Steve Crawford
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astrocrawford.bsky.social
Steve Crawford
@astrocrawford.bsky.social
1.8K followers 1.2K following 140 posts
Astronomer wandering through time and space.

Likely to post about #Earth and #Space science especially #astronomy, Open Source Software, Open Science, and space. And hiking with our dog. Opinions are my own.

He/him.
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astrocrawford.bsky.social
For such a good start for the headline, so many missed opportunities in the article for a truly Philly experience in Baltimore.

Ft McHenry instead of Liberty Bell. Fells Point: Old Town. Lexington Market: Reading Market.

Watch on Eagles game at Magerk’s if you’re staying for the weekend!
inquirer.com Philadelphia Inquirer @inquirer.com · 2d
Baltimore is the most Philly city on the Acela corridor. From coffee and conservatories to the aquarium, museums, and standout dining, here’s how to spend a long weekend in Charm City.
Charm City eats, museums, and waterfront stays in Baltimore | Field Trip
www.inquirer.com
January 4, 2026 at 3:51 PM
astrocrawford.bsky.social
No cheating, repost with the most recent photo of your pet
Large black Shepard / lab dog with a white belly wearing a red harness. He is looking to his right. He is sitting in a slight wooded park with the sun shining behind him. The rays of sunlight slip through the trees and give the top of his head and ears a slight golden glow.
January 2, 2026 at 5:11 PM
Reposted by Steve Crawford
spacewhalerider.com
Metallic snow (or maybe frost, depending on your definition of "snow") is radar-bright material at the tops of Venus’ highest mountains, such as Maxwell Montes (11 km high), possibly made of condensed lead sulfide and bismuth sulfide that sublimate at warmer altitudes and condense on mountaintops ❄️
This Magellan full resolution radar image is centered at 65 degrees north latitude, zero degrees east longitude, along the eastern edge of Lakshmi Planum and the western edge of Maxwell Montes. The plains of Lakshmi are made up of radar-dark, homogeneous, smooth lava flows. Located near the center of the image is a feature previously mapped as tessera made up of intersecting 1- to 2-km (0.6 to 1.2 miles) wide graven. The abrupt termination of dark plains against this feature indicates that it has been partially covered by lava. Additional blocks of tessera are located along the left hand edge of the image. A series of linear parallel troughs are located along the southern edge of the image. These features, 60- to 120-km (36- to 72- miles) long and 10- to 40- km (6- to 24- miles) wide are interpreted as graben. Located along the right hand part of the image is Maxwell Montes, the highest mountain on the planet, rising to an elevation of 11.5 km (7 miles) and is part of a series of mountain belts surrounding Lakshmi Planum. The western edge of Maxwell shown in this image rises sharply, 5.0 km (3.0 miles), above the adjacent plains in Lakshmi Planum. Maxwell is made up of parallel ridges 2- to 7-km (1.2- to 4.2 miles) apart and is interpreted to have formed by compressional tectonics. The image is 300 km (180 miles) wide.
December 28, 2025 at 2:01 PM
Reposted by Steve Crawford
emily.space
Ever wondered how many bins to choose when making a histogram of data? The answer is that you shouldn't choose a number of bins yourself! ☄️ #astrocode

Here's a little notebook explaining how to make less biased histograms:
Making histograms is a common way to estimate the true density distribution of a sample. But how can we choose the number of histogram bins? And if we get fancy and use kernel density estimation (KDE)...
Making histograms is a common way to estimate the true density distribution of a sample. But how can we choose the number of histogram bins? And if we get fancy and use kernel density estimation (K...
gist.github.com
December 19, 2025 at 9:19 AM
Reposted by Steve Crawford
michaelzingale.bsky.social
Virtual Astronomy Software Talks comes early this month!
Come (virtually) hear about Julia in Astro tomorrow, with 2 talks focusing on Julia:

Paul Barrett: JuliaAstro
Paul Tieda: Comrade.jl

show starts at 11am US East Coast time

vast-seminars.github.io

#astro
#astrocode
Virtual Astronomy Software Talks
vast-seminars.github.io
December 9, 2025 at 6:12 PM
astrocrawford.bsky.social
Here are some highlights from November on open data and software from NASA Science including highlights from Lucy, Landsat and Sentinel-2, and SphereX.

science.data.nasa.gov/features-eve...
science.data.nasa.gov
December 9, 2025 at 7:49 PM
Reposted by Steve Crawford
aaccomazzi.bsky.social
I'm happy to report that "Scenario 2" won't be necessary, as NASA has just communicated to us that SciX funding will continue in 2026 (albeit at a reduced level). Therefore, we will not be forcing astronomers to leave ADS, but rather develop a plan that allows a longer transition.
December 9, 2025 at 5:20 PM
Reposted by Steve Crawford
giswqs.bsky.social
🚀 I am very excited to release the SamGeoQGIS plugin for geospatial image segmentation, powered by Meta’s Segment Anything Model (SAM 3)

In this full tutorial, I’ll walk you through how to install, configure, and start segmenting satellite imagery in QGIS without writing a single line of code!
December 9, 2025 at 7:12 PM
Reposted by Steve Crawford
kuroiao.bsky.social
This made me go looking to find that ESA has similar and in many European languages! I had no idea www.esa.int/Education/On...
Online material
www.esa.int
December 7, 2025 at 9:08 AM
Reposted by Steve Crawford
avoiland.bsky.social
For more than 26 years, Earth Observatory has been located at earthobservatory.nasa.gov. Now, as part of our next chapter, we are moving to a new home at science.nasa.gov/earth/earth-observatory. See you there! earthobservatory.nasa.gov/blogs/earthm...
December 6, 2025 at 7:20 PM
Reposted by Steve Crawford
astrocrawford.bsky.social
Today I learned that NASA has a collection of free ebooks that can be downloaded as pdfs or ebub format.

The science books even include a children’s section with fun activites and coloring books!

science.nasa.gov/multimedia/s...
Science e-Books - NASA Science
From Earth and the other planets in our solar system, to supermassive black holes and the distant galaxies that contain them, explore NASA science and imagery through our library of e-books.
science.nasa.gov
December 4, 2025 at 2:43 PM
astrocrawford.bsky.social
Today I learned that NASA has a collection of free ebooks that can be downloaded as pdfs or ebub format.

The science books even include a children’s section with fun activites and coloring books!

science.nasa.gov/multimedia/s...
Science e-Books - NASA Science
From Earth and the other planets in our solar system, to supermassive black holes and the distant galaxies that contain them, explore NASA science and imagery through our library of e-books.
science.nasa.gov
December 4, 2025 at 2:43 PM
Reposted by Steve Crawford
astroalysa.bsky.social
A reminder that this gif and a similar one for the transit method are on Wikimedia Commons for anyone to use.

I'm actually putting together a teaching dossier at the moment and I'd love to hear from people if you've used any of my gifs for teaching, outreach, or science stuff!

Links to gifs below:
astroalysa.bsky.social Dr. Alysa Orbits (Obertas) @astroalysa.bsky.social · Nov 26
Omgomg my gif demonstrating using the doppler/radial velocity method for detecting exoplanets was used in the latest PBS Space Time!!!!! 🤩
Screenshot of PBS Space Time video titled "Do We Live in the Rarest Solar System In The Universe? We're about to find out!" Image shows four panels. Upper left is a top-down perspective of a planet orbiting a star, showing both orbiting the centre of gravity of the pair (showing the "wobble" of the star). Bottom left is an edge-on perspective of the same pair. Upper right is a graph showing the edge-on speed of the star (which follows a sinusoidal curve). Bottom right is a depiction of the star's spectrum, showing dark absorption lines which move due to the doppler effect (which is how the edge-on speed of the star is determined).
November 26, 2025 at 1:53 PM
Reposted by Steve Crawford
npreining.bsky.social
Good news: "We are pleased to announce that Schmidt Sciences and NASA have generously awarded arXiv $7 million in gifts and grants, respectively, to allow arXiv to complete its technology migration project and to explore ways to improve the arXiv experience ..."
blog.arxiv.org/2025/11/24/a...
#arXiv
arXiv receives $7 million in gifts and grants from Schmidt Sciences and NASA – arXiv blog
blog.arxiv.org
November 24, 2025 at 9:41 PM
astrocrawford.bsky.social
A nice display at the Pratt Library today in honor of Jane Goodall

#Pratt #Baltimore
A collection of library books about Jane Goodall
October 2, 2025 at 8:14 PM
astrocrawford.bsky.social
For National Black Dog Day, Tycho did his best alligator impression.
Black dog lying in the middle of a river. His tail is curved up. There are rocks in the foreground and trees in the background. The furthest back trees are illuminated by sun light that also glints off the river.
October 1, 2025 at 11:30 PM
astrocrawford.bsky.social
Is this color good for the harbor? I’m not sure I’ve seen it so clear or this green.

#Baltimore #water #turtle
Baltimore harbor near Fells Point. The water is a greenish tint to it but also mostly transparent. There is a turtle swimming in the foreground, empty docks to the right, and a number of sail boats and speed boats to the left. Brick row houses can be seen behind them with the ports further in the distance. A medium sized turtle swimming in the water. The water is transparent with green tint so that the turtle is fully visible. It is sticking up its head while paddling with its feet.
October 1, 2025 at 5:36 PM
astrocrawford.bsky.social
The Maryland Transit Authority is recognizing Rosa Parks birthday today and not collecting tickets!

#Baltimore #Maryland
February 4, 2025 at 1:02 PM
Reposted by Steve Crawford
irsaipac.bsky.social
This press release:
www.nasa.gov/universe/new...
is about the Open Universe simulation dataset we at IRSA are helping to release and make available via the cloud.
Here is a Python Notebook exploring this data set:
caltech-ipac.github.io/irsa-tutoria...
New Simulated Universe Previews Panoramas From NASA’s Roman Telescope - NASA
Astronomers have released a set of more than a million simulated images showcasing the cosmos as NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will see
www.nasa.gov
January 23, 2025 at 4:16 PM
Reposted by Steve Crawford
giswqs.bsky.social
📢 I'm teaching a Geographic Software Design course this semester at the University of Tennessee! 🎉 All course materials will be freely available online, with new video lectures dropping three times a week.
January 22, 2025 at 1:25 PM
astrocrawford.bsky.social
It is 21 F and I just saw two people biking down Boston St in Baltimore!

My bigger concern wasn’t the weather (as people bike in all weather), it was that it is dark out and Boston St is a very busy street (they both had lights).

#Baltimore
January 22, 2025 at 12:29 AM
Reposted by Steve Crawford
sarahkendrew.bsky.social
Here’s a handsome dog enjoying the snow for your timeline.
Black dog in a blue coat stepping onto a frozen stream in the woods. The trees are bare of leaves and there’s snow on the ground.
January 21, 2025 at 1:18 AM
astrocrawford.bsky.social
Just an owl hanging out in Baltimore on a Saturday night

#Baltimore #Owl
An owl sitting on a branch with many other branches around it. It is grey with brown stripes. Jupiter can be seen behind it in the blue grey sky.
January 18, 2025 at 11:24 PM
Reposted by Steve Crawford
scottwfleming.bsky.social
My Division is hiring! Do you have an astronomy backround and want to help lead the team designing and building cloud-based research platforms to support NASA missions? Applications are due Feb. 24th! You can also buy back time for personal research! 🔭 recruiting2.ultipro.com/SPA1004AURA/...
January 17, 2025 at 9:43 PM
Reposted by Steve Crawford
asclnet.bsky.social
Last session of #AAS245, the Lancelot M. Berkeley − New York Community Trust Prize for Meritorious Work in Astronomy Lecture, which will be given by....
January 16, 2025 at 9:49 PM