Tom Megeath
Astronomer studying the birth of stars, rust belt academic, connoisseur of beer inspired acronyms, closet Dadaist, & child of immigrant.
- Reposted by Tom MegeathMondays are better with an octopus squid 🦑💫 The octopus squid (Octopoteuthis deletron) is unusual among squids. Most squids have eight arms and two long tentacles, making a total of 10 appendages. As young Octopoteuthis mature, their two feeding tentacles are reabsorbed into their bodies.
- Reposted by Tom MegeathEVs now represent more than 10% of new car sales in 39 countries, including Vietnam at 38% and Indonesia at 15%. In the U.S., that figure is less than 10%. The gap signals a competitive problem that goes far beyond climate – it's about who controls the future of automotive jobs. buff.ly/H5ETTBQ
- Reposted by Tom MegeathOne MILLION satellites www.pcmag.com/news/spacex-...
- Reposted by Tom MegeathEnjoy a Medieval Cover of R.E.M.‘s “Losing My Religion” www.openculture.com/2026/01/enjo...
- Reposted by Tom MegeathDragonfly 😍 dragonfly.jhuapl.edu/Gallery/file...
- Reposted by Tom MegeathThe US government lost more than 10,000 STEM PhDs last year, according to an analysis by Science of newly released OPM data, with 11 departures for every hire. And many OPM calls "voluntary" separations were probably pushed. www.science.org/content/arti...
- Reposted by Tom MegeathIf you need some extra distraction from *gestures broadly at everything,* Kilauea is here to help. The next eruptive episode, episode 41, looks to be kicking off right now! Fountains are starting to grow in height. USGS LIVE stream here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXKu...
- Reposted by Tom MegeathThe Nesin Mathematics Village in western Turkey was dreamed up by award-winning mathematician Ali Nesin to engage his students
- Reposted by Tom MegeathOTD five yrs ago, thanks to the dedication and hard work of @nuclearban.bsky.social, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons entered into force, making the development, testing, production, possession, stockpiling, and use—or threatened use—of nuclear weapons anywhere in the world illegal.
- Reposted by Tom MegeathOur paper on the mysterious Devonian organism Prototaxites has now finally been published! See the paper here (www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...) and our explainer thread below! Prototaxites reconstruction by Matt Humpage
- On the 25th anniversary of the Wikipedia, I wanted to express my gratitude to the writers of the Hydrogen Spectral Series page (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroge...). Great resource for me and the students I work with, and a great example of a useful and concise wikipedia page.
- Reposted by Tom MegeathI tried to create a small video showing the orbit of the #AlphaCentauri binary star, the closest star system to our sun (without Proxima). Here is #Spitzer IRAC 4.5 Microns (infrared) with quite a gap between 2006 and 2016. The orbit between the two stars has i=79° (seeing the orbit on its side).
- Reposted by Tom MegeathPeople will get sicker. More people will have heart attacks and lung disease and other health challenges because of pollution. People’s lives will get worse, and shorter. People you know. Maybe me. Maybe you.
- Reposted by Tom MegeathBorn on this day, January 9, 1944: Jimmy Page, legendary Led Zeppelin guitarist, here showing off his antique cargo trike. Happy #bicyclebirthday, Jimmy!
- Reposted by Tom MegeathEven the UW Madison Libraries (which are great!) can't keep up with the ever-proliferating Springer Nature journals. Sorry, not going to pay $39.95 per article.
- Reposted by Tom MegeathWatch tonight on PBS (9 PM eastern, 8 PM central) and PBS Passport:
- Reposted by Tom MegeathSince posting this 2025 year-long keogram, there have been quite a few questions asking how it was created and what is visible. In this thread I'll try to explain how it all works.
- Reposted by Tom MegeathThis is one of my favourite space pictures. Crescent Earth, photographed by the crew of Apollo 15.
- Reposted by Tom MegeathVery good news for NASA Science in the compromise 2026 funding bill released by Congress today:
- Reposted by Tom Megeath#PPOD: Team members working with NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover created this “postcard” by commanding the rover to take images at two times of day on Nov. 18, 2025, spanning the 4,722nd and 4,723rd Martian days, or sols, of the mission. 🧪 🔭 Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
- Reposted by Tom MegeathNASA's SPHEREx has completed its first multispectral map of the infrared sky. It sees the sky in 102 infrared "colors," which lets it do things like this: One image highlights mature stars; the other focuses on carbon soot & gas clouds where new stars form. 🧪🔭 www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/pia26...
- Reposted by Tom MegeathThe twelfth installment in the @nytimes.com Lost Science series is up: an entomologist who helped protect people from malaria. Story by @alexaroblesgil.bsky.social Gift link: nyti.ms/4pBdYbk
- Reposted by Tom MegeathThe @nytimes.com Lost Science series continues. Here's my Q&A with a scientist who was studying how wildfire smoke threatens human health when the EPA decided that her research was no longer a funding priority. Gift link: nyti.ms/4jhpw14
- Reposted by Tom Megeath"I don’t know why my fellowship was terminated. I suspect that it has something to do with studying a species that doesn’t fit the binary of what we expect to see in nature, with completely different males and females." @carlzimmer.com profiles my wonderful coauthor @jjinsing.bsky.social Gift link.
- Reposted by Tom MegeathACTUAL GOOD NEWS EVERYONE: The Paleontological Research Institution and the Museum of the Earth have made it through the crisis! Thanks to everyone who shared or donated-every donation mattered! Please share the good news just as widely!⚒️🧪🦑 Together we did #savePRI www.ithaca.com/news/ithaca/...
- Reposted by Tom MegeathThe last bombshell paleontology discovery of a year of bombshell discoveries: Ammonites survived the K-PG extinction! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Reposted by Tom MegeathPaleoclimatologist Jessica Tierney recently published a global temperature record covering almost the past half-billion years. According to her model, 50 million years ago, inland temperatures approached 122 degrees Fahrenheit. www.quantamagazine.org/climate-extr...
- Reposted by Tom MegeathBrittle star vs. Squid! Ophiuroids only appear dainty & harmless. Another cool moment from #OkeanosExplorer #MarineLife youtu.be/oHN4sWAuBVc?...
- Reposted by Tom MegeathToday in 1964, Rod Serling’s “Carol for Another Christmas,” one of the most unusual versions of Charles Dickens’ classic story ever shown on television, was broadcast for the first and only time on ABC, the first in a series of programs fully underwritten by Xerox to support the United Nations.
- Reposted by Tom MegeathA little 3I/ATLAS update building on @marshall-eubanks.bsky.social's nice RNAAS from last week. Given its non-grav acceleration and the rate at which it's losing mass, you can work out its size. The answer: a diameter around 1 km, very typical for comets. arxiv.org/abs/2512.18341 🔭 🧪
- Reposted by Tom MegeathIn honor of the winter solstice, here is IC 1848, the Soul Nebula. It may be the darkest day of the year (for those of us in the N. hemisphere), but the light is still here and now it begins to grow. 10.7hrs, #Seestar S50 🔭 🧪 Siril, GraXpert, Starnet, GIMP
- Reposted by Tom Megeath1/n 2 NEW epic images of Phobos over Mars just released by @esa.int Mars Express This view is especially striking, with Phobos between the Tharsis volcanoes and Noctis Labyrinthus–Valles Marineris Full resolution 300MP(!) & info on: flic.kr/p/2rMW4so Credit: ESA/DLR/FUBerlin/AndreaLuck CC BY 🧪🔭
- Reposted by Tom MegeathOn the 5th day of fossils, my true love gave to me... 5 GOLD TRILOBITES! Beecher's Bed is a special Ordovician site in New York that preserves trilobite soft tissue with pyrite replacement. Legs, antenna and even trilobite eggs are found here. 1/x #12DaysofFossils
- Reposted by Tom MegeathOn the 1st day of fossils, my true love gave to me... A Clarkeocrinus troosti. I only have 1 in my collection. Despite my online handle, it is not named after me. This Devonian crinoid was named after the first New York State Museum Director, John M. Clarke. #12DaysofFossils
- Reposted by Tom MegeathSubmitting a grant you’re not eligible to get
- #1 movie when you were ten years is how your 2026 is going to go.
- ten years _old_
- Reposted by Tom MegeathClosing out my year with a journal editor shocker 🧵 Checking new manuscripts today I reviewed a paper attributing 2 papers to me I did not write. A daft thing for an author to do of course. But intrigued I web searched up one of the titles and that's when it got real weird...
- Reposted by Tom MegeathI wanted to do a quick thread about this paper led by a great postdoc here at JPL, Flavio Petricca, which suggests that Titan may not have a global ocean after all. www.nasa.gov/solar-system...
- Reposted by Tom MegeathSome plants generate their own heat to attract warmth-seeking pollinators. Heat-guided pollination may be an ancient trick that predates scent & color as a way to help plants reproduce. Amazing what you see when you look at the world in thermal vision. 🧪 news.harvard.edu/gazette/stor...
- Reposted by Tom Megeath55 years ago this morning, BANEBERRY—a 10-kiloton, weapons-related, underground nuclear test 912 feet beneath the Nevada Test Site—accidentally vented, releasing 6.7 million curies of radioactive debris, including 80,000 curies of iodine-131, the second largest venting in US history. (THREAD)
- I was pleased to play a small role in this study of a jet from the protostar SVS13. In an elegant analysis led by Guillermo Blázquez-Calero, Mayra Osorio, & Guillem Anglada of IAA, we detect with ALMA wakes in the outflowing gas due to fluctuations in the jet. www.almaobservatory.org/en/press-rel...
- 🔭
- Reposted by Tom Megeath
Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Cycle 1 Call for Proposals is Open! roman-docs.ipac.caltech.edu/roman-propos... Proposal Deadline: March 17, 2026 www.nasa.gov/missions/rom... "Roman is slated to launch by May 2027, but the team is on track for launch as early as fall 2026." #NASA #astronomy #AAS - Reposted by Tom MegeathNSF plans to streamline merit review to heal self-inflicted staffing wound www.science.org/content/arti...
- In memory of Marty DiBergi. RIP.
- 🔭
- Reposted by Tom MegeathNew results from the International Gemini Observatory 🔭 on interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS, in which it continues to do fun cometary things! The new spectrum confirms 3I/ATLAS is actively emitting CN, C3, and C2 gases, plus a visible dust fan. www.astronomerstelegram.org?read=17503
- Reposted by Tom MegeathA new census of OB associations with Gaia! In this study, we took advantage of my OB stars map to find new OB associations within 1 kpc. The goal was to create a useful reference catalogue for this era, and to trace the star formation and structure of the local Milky Way. #stellarastro #galactic
- Reposted by Tom MegeathI wrote a textbook! I hope you like it. store.ioppublishing.org/page/detail/...
- Reposted by Tom MegeathOur new study provides rare causal evidence about NYC’s speed camera program. We find large reductions in collisions (30%) and injuries (16%) near intersections with cameras. www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1... @astagoff.bsky.social ky.social @brendenbeck.bsky.social nbeck.bsky.social 🧪
- Reposted by Tom MegeathY'all the latest episode of the #Kilauea #eruption just went CRAZY. It looks like pressure built up enough to explode out the ground around the two existing vents (first few seconds), leading to a massive surge in lava fountaining.🌋🤯 USGS Live stream: www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiyt...
- Reposted by Tom MegeathLDN 1436, LDN 1438, & Supernova Remnant in constellation Auriga #astrophotograhy #astronomy
- Reposted by Tom MegeathThe stanning of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS in this account continues Image credit: Victor Sabet, Julien De Winter
- Reposted by Tom MegeathNASA has completed the construction of #NASARoman! Last month, technicians joined the inner and outer portions of the observatory in Maryland. After final testing, Roman will move to the launch site at the Kennedy Space Center for launch preparations in summer 2026: go.nasa.gov/48EqnE8 🔭 🧪
- Reposted by Tom MegeathYou've probably heard about how the rapidly increasing numbers of satellites are affecting #astronomy. A new paper in @nature.com looks at the possible future for space-based telescopes — and finds 96% of some images could be impacted. 🧪🔭🛰️ By @jennaahart.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/d41...
- Reposted by Tom MegeathI have exceeded my limit and I just can’t anymore today. Even so, I wanted to share this pretty image of NGC 281, the Pacman Nebula. It’s about 9000 light years away in the direction of Cassiopeia. 5.3 hrs, #Seestar S50 from N. Atlanta suburbs 🔭 🧪 Siril, GraXpert, Starnet, GIMP
