Bill Keel
@ngc3314.bsky.social
Astronomer, husband, father, staff of cats, sometime trombonist
Aurora from Tuscaloosa, Alabama! (Shot with my Moto phone propped atop car; I ran a bunch of DSLR sequences and its battery is recharging before I can download). That's a lifetime total of two by now! Red color was visible to the eye.
November 12, 2025 at 4:32 AM
Aurora from Tuscaloosa, Alabama! (Shot with my Moto phone propped atop car; I ran a bunch of DSLR sequences and its battery is recharging before I can download). That's a lifetime total of two by now! Red color was visible to the eye.
Sure, but it would be spectacular on a 16-bit binary odometer.
November 10, 2025 at 8:44 PM
Sure, but it would be spectacular on a 16-bit binary odometer.
Pat Henry is handing the running of DragonCon over to his daughters (of whom I interact with Rachel Reeves annually). Heartening but unexpected, this is a big enough deal for the city to be covered in the Atlanta Business Chronicle. Bonus, a bit of origin story. www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/news...
How a comic book owner created Dragon Con - Atlanta Business Chronicle
Nearly 40 years ago, comic book store owner Pat Henry was brainstorming with “a bunch of geeks," he said. The group later organized what would become the inaugural Dragon Con, attracting 75,000 fans t...
www.bizjournals.com
November 4, 2025 at 2:44 PM
Pat Henry is handing the running of DragonCon over to his daughters (of whom I interact with Rachel Reeves annually). Heartening but unexpected, this is a big enough deal for the city to be covered in the Atlanta Business Chronicle. Bonus, a bit of origin story. www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/news...
Hmm. Manufacturer of doorbell cameras has new default mode where an AI goes through all the streams in a neighborhood to find lost pets. What could go wrong, whether it can be hacked or not?
November 2, 2025 at 1:44 PM
Hmm. Manufacturer of doorbell cameras has new default mode where an AI goes through all the streams in a neighborhood to find lost pets. What could go wrong, whether it can be hacked or not?
Manuscript referee report is just back from journal. It obviously got a very close reading. The reviewer insists that minus signs in coordinate designations (of which hundreds occur in the tables) should use LaTeX $-$, not just -.
November 2, 2025 at 4:29 AM
Manuscript referee report is just back from journal. It obviously got a very close reading. The reviewer insists that minus signs in coordinate designations (of which hundreds occur in the tables) should use LaTeX $-$, not just -.
Oh. Halloween-themed arxiv submissions are now a Thing. Or in some cases a Thing from Another World?
October 31, 2025 at 7:46 PM
Oh. Halloween-themed arxiv submissions are now a Thing. Or in some cases a Thing from Another World?
Reposted by Bill Keel
🌟 The November 2025 edition of The Evening Sky Map is ready for download at skymaps.com/tesm/. The PDF features a Sky Calendar and easy-to-use sky maps for the northern and southern hemispheres, as well as equatorial regions. Please share, and enjoy exploring the Universe! 🔭
#stargazing #space
#stargazing #space
October 29, 2025 at 12:06 PM
🌟 The November 2025 edition of The Evening Sky Map is ready for download at skymaps.com/tesm/. The PDF features a Sky Calendar and easy-to-use sky maps for the northern and southern hemispheres, as well as equatorial regions. Please share, and enjoy exploring the Universe! 🔭
#stargazing #space
#stargazing #space
Montage of images we got from Space Track overnight down in the Hilton in Live Astronomy, remotely operating 1-meter observatory telescopes in AZ, Chile, Canary Islands. Finally finished data processing and color-compositing (we saw only single-filter greyscale at the time). Come join us in 2026!
October 27, 2025 at 5:59 PM
Montage of images we got from Space Track overnight down in the Hilton in Live Astronomy, remotely operating 1-meter observatory telescopes in AZ, Chile, Canary Islands. Finally finished data processing and color-compositing (we saw only single-filter greyscale at the time). Come join us in 2026!
Reading The Martians by David Baron, I was struck by a time early in the history of the canal controversy - a single erudite and well-connected proponent convinced a broad public of something that almost the entire astronomical community said was, at best, not proven. No reason, why do you ask?
October 15, 2025 at 8:28 PM
Reading The Martians by David Baron, I was struck by a time early in the history of the canal controversy - a single erudite and well-connected proponent convinced a broad public of something that almost the entire astronomical community said was, at best, not proven. No reason, why do you ask?
From collaborator email this morning: "I have deconvolution code and am not afraid to use it (even when maybe I should be)." (Does it even matter whether HST or JWST is the context?)
October 1, 2025 at 4:03 PM
From collaborator email this morning: "I have deconvolution code and am not afraid to use it (even when maybe I should be)." (Does it even matter whether HST or JWST is the context?)
Reposted by Bill Keel
Hubble image of Arp 297, also known as NGC 5754 and NGC 5752.
The pair's interactions created kinked arms in NGC 5754 (the large spiral galaxy) and the blue star clusters in the core of NGC 5752 (the smaller galaxy).
Credit: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage team, W. Keel
Source
The pair's interactions created kinked arms in NGC 5754 (the large spiral galaxy) and the blue star clusters in the core of NGC 5752 (the smaller galaxy).
Credit: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage team, W. Keel
Source
October 1, 2025 at 12:31 AM
Hubble image of Arp 297, also known as NGC 5754 and NGC 5752.
The pair's interactions created kinked arms in NGC 5754 (the large spiral galaxy) and the blue star clusters in the core of NGC 5752 (the smaller galaxy).
Credit: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage team, W. Keel
Source
The pair's interactions created kinked arms in NGC 5754 (the large spiral galaxy) and the blue star clusters in the core of NGC 5752 (the smaller galaxy).
Credit: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage team, W. Keel
Source
Reposted by Bill Keel
🌟 The October 2025 edition of The Evening Sky Map is ready for download at skymaps.com/tesm/. The PDF features a Sky Calendar and easy-to-use sky maps for the northern and southern hemispheres, as well as equatorial regions. Please share, and enjoy exploring the Universe! 🔭
#stargazing
#stargazing
September 29, 2025 at 2:19 PM
🌟 The October 2025 edition of The Evening Sky Map is ready for download at skymaps.com/tesm/. The PDF features a Sky Calendar and easy-to-use sky maps for the northern and southern hemispheres, as well as equatorial regions. Please share, and enjoy exploring the Universe! 🔭
#stargazing
#stargazing
Today in "everything is connected if you pull hard enough".
Gustav Holst was the school music teacher of Cecilia Payne, who discovered the chemical composition of the stars. He tried to get her to become a musician but she ignored him. She went on to write the most important astrophysics PhD of the 20th century and become the first woman professor at Harvard
#classicalmusic #opera When I see "Gustav Holst" I can't help but wishing that he had stopped writing "The Planets" long before he got to Neptune. 🤮
September 29, 2025 at 3:49 PM
Today in "everything is connected if you pull hard enough".
Won't name and shame, but an interesting abstract in #arxiv was just posted using multiple "private" macros for phrases, many pointless math mode tags, and part of the text which was behind a %. Colleagues, think of your readers! (Not much of a pet peeve these days, but if your aim is readership...)
September 25, 2025 at 3:15 PM
Won't name and shame, but an interesting abstract in #arxiv was just posted using multiple "private" macros for phrases, many pointless math mode tags, and part of the text which was behind a %. Colleagues, think of your readers! (Not much of a pet peeve these days, but if your aim is readership...)
Reposted by Bill Keel
🌟 The September 2025 edition of The Evening Sky Map is ready for download at skymaps.com/tesm/. The PDF features a Sky Calendar and easy-to-use sky maps for the northern and southern hemispheres, as well as the equatorial regions. Feel free to share, and enjoy exploring the Universe! 🔭
#stargazing
#stargazing
August 29, 2025 at 1:48 PM
🌟 The September 2025 edition of The Evening Sky Map is ready for download at skymaps.com/tesm/. The PDF features a Sky Calendar and easy-to-use sky maps for the northern and southern hemispheres, as well as the equatorial regions. Feel free to share, and enjoy exploring the Universe! 🔭
#stargazing
#stargazing
OK, ready or not, I'm declaring the PPT visuals done for my solo panel on "Stars that go bump, bang, or boing in the night"
for DragonCon Space Track on Saturday evening. With any weather luck, we can show folks ongoing supernova explosions in Live Astronomy overnight each night.
for DragonCon Space Track on Saturday evening. With any weather luck, we can show folks ongoing supernova explosions in Live Astronomy overnight each night.
August 25, 2025 at 6:35 PM
OK, ready or not, I'm declaring the PPT visuals done for my solo panel on "Stars that go bump, bang, or boing in the night"
for DragonCon Space Track on Saturday evening. With any weather luck, we can show folks ongoing supernova explosions in Live Astronomy overnight each night.
for DragonCon Space Track on Saturday evening. With any weather luck, we can show folks ongoing supernova explosions in Live Astronomy overnight each night.
Reposted by Bill Keel
This is again a reminder that college isn’t supposed to just teach you a job but is supposed to teach you how to think, because that job you’re training for might not exist when you graduate
"Among college graduates ages 22 to 27, computer science and computer engineering majors are facing some of the highest unemployment rates, 6.1% and 7.5% respectively ...
That is more than double the unemployment rate among recent biology and art history graduates, which is just 3%"
That is more than double the unemployment rate among recent biology and art history graduates, which is just 3%"
Goodbye, $165,000 Tech Jobs. Student Coders Seek Work at Chipotle.
www.nytimes.com
August 10, 2025 at 1:48 PM
This is again a reminder that college isn’t supposed to just teach you a job but is supposed to teach you how to think, because that job you’re training for might not exist when you graduate
Ahh, here's my tentative DragonCon schedule. Live Astronomy each night, right, "Interstellar Objects" seem to be out but "Things that go Bang, Boom, or Boing in the Night" is in. OTOH this early in August even the science track schedules remain somewhere between fantasy and science fiction.
August 2, 2025 at 9:56 PM
Ahh, here's my tentative DragonCon schedule. Live Astronomy each night, right, "Interstellar Objects" seem to be out but "Things that go Bang, Boom, or Boing in the Night" is in. OTOH this early in August even the science track schedules remain somewhere between fantasy and science fiction.
Note for bystanders: this is an artifact of a time decades ago, when scientists communicated by means of "preprints", physical copies of submitted work circulated because submission-to-publication in some journals could take a year.
@ngc3314.bsky.social Honestly, the rubbish I have somehow failed to throw away for years…
July 30, 2025 at 12:36 PM
Note for bystanders: this is an artifact of a time decades ago, when scientists communicated by means of "preprints", physical copies of submitted work circulated because submission-to-publication in some journals could take a year.
Reposted by Bill Keel
"AI" is IT from A Wrinkle in Time.
"Just give in," the AI pushers say. "We can all be together in this. You don't have to think."
Time to hold onto your inner Meg, friends.
"Just give in," the AI pushers say. "We can all be together in this. You don't have to think."
Time to hold onto your inner Meg, friends.
July 29, 2025 at 12:50 AM
"AI" is IT from A Wrinkle in Time.
"Just give in," the AI pushers say. "We can all be together in this. You don't have to think."
Time to hold onto your inner Meg, friends.
"Just give in," the AI pushers say. "We can all be together in this. You don't have to think."
Time to hold onto your inner Meg, friends.
I am old enough to have seen a performance by one of Tom Lehrer's "American Musical theater"classes at UCSC. He found musicals for them to perform that I couldn't quite believe had actually been written (ex:"Jupiter Forbid").
R.I.P.
and hoping Alabama doesn't get the Bomb.
R.I.P.
and hoping Alabama doesn't get the Bomb.
July 28, 2025 at 2:49 PM
I am old enough to have seen a performance by one of Tom Lehrer's "American Musical theater"classes at UCSC. He found musicals for them to perform that I couldn't quite believe had actually been written (ex:"Jupiter Forbid").
R.I.P.
and hoping Alabama doesn't get the Bomb.
R.I.P.
and hoping Alabama doesn't get the Bomb.
Reposted by Bill Keel
🌟 The August 2025 edition of The Evening Sky Map is ready for download at skymaps.com/tesm/. The PDF features a Sky Calendar and easy-to-use sky maps for the northern and southern hemispheres, as well as the equatorial regions. Feel free to share, and enjoy exploring the Universe! 🔭
#stargazing
#stargazing
July 28, 2025 at 1:50 PM
🌟 The August 2025 edition of The Evening Sky Map is ready for download at skymaps.com/tesm/. The PDF features a Sky Calendar and easy-to-use sky maps for the northern and southern hemispheres, as well as the equatorial regions. Feel free to share, and enjoy exploring the Universe! 🔭
#stargazing
#stargazing
Боже мой!
This is AMAZING (and so very in keeping with Tom Lehrer!)!!
With Tom Lehrer's passing, I suppose this is a moment to share the story of the prank he played on the National Security Agency, and how it went undiscovered for nearly 60 years.
July 27, 2025 at 10:51 PM
Боже мой!
Working on visuals for a talk on interstellar objects at DragonCon in 5 weeks. (Thanks to colleagues such as @chrislintott.bsky.social and @astrokiwi.bsky.social for all the simulation detail!). I am now bracing myself for the inevitable inclusion of the AV-lobe phenomenon.
July 26, 2025 at 6:57 PM
Working on visuals for a talk on interstellar objects at DragonCon in 5 weeks. (Thanks to colleagues such as @chrislintott.bsky.social and @astrokiwi.bsky.social for all the simulation detail!). I am now bracing myself for the inevitable inclusion of the AV-lobe phenomenon.
Current SN Ia 2025rbx in NGC 7331 is really bright and in a photogenic spot near the nucleus. (5m each BVR during morning twilight, 1m Kapteyn telescope on La Palma remotely operated by SARA consortium). 🔭
July 25, 2025 at 4:54 PM
Current SN Ia 2025rbx in NGC 7331 is really bright and in a photogenic spot near the nucleus. (5m each BVR during morning twilight, 1m Kapteyn telescope on La Palma remotely operated by SARA consortium). 🔭