Dr. Teddy Kareta
@teddykareta
planetary astronomer by day, also by night asst. prof. @ villanova, movie buff, he/they, 🏳️🌈 formerly lowell obs., uaz, umass
in "huh, small world" news: just found out that Haruomi Hosono, electronic music pioneer and one of the most influential japanese musicians of the 70s and 80s, is the grandson of a Titanic survivor, Masabumi Hosono
made some english muffins from scratch while working from home this AM
a departmental retirement means I am now the proud owner of this 50s paperback version of Minnaert's "Light and Color" with a very nearly psychadelic cover
love me an edward hopper painting. still remember seeing "nighthawks" as a sixteen year old and entering a kind of fugue state. dunno how I wandered through the moma for hours and missed "new york movie" though.
got to see one of my favorite paintings -- "composition" by Sophie Taeuber-Arp (1930) -- for the first time today at the moma. really amazing.
feat. your bog-standard "astronomer stands in front of telescope and shows off meteorites to undergrads" shots
obviously, there's a tremendous amount of privilege and luck involved in considering a honeymoon abroad or a destination wedding but this does remind me of the classic onion article "everywhere on earth has the wrong amount of water"
my wedding: impeded & altered by a *lack of water* at the grand canyon my honeymoon: impeded & altered by *too much water* in japan
extra extra, read all about it: "Dust On, Dust Off: HST Observations of the Newly Dormant Jupiter Co-orbital Comet P/2023 V6 (PANSTARRS)" by John and me, out this morning in the PSJ, in which we used 49 minutes of hubble time to measure the brightness of a dot iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...
It's commencement day for the undergrads at Villanova and I'm contractually obligated to go sit in direct sunlight in my doctoral regalia for hours during this mini-heatwave. Am I happy to support them and see them off? Yes, of course. Does this seem risky? oh you betcha
got an original "fun shirt" from the 80s and my wife told me it looks like I'm ready do some insider trading on a yacht
we'll probably never be able to outdo our last one (which seemed to get a small amount of press coverage simply due to how stupid the title was) but hope springs eternal
quoted some in this CNN article about interstellar comet isotopes www.cnn.com/2026/05/01/s...
got to surprise my undergrad Hannah -- off to UVA in the fall for a PhD -- with our department's big annual research award complete with a BIG NOVELTY CHECK this evening. really living my publisher's clearing house dreams here.
got to show my students "earthrise" (many for the first time!!) yesterday. happy earth day!
went to the franklin institute today with a bunch of students and a few fellow professors and let me just tell you how disappointed I was to find out that while they have copies of these old posters on display, they don't let you buy copies
my friend Ben (one of the finest telescope operators at the Lowell Discovery Telescope) offered to take some film photos of the wedding with his refurbished cameras from the fifties and wowee zowee
downloaded one of this dudes books. unbelievably, I think there is at least one alternative pope who absolutely would have opinions about interstellar comets. he said he was from mars and had studied the earth (chicago, specifically) with a telescope.