Odele Straub
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odelestraub.bsky.social
Odele Straub
@odelestraub.bsky.social
58 followers 120 following 1 posts
* professional astrophysicist (black holes, accretion discs)
* outreach manager at the ORIGINS Excellence Cluster
* author
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Odele Straub
philplait.bsky.social
Brush your teeth after eating these or else you'll get calculus.
A vending machine with a snack called minis, and the brand is Leibniz.
November 16, 2025 at 8:41 PM
Reposted by Odele Straub
astrokatie.com
Saturn’s rings remain disconcertingly thin
November 16, 2025 at 7:20 AM
Reposted by Odele Straub
dsz.bsky.social
RIP Jane Goodall. Here she is with another incredible conservationist and humanitarian, David Attenborough. Times like this make you wish the world had a few more Janes and Davids.
A black and white photograph of Jane Goodall and Sir David Attenborough, two of the most revered figures in conservation, captured together in a moment of camaraderie. Their friendship and mutual respect spanned decades, united by a shared passion for wildlife and the natural world.
October 2, 2025 at 6:39 AM
Reposted by Odele Straub
maxplanck.de
"We have never seen anything quite like it!" 🌌🔭An international team of astronomers w/ the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy have unveiled a stunning image of #blazar PKS 1424240, affectionately nicknamed the 'Eye of Sauron' - & it's simply stunning! www.mpg.de/25171297/eye...
The 'Eye of Sauron' - a striking image of the plasma jet in the blazar PKS 1424+240, seen head-on. (Image credit: Y.Y. Kovalev et al.)
August 13, 2025 at 1:13 PM
Reposted by Odele Straub
apod.shinyakato.dev
🔭 Blue Arcs Toward Andromeda

Image Credit & Copyright: Ogle et al.

apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25080...
The Andromeda Galaxy is shown just right of center, while some unusual blue arcs appear to its left. Please see the explanation for more detailed information.
August 4, 2025 at 8:00 AM
Reposted by Odele Straub
eso.org
Sailing beneath a sea of stars! 

Feast your eyes on this stunning image of our Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) underneath a gorgeous starry night sky. It almost looks like a ship cresting a great, shadowy wave. ⛵️🌊

Read more: https://www.eso.org/public/images/potw2530a/

🔭 📷 P. Romaniuk/ESO
The bottom fourth of the image is taken up by the black shadow of Chile’s Atacama Desert, appearing as a wave with a peak near the left-hand side. Almost at the very peak of the shadow is a grey dome appearing as a white light. The branching Milky Way extends from the centre of the image to the top right.
July 28, 2025 at 7:02 AM
Reposted by Odele Straub
quantamagazine.bsky.social
In 1965, the mathematical physicist Roger Penrose proved that, given two simple assumptions, space-time must end at points called singularities. The paper has been called “the most important paper in general relativity” since Einstein’s. www.quantamagazine.org/singularitie...
June 1, 2025 at 9:05 PM
Reposted by Odele Straub
dfg.de
Die #Exzellenzcluster stehen fest: Heute hat die Exzellenzkommission 70 Projekte zur Förderung ausgewählt. 45 Cluster werden fortgesetzt, 25 neu eingerichtet. Die Förderung beginnt ab 1. Jan. 2026 für 7 Jahre, die Fördersumme beträgt insg. 539 Mio. €/Jahr. Die Liste: www.dfg.de/resource/blo... 1/3
Deutschlandkarte der Verteilung der Exzellenzcluster auf Bundesländer und Universitäten.
May 22, 2025 at 3:05 PM
Reposted by Odele Straub
benjaminpope.bsky.social
Some beautiful JWST images of Wolf-Rayet colliding wind binary nebulae on arXiv today!

arxiv.org/abs/2505.11616
JWST images of four Wolf-Rayet colliding wind binary nebulae from Richardson et al today
May 20, 2025 at 7:16 AM
Reposted by Odele Straub
caslmu.bsky.social
Is Life Fine Tuned to Physics or Is Physics Fine Tuned to Life? Don't miss the online panel discussion with Philip Goff @philipgoff.bsky.social @durham-university.bsky.social and Helen Meskhidze @bhi-harvard.bsky.social in our lecture series ‘The Fine-Tuned Universe’ on Tuesday, 13 May at 7pm (CET).
May 8, 2025 at 9:30 AM
Reposted by Odele Straub
eso.org
Our VLT has found a planet that orbits at an angle of 90 degrees around a rare pair of peculiar stars.

This is the first time we have strong evidence for one of these ‘polar planets’ orbiting a stellar pair 😲

Discover more: www.eso.org/public/news/...

🔭 🧪 ☄️

Illustration by ESO/L. Calçada
An artist’s impression showing the orbits of two stars around each other, as well as the orbit of a planet around them. The planet’s orbit is tilted at a 90-degree angle to the stars’ orbits.
April 16, 2025 at 6:03 PM
Reposted by Odele Straub
chrislintott.bsky.social
An astonishing headline reporting on new observations from a team led to Nikku Madhusudhan claims they’ve found ‘hints of life’ on a planet orbiting a dwarf star some 124 light years away. What’s going on? (1/n) www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... 🔭 🧪
Promising hints of life found on distant planet K2-18b
Scientists find new but tentative evidence that a faraway world orbiting another star may be home to life.
www.bbc.co.uk
April 17, 2025 at 3:24 AM
Reposted by Odele Straub
maxplanck.de
"I think this is one of those situations where extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence": Laura Kreidberg
@mpi-astro.bsky.social about signs of life beyond our #solarsystem.
npr.org/2025/04/16/n... #exoplanets #K218b @npr.org @lkreidberg.bsky.social
Is this a hint of life on another world, or just a lot of hot air?
The James Webb Space Telescope may have detected life-associated gas in the atmosphere of a far-off planet. The news is being greeted with both enthusiasm and skepticism.
npr.org
April 17, 2025 at 6:03 AM
Reposted by Odele Straub
ryanjfrench.bsky.social
A coronal mass ejection is en route from the Sun! This footage from GONG reveals two filaments of plasma erupting on the weekend, the latter of which is predicted to reach Earth tomorrow afternoon/evening. A strong geomagnetic storm (and lower-latitude aurora) is possible.
April 14, 2025 at 3:16 PM
Reposted by Odele Straub
eso.org
Fishing for the ELT 🎣

In this wide-eye image our Extremely Large Telescope is lit up by the flowing river of the Milky Way. The dangling line of a crane 🏗️ casts down like an enormous fishing rod hoping to catch more building materials.

Discover more: www.eso.org/public/image...

🔭 🧪
📷 ESO
A night image of a partially-built telescope under the stars. The image uses a distorted projection, which creates a focal point in the centre which is closer to the viewer, and which everything bends around. The middle of the picture is taken up by the dome building of the telescope, with a crane on the right. Its tether line splits the image in half horizontally. The dome of the telescope is open, showing the beams that hold the main structure in place.
April 14, 2025 at 7:01 AM
Reposted by Odele Straub
maxplanck.de
Happy #QuantumDay, everyone! 😊 Discovering #quantumtheory revolutionized #physics forever - and might even make your hair stand on end! 😉 #MaxPlanck
Max Planck before discovering quantum theory (1878) and after discovering quantum theory (1901)
April 14, 2025 at 9:58 AM
Reposted by Odele Straub
philplait.bsky.social
Something very, very weird is going on over at Andromeda.

badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/more-cosmi...

🔭🧪
More cosmic weirdness: What’s going on with the Andromeda Galaxy’s satellites?
Why are all its satellite galaxies on one side — the side facing us?
badastronomy.beehiiv.com
April 14, 2025 at 2:33 PM
Reposted by Odele Straub
profsera.bsky.social
Sometimes it's good to remember we are but one planet in an infinite and mysterious universe. Congratulations to the KM3NeT team for discovering the highest energy neutrino yet! ! 🧪🔭 It's 30x higher energy than what's been seen before, origin unknown but I vote for a supermassive black hole ⚫👈
km3net.bsky.social KM3NeT neutrino telescope @km3net.bsky.social · Feb 12
📢KM3NET DETECTS THE HIGHEST ENERGY NEUTRINO EVER OBSERVED

This #KM3NeT_UHE event KM3-230213A is estimated to have a record neutrino energy of 220 PeV, or 220 million billion electronvolts

➡️For details: www.km3net.org/km3net-webin...

#RecordNeutrino
February 12, 2025 at 4:21 PM
odelestraub.bsky.social
Imagine, you forgot the value of the speed of light. 🫣
But you have a microwave and some chocolate at home! 🥳

〰️ read frequency on oven
🌀 take out rotating system
🍫 cook chocolate for 30s
📏 measure wavelength λ/2 between molten spots
➡️ find c = f * λ = 279 300 000 m/s

(🧐 actual c=299 792 458 m/s)
February 12, 2025 at 2:51 PM