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If you have a TikTok account, come over and follow me and you can watch my Live with the telescope.
tiktok.com/@cosmosconblog?is…
Here is a clip from tonight's Live session.
cosmoscon retweeted
UPDATE: $100,000 has been raised for Walt, the Red Barron employee harassed to the breaking point by a nuisance streamer. The owner of this GoFund Me has made contact with him and we have reached out as well. Walt is “overwhelmed” by the generosity. America is still great.
Fundraiser: gofund.me/5696ef2ea
🚨ATTENTION: Please Help Me Find This Father.
This hardworking dad of four just trying to make a living was harassed at his job by a nuisance TikTok influencer.
He was then posted online to be mocked by the public.
America is facing a crisis and people are going to start snapping. People work too hard in this country and deserve better than this. This man's main priority is providing for his family and we want to help him do that.
Too many use the internet for bad, let's use it for good so we can help make his life better.
I want to set up a GiveSendGo for him.
If you can help me get in contact, shoot me a DM.
cosmoscon retweeted
Tune in now for the final episode of the Best Damn Podcast in the Universe.
It is the end of an era, but not an end of the movement.
Play your part, go podcasting!
I can’t wait to read Sarah’s new book!
When I look at images like this, I'm reminded of all things of Tom Bombadil from The Lord of the Rings. Hear me out, y'all.
We've observed so many incredible phenomena in the universe, but the overwhelmingly vast majority of it will forever be unseen by human eyes. We've just scratched the surface in our own Galaxy, and it's one of perhaps a trillion galaxies in the observable universe. How many incredible scenes like the one below will never be viewed by anyone but God? So, why do they exist?
This is where I agree somewhat with critical atheists who seem compelled to point out the absurdity of thinking the entire universe was created *just* for us. I don't think the universe was created just for us. Scripture tells us that not only was the universe created through and by Jesus Christ, but it was created FOR him. God created it for his own purposes, and we're obviously a part of that. But isn't it possible that the audacious, outlandish, and incredibly dramatic beauty of the universe is the result of an artist creating to delight himself?
This is where Tom Bombadil comes in. A lot of fans of Tolkien's world are baffled by this character. The Hobbits encounter him early in their journey, and he is presented as both helpful and an enigma - a character of subtle power so deep and great that the One Ring that threatens to consume an entire world has zero effect on him. And, in turn, he himself seems to have little effect on the world. Beyond helping the Hobbits escape the barrow wights, he doesn't figure into the narrative at all.
So, why does Tom exist, not only in the realm of Middle-earth, but in Tolkien's imagination? Tolkien presents Tom as the "Oldest and Fatherless" or "the First" - older than anything else in Middle-earth. In 'The Gospel According to Tolkien: Visions of the Kingdom in Middle-earth' Tolkien scholar Ralph C. Wood writes that Bombadil does serve a purpose, but not a mortal one. He "may be Tolkien’s own monkish gift to Ilúvatar [God] - a creature not meant for our understanding but for the enjoyment of God alone." He frames Tom as a creature existing, not for any discernible earthly or practical purpose, but for pure delight in something for its own sake.
I wonder if that's why such extravagant beauty exists in the universe. Not for practical reasons, but because it's God's nature to create beautiful things that delight him. I'm certain he wants us to enjoy them, but given that we will only ever observe a tiny fraction of what he has made, I suspect that the vast majority of it was "not meant for our understanding but for the enjoyment of God alone." Praise him for the parts of it that we do see.
Image credit: Horsehead and Flame Nebulae by Wissam Ayoub
cosmoscon retweeted
The Savannah River Site Area Emergency was terminated at 9:45 p.m. Protective actions have been lifted, and site barricades have reopened.
When more specific information is available, it will be provided to you via SRS.GOV and Facebook.com/savannahriversi….
cosmoscon retweeted
Breaking: the FAA has shut down airspace over the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site, with a notice calling it a “US Government Nuclear Incident.”
An event is in progress that has triggered emergency response activities at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site. This message is being sent to you as part of our emergency response organization information process.
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
The FAA NOTAM used standard terminology for a temporary restriction during a nuclear site incident; official updates confirm a contained lab fire was extinguished with no detectable off-site contamination and the Site Area Emergency was terminated.
public.srs.gov/2026/10/savann…
cnn.com/2026/10/28/us/…
cosmoscon retweeted
Savannah River Site (SRS) officials have declared a Site Area Emergency at 5:39 p.m. on 10-28-26 at the Site located near Aiken, SC.
cosmoscon retweeted
Atheists sometimes tell me I have to choose between God and science.
I do not, and neither do you.
There is nothing anti-scientific about the idea that an all-powerful, transcendent super-intelligence created the universe and wrote its laws.
In fact, it's far more believable to me that this is the explanation for our lawful, intelligible universe than the story I was expected to believe as an atheist - that the universe "just is" or that it's somehow lawful and intelligible despite having no intelligence or will behind it.
But what about the big bang? Is that a problem for a Bible-believing Christian?
Not at all.
Leave aside the age issue - which is frankly the least explosive part of all this - and consider how modern science has caught up with the Genesis narrative in the last 100 years. Modern science has figured out that the universe isn't eternal, as people thought for thousands of years, but suddenly came into being a finite time ago just as Genesis 1:1 describes.
I do not have to give up God to believe that. In fact, as a scientist, it's the only way I can make sense of why the universe exists at all and is the way it is.
Don't let anyone tell you that you have to choose between God's two books - the Bible and his creation. They are wonderfully compatible.
cosmoscon retweeted
Iris Nebula (NGC 7023) is a reflection nebula in the constellation Cepheus, located about 1,400 light-years from Earth. It is illuminated by the bright star SAO 19158, which is surrounded by dense clouds of interstellar dust. This image was captured during the night of October 17–18, 2026, using a Seestar S50 telescope with the IR-cut filter. The data were collected using live stacking of 242 × 30-second exposures, for a total exposure time of 2 hours 1 minute. Final post-processing was performed in the Seestar S50 app.
#Astrophotography #SeestarS50
ALT Image (c) @RafStargazer
It’s the right thing to do. This Podcast (which really is the best podcast in the universe) just hasn’t been the same without Dvorak. It’s a fitting way to honor his passing and letting it die was the right call.
My best wishes to the entire Dvorak family as they continue to carry on without John and to Adam! I’ll be listening to “We Get To Do This” podcast now!
RIP John and ITM!
@adamcurry explains the end of No Agenda.
No Agenda Is Really Ending — Adam Opens Up About the Dvorak Family Negotiations NoAgendaFun noagendafun.com/why-no-agend…
cosmoscon retweeted
M22: The Great Sagittarius Globular Cluster
Messier 22 (M22) is a globular cluster in the constellation Sagittarius, located about 10,000 light-years from Earth.
I recently started taking Adam Block’s DeepSky Academy course. I highly recommend it.
This astrophotograph is the result of the “Stars and Star Clusters” workflow from that course.
I stacked the RGB data provided by Adam Block and processed it in PixInsight.
Lifelong learning is very important to me, and I enjoy staying up to date on the latest astrophotography processing techniques and in all sorts of other areas.
The desire to keep learning is like fuel for my brain.
How about you? Do you enjoy taking courses (whether related to astrophotography or not)? Maybe you’re taking one right now?
Clear Skies!
ALT M22: The Great Sagittarius Globular Cluster (RGB). Astrophoto by Beatrice Heinze (Processing) and Adam Block (Data).
I got another 90 minutes of data gathering time this past weekend on the Fish Head Nebula (NGC896, on the left) and the Heart Nebula (IC1895, on the right).
They are both located between 6,000 and 7,000 light years away. They look right next to each other but the Fish Head Nebula is 1,000 light years closer to us than the Heart Nebula.
This puts the total exposure time of this area of the Cosmos at close to 3 hours using my 85mm refractor telescope and Canon DSLR camera in a severely light polluted Bortle 7 sky.
cosmoscon retweeted
I took about 50,000 photos through a 14" telescope last night to produce this: A hyper-detailed photo of the full moon. The fidelity of the photo was great enough to allow me to greatly enhance the color, revealing a hidden world of geological diversity.
Max had an incredible shot here!
But I stared for minutes at that shot from the ISS. Amazing!
ICYMI: the International Space Station was seen crossing in front of the Moon earlier this morning from Florida’s Space Coast (left image, taken by me).
@astro_anil was also looking down from the station around the same time and caught the Florida peninsula lit by the near-full moon (right image).
cosmoscon retweeted
Humanity’s orbital outpost and our moon. Can you spot it???
Captured at 1:56:41 a.m. EDT from Florida's Space Coast, the @Space_Station and her crew of 7 were seen crossing the disc of our moon.
On board are @NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins, Luke Delaney, and Anil Menon; @csa_asc astronaut Joshua Kutryk; and Roscosmos cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov, Anna Kikina, and Sergey Teteryatnikov.
📸 - @NASASpaceflight
