Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Xueqing Chen

@xqchen.bsky.social

My popular-science video debunking internet myths about the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS on the Chinese video platform Bilibili now has 50k+ views! ⬇️
【关于3I/ATLAS的所有真实科学。【天文PhD解读】】 www.bilibili.com/video/BV1JY1...

November 27, 2025 at 7:17 PM

Xueqing Chen

@xqchen.bsky.social

Happy to share my insights on the potential of Doppler imaging with the ELT at #ExoELT last week! Also my first time at #ESO Garching!

November 27, 2025 at 7:01 PM

Reposted by Xueqing Chen

Jayne Birkby

@jaynebirkby.bsky.social

It’s #ExoELT week! A week dedicated to discussing all things exoplanets and the ELT, @eso.org’s 39-m telescope coming online in 2029 😱 The size of this machine is just extraordinary. You can fit a whole VLT telescope on its Nasmyth platform 🤯

November 17, 2025 at 12:49 PM

Reposted by Xueqing Chen

Simeon Schmauß

@stim3on.bsky.social

This photo from the Perseverance rover captured in early March, may be my favorite Mars image from this year.

It shows Mars' smaller moon Deimos over the hills of the Nili Planum region in the dark skies before dawn. 🔭

Full res: flic.kr/p/2rwUwV7

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Simeon Schmauß

A picture of Mars taken during astronomical twilight (the sun was 13° below the horizon). It shows a dimly lit reddish landscape with some hills at the horizon. Deimos, Mars' smaller moon shines with a small halo in the pale sky above.

October 2, 2025 at 4:16 PM

Xueqing Chen

@xqchen.bsky.social

this could be my new unlock screen

Jason Major @jpmajor.bsky.social · Oct 11

Dione in front of Saturn, captured by Cassini 20 years ago today on October 11, 2005 🌖🪐

October 12, 2025 at 6:58 PM

Xueqing Chen

@xqchen.bsky.social

very informative stuff!

Keith Smith @drkeithsmith.bsky.social · Oct 9

How can we tell what's inside an #exoplanet? @timlichtenberg.bsky.social et al review how a planet's atmosphere interacts with its interior. Atmospheric observations can distinguish between lava worlds, water worlds, temperate surfaces or supercritical interiors. ☄️
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

October 10, 2025 at 10:50 AM

Xueqing Chen

@xqchen.bsky.social

Beautiful illustration of Enceladus ocean!

ESA Space Science @science.esa.int · Oct 1

🆕 The discovery of new complex organic molecules at Saturn's #Enceladus enhances the likelihood that the moon is habitable 🪐

On Earth, these molecules are involved in chemical reaction chains that lead to the more complex molecules essential for life.

Read more 👉 www.esa.int/Science_Expl...
🔭 🧪 ☄️

Scientific illustration showing a cross-section of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. It features three labelled layers: An ice shell at the top, with visible cracks releasing jets of water vapour into space; an ocean in the middle, depicted as a large body of water beneath the ice; a rocky core at the bottom, shown emitting heat that may drive the jets. In the background, Saturn and its rings are visible in space.

October 2, 2025 at 1:16 PM

Xueqing Chen

@xqchen.bsky.social

very cool animation of a forming rogue planet!

ESO @eso.org · Oct 2

The findings indicate that at least some rogue planets may share a similar formation path to stars since similar bursts of accretion have been spotted in young stars before. 3/

October 2, 2025 at 12:45 PM

Reposted by Xueqing Chen

Perseverance Image Bot 📡

@persevereimgbot.bsky.social

Sol 1629: Right Navcam, imaged at 15:45:43.410 (local mean solar time)

An image taken by the Perseverance rover on Mars

September 22, 2025 at 3:31 PM

Xueqing Chen

@xqchen.bsky.social

beautiful render!

Space Telescope Science Institute @stsci.edu · Sep 18

A nearby, burned-out star is eating a fragment of a Pluto-like object. Only Hubble could identify that this is taking place with its unique ultraviolet vision: https://bit.ly/4mZk6sx 🔭 🧪

An illustration showing a glowing white object in the upper left corner. This object is encircled by hundreds of thin, concentric, pale-yellow rings on an angle from bottom left to top right. The rings are palest closest to the central, glowing white object. A curving trail of gray, rock-like fragments marches across the right side, through the thin rings and joins the rings at far right. The eight largest fragments of varying sizes appear in the foreground. These objects have white, comet-like tails streaking away from the glowing white object in the rings’ center. The curving trail of fragments bends toward the glowing white object. At the bottom left corner is the label Artist’s Concept.

September 22, 2025 at 8:07 PM

Xueqing Chen

@xqchen.bsky.social

beautiful artist illustration

AAS Nova @aasnova.org · Sep 22

Nathalie Korhonen Cuestas reports for @astrobites.bsky.social on supermassive black holes in the early universe that may have been hiding phases of their growth. aasnova.org/2025/09/22/a... 🔭

Are Quasars Growing in Secret?

Astrobites reports on supermassive black holes in the early universe that may have been hiding phases of their growth.

aasnova.org

September 22, 2025 at 8:01 PM

Reposted by Xueqing Chen

Astronomy Picture of the Day 🪐

@apod.shinyakato.dev

🔭 Galaxies, Stars, and Dust

Image Credit & Copyright: Robert Eder

apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25082...

$This well-composed telescopic field of view covers over a Full Moon on the sky toward the high-flying constellation Pegasus. Of course the brighter stars show diffraction spikes, the commonly seen effect of internal supports in reflecting telescopes, and lie well within our own Milky Way galaxy. The faint but pervasive clouds of interstellar dust ride above the galactic plane and dimly reflect the Milky Way's starlight. Known as galactic cirrus or integrated flux nebulae they are associated with the Milky Way's molecular clouds. In fact, the diffuse cloud cataloged as MBM 54, less than a thousand light-years distant, fills the scene. The galaxy seemingly tangled in the dusty cloud is the striking spiral galaxy NGC 7497. It's some 60 million light-years away, though. Seen almost edge-on near the center of the field, NGC 7497's own spiral arms and dust lanes echo the colors of stars and dust in our own Milky Way.$

August 28, 2025 at 8:00 AM

Xueqing Chen

@xqchen.bsky.social

Threw my WISE1049B Doppler maps in Blender and it came out like a stormy gas giant world!
How I did it ➡️
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0aG...
#astroart #spaceart

Doppler imaging X procedural gas giant planet rendering

YouTube video by ExoRender

www.youtube.com

August 30, 2025 at 8:43 PM

Reposted by Xueqing Chen

Don Davis

@ddavisspaceart.bsky.social

An acrylic painting done in 1982 for an Earth history related 'Cosmic Calendar' that was supposed to be published by a Carl Sagan affiliated business, but the project fell apart leaving a dozen unused paintings. I have mine, including one that is yet unfinished. Here we see a Paleozoic tide pool.

An acrylic hair brush and airbrush painting from a failed calendar project. 'January' started the series sowing Earth from its formation to 2.2 billion years ago, half the history of Earth. Each successive month represented half the remaining history with some 'editorial shuffling'. I did the first 6 months, Adolf Schaller did the last more recent ones and we collaborated equally on the final month. Unfortunately his work for the project is probably lost except for the 'December' work which I have and still has my contributions unfinished.

#SciArt

August 13, 2025 at 6:05 AM

Reposted by Xueqing Chen

Mark Marley

@markmarley.bsky.social

The standard cartoon was pretty on point.

Artist conception of a giant planet forming in a stellar disk, clearing a gap.

August 26, 2025 at 4:15 PM

Xueqing Chen

@xqchen.bsky.social

Super excited that my first PhD paper "Global weather map reveals persistent top-of-atmosphere features on the nearest brown dwarfs" is accepted and now out on arXiv!
Check out the first multi-band weather maps of not just one, but two extrasolar worlds!
Link to paper: arxiv.org/abs/2408.09606