CosmoQuest

@cosmoquest

Explore our universe. Map other worlds. Put science in your brain. Home to Escape Velocity Space News, AstronomyCast, 365 Days of Astronomy. Support indie science journalism & community science at patreon.cosmoquest.org

61 Following966 Followers396 Posts

Twitch Bluesky

Is this your profile?Claim it and cosmoquest.dirty.social is yours.Claim profile

CosmoQuest@cosmoquest· 25d

Thing we learned this week: If your house get's hit by a meteorite, your first priority is to put on medical gloves and use foil and mason jars to collect the space rocks. Then call your insurance company. www.seti.org/news/alien-w...

CosmoQuest@cosmoquest· 26d

Join us for a StarShip 13 watch party on Twitch.tv/CosmoQuestX. Launch is scheduled for 5:45 pm and we will go live about 30 minutes before with Moon Mapping and more.

Starship 13 on pad waiting to launch with cloudy skies and a wet landscape.

CosmoQuest@cosmoquest· Jul 1

CosmoQuest will always be a place that embraces people of all kinds. We don't care who you love; we only hope that you find love in this world. This image is released under a cc-by license. Please use it, and link back to the post below to share all related credits & information on the meanings.

Please go to https://patreon.cosmoquest.org/posts/pride-flag-but-162620451 for a complete description

CosmoQuest@cosmoquest· Jun 23

June endures, & so do we. As we continue to create a science-themed Pride Flag, today we add the white, pink and teal that represents the Trans community. Our images are the sky, a star forming region, & the nebula of binary dying stars. Learn More: patreon.cosmoquest.org/posts/161878...

CosmoQuest@cosmoquest· Jun 19

Happy Juneteenth! This Pride we're redoing the Pride flag with space and looking at the meaning of each color for pride and for science. The brown & black stripes on the Pride flag represent the people of color who are so often the pillars & defenders of the queer community. We wrap the cosmos...

The black wedge is the darkness of space pricked with stars and galaxies while the brown shows healthy soil with a single leaf.

Credits: Glan Carrie on Unsplash, ESA/NASA/CSA/the JADES Collaboration

CosmoQuest@cosmoquest· Jun 16

Gonna be real for a moment: Our financial reserves are completely exhausted. We expect this to happen in September, at the end of our fiscal year. Bad days came early; donations have been, ah, shit, in 2026, so we need to ask for your help now. If you have extra, please donate: cqx-fy26.org

CosmoQuest@cosmoquest· Jun 15

Today is purple, a color that during Pride represents Spirit. In astronomy, my favorite example of purple is its use to trace out the large scale structure of our universe in simulations. The image used here comes from the Millennium Simulation. patreon.cosmoquest.org/posts/161185...

CosmoQuest@cosmoquest· Jun 12

Going live in moments. And seriously, there is a lot to cover. This book inspired so many ideas and we hope it will inspire you too.

CosmoQuest@cosmoquest· Jun 8

In the pride flag (& most contexts), green represents nature and prosperity. When it comes to aurora, green means oxygen has been excited by particles from the Sun, and after spending some time in that excited state, the electrons are settling back down and releasing a green photon as they go.

A pride flag that has for its green strip a section of an aurora photo by Chris Marquardt https://www.flickr.com/photos/nubui/13092548463

CosmoQuest@cosmoquest· Jun 5

Yellow is the color of the Sun, which supports all life... at least when it comes to the Pride flag. Our real Sun is technically white, but our atmosphere makes it look yellow. Science sometimes lacks poetry. In science, yellow is doubly ionized Oxygen and warm gas in the Rosetta Nebula.

CosmoQuest@cosmoquest· Jun 3

The orange stripe represents healing & reminds us fun / celebration are healing activities. We used a segment of Mars that includes Hebes Chasma (left dark splotch). The color is just rust. Seriously. Mars has a lot of iron oxide minerals in its rocks & soils that are orange in color because rust.

CosmoQuest@cosmoquest· Jun 2

Join us in exploring the pride flag. The queer community has paid with blood to live their truth and that red stands for passion and the blood of life. In astronomy, red is the color of glowing hydrogen, the most common atom in our Universe. Image: The Horsehead nebula by Ivan Bok.

The intersex pride flag with the top band of red replaced is a section of the horsehead nebula, which is a star marked band of red with a cloud of dust and gas blocking light and making a silhouette of a horse.

CosmoQuest@cosmoquest· May 29

There is one less toilet in space. With the safe return of Shenzhou 21 and its 3 person crew, there are now only nine (9) toilets in space. International Space Station: 4 Crew Dragon Docked at ISS: 1 Soyuz Docked at ISS: 1 Tiangong Space Station: 2 Shenzhou Docked at TSS: 1

CosmoQuest@cosmoquest· May 26

Celebrate Space with us every day. Join with 20% off using code MAYDAY20 at patreon.cosmoquest.org Image: gravitational lensing by the foreground galaxy (center) distorts a background galaxy into a surrounding spiral. Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, G. Mahler

From NASA: In the centre is an elliptical galaxy, seen as an oval-shaped glow around a small bright core. Around this is wrapped a broad band of light, appearing like a spiral galaxy stretched and warped into a ring, with bright blue lines drawn through it where the spiral arms have been stretched into circles. A few distant objects are visible around the ring on a black background.

CosmoQuest@cosmoquest· May 26

The space toilet count just got turned up to ten (10!) after Shenzhou-23 docked with the Chinese Tiangong space station. Where you'll find Space Toilets: International Space Station: 4 Crew Dragon Docked at ISS: 1 Soyuz Docked at ISS: 1 Tiangong Space Station: 2 Shenzhou Docked at TSS: 2

Astronauts on the Chinese space station in blue flight suits giving a thumbs up

CosmoQuest@cosmoquest· May 22

We are live. The "We're doing this to collect data" information has me thinking they expect boom. twitch.tv/CosmoQuestX

CosmoQuest@cosmoquest· May 22

No Boom yesterday. Boom today? There's been many (sonic) boom with Starship launches. Flight 12 may be launching later today. If they do, we'll go live on Twitch.tv/CosmoQuestX once prop loading is started. This could be as early as 6:15pm Boston / 3:15pm. Credit: SpaceX

Starship seen from a drone in a bank of fog.

CosmoQuest@cosmoquest· May 1

It's recording day here at CosmoQuest. How it started.... With makeup, wardrobe, & lights. #nofilters

CosmoQuest@cosmoquest· Apr 28

As of today, there have been 100 launches this year with 6 failures. We use Rocketlaunch.live to keep track of them. There are also 9 toilets in space. Tracking them is one of our raison d'être. Follow us for random space stats and more! (Image: A NASA HQ image of the Artemis II launch)

A photo taken just as the Artemis II SLS rocket clears its towers. It looks like a bullet being fired on the other side of a bay during the golden hour. If only this were the only bullet-shaped thing in our world!

CosmoQuest@cosmoquest· Apr 6

We've got no words, just (good!) feels, when it comes to Artemis II. And this is just the beginning.

The Moon is framed in the window of the Orion Capsule

CosmoQuest@cosmoquest· Apr 1

This is awesome: "broken__symmetry: I just got the sports bar im at to put this on tv... they said we have to show sports...i said its the sport of space" #GoArtemis

CosmoQuest@cosmoquest· Mar 5

The number of successful rocket launches for 2026 holds at 42 while the number of less than successful creeps up to four, reminding us that space is hard. Our hearts go out to everyone who had counted on Japan’s Kairos Rocket for their dreams and their data.

The contrails of the destroyed Kairos rocket

CosmoQuest@cosmoquest· Jan 9

Getting sick on a business trip is the worst. And that's exactly what happened to one of the US astronauts. Crew 11 will be coming home early. The person is stable, this is not an emergency evac, & no panic is needed. Crew 12 will launch early if ready, & the remaining US crew will be ok.

A 2018 image of the International Space Station against a background of clouds and sea.

CosmoQuest@cosmoquest· Jan 9

CosmoQuest@cosmoquest· Jan 7

It's that time of the month again! At 8pm EDT, @starstryder.space will be on Starfront Observatories Discord discussing the ways stars explode (or at least some of the ways). Discord: https://discord.gg/starfront Event: https://discord.com/events/1249909998952382515/1457521193258057874

CosmoQuest@cosmoquest· Dec 20

We appreciate, and will not eat, the doggo. Please enjoy our Studio Dogs.

CosmoQuest@cosmoquest· Dec 18

As we near the end of the tax year, we'd like to remind you that we're part of a 501(c)3 non-profit, your contributions are tax deductible where allowed by law, and we could really use your help. Learn more: cosmoquest.org/donate Donate: cqx-fy26.org

CosmoQuest@cosmoquest· Dec 18

Another episode is in the can (or at least on the harddrive). Next up, editting. Folks on Patreon.com/CosmoQuestX should get our next EVSN episode this weekend with it going public next Wednesday.

CosmoQuest@cosmoquest· Dec 8

We are coming to the end of our hangout. Thank you to everyone who donated. We won't stop working We hope you will stick with us. Donate: https://ow.ly/StBO50XFvMc Patreon: https://ow.ly/n6Gl50XFvMe Twitch: https://ow.ly/veko50XFvMh YouTube: https://ow.ly/F61150XFvMg

CosmoQuest@cosmoquest· Dec 8

We are deep into the hangout-a-thon, and we are hoping to see more palindromes. Donate: cosmoquest.org/x/donate/ Patreon: patreon.com/cw/CosmoQuestX Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/cosmoquestx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CosmoQuest