Emily J
@emexastris
She/her. Science, politics, cats, Judaism. Planetary scientist and operations engineer.
Basically finished with the moon. Not sure if I’ll start on the leaves and flowers tonight or not.
Well, that’s the end of @indivisible.org for me. It was a good decade, but they’ve endorse a neonazi mercenary who abuses women. If that’s the Democratic Party they think we need, then we don’t share the values I thought we did.
My mom wanted to learn to pipe frosting so we practiced together today (I don’t have a picture of her finished cake, which is sad, because she tried to make a heart, decided it looked more like a uterus, and added fallopian tubes and ovaries 😄)
To my recollection this person didn’t used to be like this, but they are now and folks following them might want to reconsider that. bsky.app/profile/erup...
Noooo Grian did the thing I can’t stand. Telescopes *do not* stick out of the observatory building! That would defeat the entire point of the building, which exists to protect the telescope. I know it’s a cartoon trope, but if you look up a *single* real telescope, you’d see.
Please welcome John, the first member of the first moderation list I’ve ever made, who is explicitly ok with giving money to Nazis and also thinks I’m making up the substack fee structure. bsky.app/profile/did:...
Today: surprisingly hard to photograph, but I love this little moon-and-star set
I think I just got this centered on the first try, which uses up my allocation of luck for at least a week.
Today’s space earrings. I think these are adorable - I especially love the little heart on the robot - but they are surprisingly uncomfortable given how tiny they are so I don’t wear them much
I’m using having to be in the office a lot more than usual for Pandora’s commissioning as an excuse to wear all my space-themed earrings (I have quite a few). Today’s selection, which I also wore to launch, are my Saturns by @elakdawalla.bsky.social
I will never be able to find the Facebook post to give proper credit, but I believe that person gave this advice to be shared: most stores only rearrange their actual shelves once or twice a year. The gluten-free cheezits are going to be on an end cap or special display, not with the other crackers
Anyone ever seen this in Libby before? I got like a bonus copy of a book I have on hold, but only for a week and I still keep my place in line?
Also, we behaved ourselves all morning, but approximately 2 minutes after we signed off with the spacecraft manufacturer we were abusing our big fancy mission ops display for football purposes 😂
Pandora’s orbit is at 600 km altitude, so it was in the second batch of deployments over two hours after launch. We were actually one of the last ones, which means we got a *fantastic* view of separation.
After launch I stepped outside for a break. It was freezing cold and windy, but the sunrise was pretty.
There was an official university photographer and videographer there, so I didn’t spend much time taking pictures, but here’s a few. First: a picture SpaceX shared of all the payloads before the closed the fairing. Pandora is the white cylinder and blue solar panel at the top left.
Ok, bedtime. I probably won’t be on Bluesky until lunchtime. I’m pretty sure I posted a similar “mission polo the night before” picture for EOM Cassini. Think clear skies!