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There's this sort of anthropomorphizing that inherently happens in language that really gets me sometimes. I'm still not over the terminology of "gravity assist," the technique where we launch satellites into the orbit of other planets so that we can build momentum via the astounding and literally astronomical strength of their gravitational forces, to "slingshot" them into the direction we need with a speed that we could never, ever, ever create ourselves. I mean, some of these slingshots easily get probes hurtling through space at tens of thousands of miles per hour. Wikipedia has a handy diagram of the Voyager 1 satellite doing such a thing.

"Gravity assist." "Slingshot." Of course, on a very basic and objective level, yes, we are taking advantage of forces generated by outside objects to specifically help in our goals. We're getting help from objects in the same way a river can power a mill. And of course we call it a "slingshot," because the motion is very similar (mentally at least; I can't be sure about the exact physics).

Plus, especially compared to the other sciences, the terminology for astrophysics is like, really straightforward. "Black hole?" Damn yeah it sure is. "Big bang?" It sure was. "Galactic cluster?" Buddy you're never gonna guess what this is. I think it's an effect of the fact that language is generally developed for life on earth and all the strange variances that happen on its surface, that applying it to something as alien and vast as space, general terms tend to suffice very well in a lot more places than, like... idk, botany.

But, like. "Gravity assist." I still can't get the notion out of my head that such language implies us receiving active help from our celestial neighbors. They come to our aid. We are working together. We are assisted. Jupiter and the other planets saw our little messengers coming from its pale blue molecular cousin, and we set up the physics just right, so that they could help us send them out to far stranger places than this, to tell us all about what they find out there.

We are assisted.

And there is no better way to illustrate my feelings on the matter than to just show you guys one of my favorite paintings, this 1973 NASA art by Rick Guidice to show the Pioneer probe doing this exact thing:

"... You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your longing. Embody me. ..."

Gravity assist.

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This video is part of the satirical series "This is JSC" created by students at NASA Johnson Space Center and shows NASA astronaut Thomas Marshburn acting out an exaggerated version of what some astronauts experience after spending a while in microgravity. There are anecdotes from astronauts about dropping items after their return to Earth out of habit from letting things float on the space station, however the clip is very exaggerated for comedic purposes.

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Hey everyone guess whose birthday it is!!

Happy birthday Juice!! Everyone throw some lunchables into space for our friend Juice

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Astronomers are the funniest people on earth actually

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In terms of science communication and space exploration advocacy, Elon Musk has sent us back into the fucking Stone Age.

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March 28, 2013 — Soyuz TMA-08M launches to the International Space Station

Soyuz TMA-08M Carat carried three members of Expedition 35, two Russians (Pavel Vinogradov and Aleksandr Misurkin) and one American (Chris Cassidy), to the station and utilized an expedited rendezvous and docking procedure, docking to the station after only six hours in orbit rather than the usual two days.

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"An early morning fog almost turns space shuttle Discovery invisible as it rolls out from the Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Pad 39B for the STS-102 mission to the International Space Station. It lifted off from LC-39B on March 8, 2001."

Credit: NASA

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Martian polar ice caps © ESA

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The first six female American astronauts (top: Anna Fisher; middle: Rhea Seddon & Judy Resnik; bottom: Shannon Lucid, Sally Ride, & Kathy Sullivan)

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I love telling children whom I am put very temporarily in charge of during tours, to ask their parents or teachers for something and being able to unleash various levels of hell onto unsuspecting authority figures that I will never have to meet

like today I told some kids to ask their science teacher to do the mentos-coke experiment with them

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So APOD is officially dead then

Today NASA decided some (genuinely ugly) AI generated bs with a real video inserted to create a dumb and sad excuse for a holiday aesthetic is worthy of being the Astronomy Picture of the Day December 7th 2024.

embarrassing.

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me: I should set realistic goals for how to improve in my job as a museum tour guide, like figuring out the best paths, coming up with some jokes, looking up the answers to frequently asked questions and training my voice

also me: I should memorize every single exhibition piece

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(x)

fellow museum workers/tour guides, what is something you just keep forgetting children don't know about yet 😩

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Thanks to our friends at USGS Astrogeology for creating these, and Happy Martian New Year!

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Mission Specialist Sally Ride on Space Shuttle Challenger middeck, STS-7

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If you're feeling anxious or depressed about the climate and want to do something to help right now, from your bed, for free...

Start helping with citizen science projects

What's a citizen science project? Basically, it's crowdsourced science. In this case, crowdsourced climate science, that you can help with!

You don't need qualifications or any training besides the slideshow at the start of a project. There are a lot of things that humans can do way better than machines can, even with only minimal training, that are vital to science - especially digitizing records and building searchable databases

Like labeling trees in aerial photos so that scientists have better datasets to use for restoration.

Or counting cells in fossilized plants to track the impacts of climate change.

Or digitizing old atmospheric data to help scientists track the warming effects of El Niño.

Or counting penguins to help scientists better protect them.

Those are all on one of the most prominent citizen science platforms, called Zooniverse, but there are a ton of others, too.

Oh, and btw, you don't have to worry about messing up, because several people see each image. Studies show that if you pool the opinions of however many regular people (different by field), it matches the accuracy rate of a trained scientist in the field.

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I spent a lot of time doing this when I was really badly injured and housebound, and it was so good for me to be able to HELP and DO SOMETHING, even when I was in too much pain to leave my bed. So if you are chronically ill/disabled/for whatever reason can't participate or volunteer for things in person, I highly highly recommend.

Next time you wish you could do something - anything - to help

Remember that actually, you can. And help with some science.