocial/media_attachments/files/113/109/958/133/450/915/original/6860be8d869f56b7.mp4

2024-09-09 22:31:14 GMT

Apparently, the Universe has some questions.
#JWST spotted an unusual configuration of a gravitational lens, a hyperbolic umbilic lens. The gravity of a foreground galaxy cluster magnifies and distorts the light from background galaxies.
This cosmic question mark is made of five images of the same background galaxy pair, labeled A-E, an interacting red dusty galaxy and a face-on spiral galaxy. The foreground galaxy cluster is the white hazy ovals.
https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2024/news-2024-128
#Space #Astronomy
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2024-08-26 23:49:47 GMT

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Gravitational lensing is one of the more bizarre consequences of General Relativity. Mass warps space-time, so that the shortest path between two points is no longer a straight line, it's curved.
The warped space acts like a lousy lens, distorting images of background galaxies into arcs — like looking through the base of a wine glass.
Astronomers target these warped, magnified images to see details in galaxies that would otherwise just look like red dots.
🎞️ https://esahubble.org/videos/hubblecast70c/
https://cdn.masto.host/astrodonsocial/media_attachments/files/113/030/977/984/005/810/original/22d6e4d3e99b1c81.mp4

2024-08-26 23:40:45 GMT

Our Milky Way galaxy's globular star clusters are old — about 12 or 13 billion years old. Where did they come from? A recent #JWST observation provides some clues.
Massive galaxy clusters create gravitational lenses, warping and magnifying images of background galaxies.
In one image, researchers observed a very distant galaxy, seeing it as it was when the Universe was about 460 million years old. The galaxy has star clusters, which may be proto-globular clusters.
https://esawebb.org/news/weic2418/
https://cdn.masto.host/astrodonsocial/media_attachments/files/113/030/896/557/953/113/original/815f8249d7f39069.jpg

2024-08-23 18:03:59 GMT

Some good news about Chandra via Yvette Cendes (@whereisyvette.bsky.social) on BlueSky.
The X-ray telescope had been facing mission-ending-level budget cuts. They have been given a 1-year reprieve to avoid layoffs.
#Chandra #SaveChandra
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2024-08-19 20:15:12 GMT

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If you want to learn more Cecilia Payne and her research, there is a cool podcast series from NASA's Universe of Learning - Diaries of the Cosmos Podcast: Hydrogen Hunters
https://www.universeunplugged.org/podcast/hydrogenhunterspt1
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2024-08-02 19:52:52 GMT

Surprisingly, sometimes people are wrong on the internet. There are a lot of mislabeled astronomical images out there.
How can you find images of space from trusted sources? Try AstroPix. It offers access to the public image galleries from leading astronomical observatories under a single unified interface. Search by object name or coordinates, or use the free text to search titles, captions, and topics.
https://www.astropix.org
1/3
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2024-07-30 19:44:40 GMT

Looking for resources to use in astronomy education or outreach? Want to take a deep dive into topics in astrophysics?
NASA’s Universe of Learning has several curated collections of images, videos, activities, and more that focus on specific topics and targets.
Check them out:
https://universe-of-learning.org/informal-educators/science-resources/
#Astronomy #Astrodon #ITeachPhysics
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2024-06-26 03:00:44 GMT

I went on a tour of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center today with a group of students. The highlight was seeing (parts of) the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope being tested in the massive clean room.
From left to right, we see the spacecraft bus (where the computers, communications equipment, and propellent are housed), spare solar panels, and the coronagraph instrument (under the silver tent thing, near the wall of air filters).
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2024-06-19 19:22:56 GMT

Hubble is back doing science!
Here is one of the first new images #Hubble has taken since transitioning to one-gyro mode and restarting science operations June 14.
It features the lenticular galaxy NGC 1546, a member of the Dorado group of galaxies, about 58 million light years away.
https://hubblesite.org/contents/news-releases/2024/news-2024-026
https://cdn.masto.host/astrodonsocial/media_attachments/files/112/644/826/081/871/693/original/ac5e7fc1f26f7b2f.jpg

2024-06-05 23:53:43 GMT

Remember Zoozve? The quasi-moon of Venus featured on Radiolab that was named after a typo on a map of the Solar System?
Now is your chance to name one of Earth’s quasi-moons. The IAU and Radiolab are holding a contest — they will pick the top 10 names, which then go to a popular vote.
More info: https://www.iau.org/news/pressreleases/detail/iau2406/
#astronomy #space
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