Elizabeth Tasker

@elizabethtasker.bsky.social

5330 Followers 1070 Following

UK astrophysicist and science communicator working at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). Author of 'The Planet Factory' and editor of ‘Planetary Diversity’. Very into space, virtual reality, computer graphics and rescue cats.

Late afternoon sun is starting to set over a beach.
Sun setting over the sea.
A photo of me posting on a concrete wall beside the sea. My arms are folded in an exaggerated hero pose! I’m wearing pale blue trousers and matching jacket with black solid looking shoes.
A blue vertical banner wishing the team good luck for a successful launch.
A photograph looking at the JAXA launch site on Tanegashima island. Two launch pads are visible (the one closer to the sea is no longer used) and the beach and waves stretch almost to the site. On the other side of launch pads is green foliage.
The H3 rocket soars into the night sky as a firey dot.
A photograph of the rocket launch. The night sky is lit up by the rocket which has given the sky at high altitude a bright orange halo. And trail of smoke is silhouetted against the brightness, leading down to the dark landscape below.
A night shot taken with a phone camera. In the distance, a bright horizontal speck is the JAXA H3 rocket preparing for launch.
A jet foil sits in harbour, waiting for boarding. The name on the side is “rocket 3”.
Insect cages for collecting bugs. The ones on the top shelf are shaped like large red and white balls from the Pokemon anime series.
Casper the cat burrito. Most of his inbody is wrapped in a towel. Just his bottom and tail at visible.
A photograph looking at the nozzle end of two rockets mounted horizontally on the JAXA Sagamihara campus in Kanagawa (technically a bit outside Tokyo!). Leafy trees surround them and it is very hot.
A selfie of me wearing my glasses while holding my phone in my raised arm and pointing down. Decent selfies are hard. My glasses are rectangular and dark blue, but look black in the photo.
A pink stain on the urine pad that lines litter boxes. This is caused by blood in the urine and requires urgent vetinary care.
A mural made from tennis balls pressed into the netting wall around a tennis court. The design shows a horse for this year’s zodiac symbol, and around it are images of umbrellas and a frog with a leaf umbrella.
My hand holding a flask. The flask os black decorated with stickers showing a somewhat phallic looking dinosaur, the world splitting in two, “we’re all doomed” and “inevitable. We all die anyway” as well as a pint of beer labelled “celebrate the small things”.
A calico cat lies on a bed attached to a desk, with her face firmly planted in the cushion.
Poster advertising the IAU Symposium "Innovative Research and Techniques in Astronomy Communication".
A take out bowl of rice topped with different types of fish and also egg.
The entrance to Jonan Pet Cemetery, which is flanked by two statues of elephants to remember all who pass through.
Screenshot of Professor Yoshikawa holding a ... fairly shapeless... grey model.
A screenshot from the press conference showing the image captured by Hayabusa2 just before closest approach. The asteroid looks like a peanut, with two bulbus parts connected with a thinner neck region.
A black and white cat sits upright, with his head over a calico cat who is lying on the floor. They look very cute.
screenshot from the live stream, showing the livestream narrators, now with team leader Mimasu Yuya, chatting around a small table. Yuya looks exhausted!
Screenshot from the live stream. In the Hayabusa2 control room, the team gather around the ISAS Director General Fujimoto Masaki, who is clearly delighted.
screenshot from the live stream. In the Hayabusa2 control room, the team are gathered before the camera, all beaming. Front and centre in a bright blue jacket is a young man holding a blue spherical Daruma doll.
Screen shot from the live feed, showing the Hayabusa2 control room where everyone is giving a celebratory high-five!
Screenshot from the live feed, showing the progress of Hayabusa2.
Scene from the control room during the flyby observations of asteroid Torifune by Hayabusa2. Several team members are wearing jackets with an image of the flyby on the back.
Driving license documents in a clear file with a picture of the first Hayabusa spacecraft on the front.
A screenshot from google translate from Japanese to English. The English said "Images of asteroid "Ryugu" acquired by the asteroid explorer, Hayabusa2". The original Japanese says the images are of asteroid Torifune, not Ryugu.
A small train station with old red trains marks the stop for Nagato.
Outside of a Shinkansen train, with One Piece characters painted on the side.
A giant fugu fish is suspended from the ceiling above fugu edible (hopefully) products.
A sign in the bathrooms of a capsule hotel asking people to not be naked or half-naked in the mixed-gender communal space.
A photo of the inside of a capsule hotel, showing a series of “rooms”, each with pull down blind rather than a door. The inside of the first capsule is shown, revealing a semi-double sized bed that reclines so you can sit propped up or flat. The room encloses the bed nearly exactly, with just a thin strip at the foot of the bed to stand.
A screen shot from “wanikani” showing the kanji for “husband” and three vocabulary words for “husband”, “husband and wife” and “polygamy”.
Quick interview with Stephan Ulamec from DLR. He sits on a chair facing the camera, answering the question "What is the biggest challenge for the MMX rover, IDEFIX"?
Two cats are lying on a rug together, batting at each other with their paws (in a fairly friendly fashion!).
A table in a coffee shop with a mug of tea, iced coffee, and two drills on top.
A black and white cat relaxes on the floor. The cat toy is nowhere to be seen.
A black and white cat is filmed by a camera mounted on the ceiling. We see him swipe at a multicoloured toy attached to the ceiling and then grab it, carrying it off-camera. There’s a brief image of him wrestling with it on the carpet and then just the string being pulled 😹
A calico cat lies on a multicoloured rug, looking up at the camera. A rainbow plushy worm on a orange elastic string lies on the rug in front of her.
A black and white cat with green eyes is peering around the side of a cushion and bookcase at the camera. He is very shy, but his one visible eye looks bright with interest.
A calico cat sticks her head out of a white and green outdoor cat house that sits on the floor besides a bookshelf.
A quick interview with the Project Manager of MMX, Kawakatsu Yasuhiro. He speaks in Japanese with English subtitles, recalling that one of the biggest challenges of the mission so far was when the covid pandemic throttled the collaboration plan for the international team.
A calico cat approached an IKEA kallax bookshelf and examines a fabric cat house in one of the shelves. She prods it with a paw, but is clearly dissatisfied with its safety and walks away.
A selfie of me wearing a pale blue shirt with brown stripes. There is a decoration of black cats running down the button seam, and where a top pocket would sit is a grey cat head shape with little black ears.
A sign above a shelf of books in a bookstore labelled “on time books (for women)”.
A screenshot from the kanji and vocabulary builder, wanikani. The word is “indigestion” and comprises of four kanji characters in Japanese, meaning extinguish, change, not and good.
The final part of the chalkboard explainer video, sharing key results to-date from the NASA OSIRIS-REx mission, and a look at some future missions.
The second part of the chalkboard explainer videos, discussing the key results to-date from the JAXA Hayabusa and Hayabusa2 missions.
A chalkboard explainer video (part 1 of 3) describing why asteroid sample return missions are challenging, and why we do them anyway.
the start of the animation giving the title "the science of asteroid sample return missions", sketches of the three asteroids, Itokawa, Ryugu and Bennu, and the text "the movie".
Video of the cat automated water bowl in action. A small steel dish is attached to a water tank. It is tipped out into a smaller water tank below and then fresh water is added from the bigger tank.
Two hands clinking glasses together over the counter top of a bakery.