Phil Plait

@philplait.bsky.social

84113 Followers 298 Following

Bad Astronomer (formerly @BadAstronomer), SciCommer, Dork. Crash Course Astronomy guy. He/him. Newsletter: badastronomy.beehiiv.com I'm self-employed so my opinions do in fact represent my company's.

My super cute but astonishingly lazy dog with a white head and brown patch over one eye, her ears sticking up. She's on an easy chair facing to the side so all you see is her head resting on the chair arm. Her face registers... Nothing. Tepid ennui, perhaps.
A small pond covered in green algae. A fountain is spraying up and clearing a small area of scum.
A fierce gray-brown bird sits on top of a furled umbrella looking over the tops of some trees, with a very hazy blue sky.
A spectacular landscape of bushes, verdant hills, mountains in the background and an overcast sky with dramatic clouds
The back end of a snake, with about 30 cm visible and the rest hidden by bushes as it rested half on and half off a friend's front atep
A hummingbird on the left hovers next to a hanging planter full of red and orange flowers. Trees are in the background.
Hello- I am writing to express my strong opposition to the proposed OMB rule that would allow political appointees to override peer-reviewed work. I am an astronomer and science communicator, and for over a decade worked with NASA astrophysics missions like Hubble, Fermi, NuSTAR, and Swift. I was on a team that built a camera on Hubble, and was on the education and public outreach team for the other missions, so I have experience working at the cutting edge of astronomical research. It is critically important scientists rely on other scientists to review their work and decide what proposals are supported and which are not. These proposals, this research, are detailed, complex, and heavily steeped in the history of each particular field. Only a scientist familiar in that field should have a say in what is appropriate work. Political appointees will not have the experience needed to fairly judge what work will be funded and what won't. Continuity of funding and support is essential, and fleeting partisan whims will severely undermine the work that needs to be done to make America a strong scientific force that makes our citizens proud and preserves it as an inspiration for the rest of the world. That standing is at grave risk right now, and will be destroyed if this new rule is allowed go through. We've already seen vast damage done to science in the US, with critical — literally life-saving — research cut off for no reason other than it goes against some current political fad. Not only are we giving up on work that is critical to our economy, but is also absolutely crucial across the globe. So, again, I stand firmly against the proposed ruling. Thank you, Phil Plait
Front and back of the Fermi sticker with text describing the mission. The front shows a drawing of an active galaxy.
A beautiful hawk with a reddish brown breast stands on a wood beam on the ground seen through a window.
My wife in a blue shirt, dark blond hair blowing in the wind, and me wearing a white hat and red shirt, smiling in front of a massive 15-meter-high concrete gate that looks like a castle.
Weather forecast for my area showing 100 degree temperatures and high chance of rain storms
A ridiculous lovely scene of a pond nestled in green hills, rows of grapes, and mountains all under a blue sky with puffy clouds.
A winery counter with wine bottles in the background. A large reddish glass sculpture is centered, flowing and shaped like a figure-8.
View from a hilltop showing an open eating area with tables, and cloud-ensheouded mountains in the distance.
A bird with black wings and white spots, a white chest, and a striped black and white head clings vertically to a tree.
Me, masked, inside an actual honest to God shopping mall. It had tons of people in it and everything.
A lovely moth with wings folded on a light colored brick. It's all in light and dark brown tones.
Armus, an evil character from Star Trek the Next Generation, is a gooey, gloomy humanoid figure covering in deeply thick black, ooze. It's standing in a dark pool of the goo, with rocks and such in the background.
A variety of bagels sitting in a paper bag.
The Stargate SG-1 villain Ba'al, with his hand near his chin, one finger across his lower lip, with perhaps a slight but evil smile
An orange and black butterfly where the black creates a webbed pattern over the wings, sitting on a stalk of a flowering tree with small, bright white petals. In the background is a tree and brown leaves on the ground.
Headline: Trump announces $700 million in new support for struggling coal industry
Two chocolate chip cookies overlapping, with what looks like one on top of the other in a vanilla position.
Photo of Trump apparently yelling at a young boy pushing a lawn mower in the White House lawn.
A sign that says masks are required for everyone even if vaccinated.
My white dog with brown patches sitting on the floor and resting her chin on the arm of a couch. Just off screen: my wife with a small cup of cheese puffs
A cloudy twilight with Venus and Jupiter shining through them.
Two loaves of chocolate mint biscotti not yet sliced. They look like giant poops but they smell heavenly.
A red neon sign at night that vertically spells out NOPE. I took this photo in Boulder, Colorado.
Shot of the starship Voyager from Tsra Trek, with the episode title listed as "The one where Seven of Nine says 'fun will now commence '".
Light passing through the glass in an outside door creates amazing swirling patterns on a wall and closet door inside my house. In some spots the light is brighter where it gets focused by the shape of the glass; these are called caustics and are similar to the bright lines in pool bottoms caused by light refracting through waves on the water surface.
A faint circular blue glow with fiery red fringes that looks kinda like a cabbage, but I've always thought it looks like an ancient Roman wearing a headband of olive leaves
Drawing of an E coli bacterium, a rounded cylinder with flagellae at one end, and next to the other end a teeny tiny microphone supplied no doubt by the New York Times
A brown and tan female cardinal sits on a rectangular wire cage with a yellowish suet cake in. It.
A large red headed bird with black and white wings and white belly hangs into a small rectangular cage with yellowish suet inside. The background is all leaves and trees.
Delicate white bell shaped flowers tinged with pink against smooth green oval leaves.
The iconic Leg Lamp from the movie A Christmas Story. It's a woman's leg from the thigh down, in fiishnet stockings with a fringed yellowish lampshade on top.
Scene from an early Simspon's episode called Bart's Comet where they think a comet will impact Springfield. It shows Moe, Apu, and Krusty, and Moe is saying "Let's burn down the observatory so this will never happen again!" I used to use this clip from the episode in my talks about astronomy on TV.
The just past half moon in a deep blue sky next to a tree.
An absolutely horrific glass clown that will haunt your dreams and will curse just for even thinking about it. It stands about 24 centimeters high and has an orange torso and head, with a manically smiling face that is obviously going to expand and dislocate its jaw and swallow you whole, dining on and slowly digesting your soul
White petunias with a network of black lines like fractures radiating away from the center.
Landsat images of spots on Earth that look like letters. This one spells out FUCK TRUMP
One of thos eirritating captcha displays asking to pick the objects that "produces heat". Displyed are the sun, an office chair, a pair of ice skates, a snowy mountain, and a slab of grilled meat. These all produce heat in the thermal infrared.
My mostly white dog lying on a blue blanket. She's mostly deeply sunk into it with just a half her head and some of her body showing, and her eye is a bit wild trying to look at me.
A brownish landscape covered in small hummocks, craters, and pitting
My dog Daisy, a white mutt with brown patches, lying on a bed facing away from the camera but twisted so you can see her face, which is full of knowing disappointment and "why are you doing this to me?" energy
A GOP flyer full of lies about how Dems don't want to restrict Virginia, which, I may have mentioned, is a lie.
A car on a road following very closely behind an open bed truck with a couple of dozen large pine tree trunks stacked up at an angle, looking like they are just aching to slide off and kill people who are in a car following very closely behind.
Daffy Duck and Marvin the Martian on Planet X in the cartoon "Duck Dodgers in the 24th and a half cebtury".
Photo of my ballot (which is legal to do on Virginia) showing I voted "yes" on a temporary redistricting measure to prevent the GOP from stealing votes in the midterm election.
Storefront painted yellow with three addresses on it: 1701-B, 1701-C, and 1701-D
My dog, white mutt with brown patches, resting her chin on the chair in which my wife is sitting.
Two signs: one for the cupcakes place called Baked on the James (it's on the James river) and the other for Soothe, a marijuana dispensary.
My white dog Daisy lying down next to my black dog Buddy with her head resting on his flank.
Grayscale image of the capsule under the parachutes, which look silvery. The capsule is glowing brilliantly along the bottom where the heat shield took the brunt of the atmospheric beating.
A big splash in the ocean under the three red and white parachutes
Orion capsule underneath three red and white parachutes.
Pink and white flowers growing among greenery and small rocks
A very cute lizard, possibly an Eastern Six-lined Race Runner, a gecko with a dark body and yellow stripes running down the length.