Hi #fediverse ! We’re the European Southern Observatory, and we design, build and operate ground-based telescopes.
One of them is our Extremely Large Telescope, currently under construction in #Chile. It will have a 39 m mirror, and its rotating enclosure will weigh 6100 tonnes, or about 700 mastodons!
We’re looking forward to chatting with all of you about #astronomy
And many thanks to @sebinthestars for running our former instance!
@Benhm3 We feel you! Our first telescope at La Silla Observatory had a 1 m mirror. The ELT will have 798 hexagonal segments, each 1.5 m wide, working together as a huge single mirror.
@Benhm3 Atmospheric turbulence will be corrected with two other mirrors: the M4, which is a flexible mirror that can deform 1000 times per second, and the M5, a flat mirror that will tip & tilt to stabilise the image (also against vibrations due to wind or the telescope itself). You can find more details here: elt.eso.org/telescope/adaptive…
ESO is the European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere. It operates the La Silla Paranal Observatory in Chile and has its headquarters in Garching, near Munich, Germany.
Perhaps you know this already, but if not then, Mastodon has the ability for accounts to verify who they are by way of their domains (in your case esa.org). Think of this as Mastodon's version of the blue checkmark from other platforms.
It is easy to set up, and would signal to everyone that your account is in fact the official ESA account.
Auf YouTube findest du die angesagtesten Videos und Tracks. Außerdem kannst du eigene Inhalte hochladen und mit Freunden oder gleich der ganzen Welt teilen.
Deepin 25 launches as an immutable Linux system, featuring a revamped desktop, AI assistant, and universal app packaging with cross-distro compatibility. linuxiac.com/deepin-25-launche…
"A cyclist is a disaster for the country's economy: he does not buy cars and does not borrow money to buy. He does not pay for insurance policies. He does not buy fuel, does not pay for the necessary maintenance and repairs. He does not use paid parking. He does not cause serious accidents. He does not require multi-lane highways. He does not get fat. Healthy people are neither needed nor useful for the economy. They don't buy medicine. They do not go to hospitals or doctors. Nothing is added to the country's GDP (gross domestic product). On the contrary, every new McDonald's restaurant creates at least 30 jobs: 10 cardiologists, 10 dentists, 10 dietary experts and nutritionists, and obviously, people who work at the restaurant itself." Choose carefully: cyclist or McDonald's? It is worth considering. P.S. Walking is even worse. Pedestrians don't even buy bicycles. P.P.S. If you have read this far and still don't get it, this post is SATIRE. Reread it with this in mind.
This entry was edited (Monday, June 23, 2025, 2:09 PM)
This is the reverse case of the broken window fallacy. What cyclists do not spend one way, they spend in other areas. To the best of our knowledge, the net impact of cycling on GDP is positive, because cyclists are more productive (because healthier).
But they spend their money the wrong way. Nothing goes to big business like car companies, construction industry (suburbian sprawl!), banks, pharma and healthcare etc.
And they lead a less resource intense life - that's not okay from a growth paradigm perspective. Seriously, that's bad for capitalism.
@stekopf Sorry, but this is not the way growth accounting works. Economic growth is producing more with the same amount of inputs, or less. When I avoid filling my car fuel tank and buy an album on Bandcamp instead, I create growth: there are less market-traded inputs for an additional copy of the album than for a tank of gasoline. Notice the same holds if I replace the album with an Amazon Prime subscription.
@MathieuP @stekopf What some people may take issue with in regards to the input is that economics often only concerns itself with money, as you hinted at by adding an adjective "market-traded". The input being a unique ecosystem being destroyed or a non-renewable resource cannot be reduced to a monetary valuation though.
@MathieuP @stekopf How can you be sure there are less inputs for a copy of a Bandcamp album or an Amazon Prime subscription than for an equally-priced amount of gasoline? The digital world has a very real physical footprint in terms of materials and energy.
@jackofalltrades @stekopf We are taking marginal costs here. The overwhelming share of digital goods footprint is at the hardware fabrication and disposal stages.
@MathieuP @stekopf Not only that. Energy is also a very important input, which comes back nicely to the gasoline for a car vs digital subscription example.
While it is obvious that more energy is needed to move a car than to stream an album over the internet, it becomes much less obvious once the whole system is taken into account. Just like roads have costs, so does the internet infrastructure. Storing and streaming data requires data centers, routers, switches and cables that not only need to be constantly powered, but also periodically replaced.
@jackofalltrades @stekopf @gerrymcgovern Firstly, because I have recent lifecycle analysis under my eyes. We are talking differences by one or two orders of magnitude, there. Secondly, the increase of resources consumption at world level is overwhelmingly the effect of development. In the Western world, resource consumption per capita is stable or decreasing in most countries (the US are, as for health, the embarrassing outlier).
@jackofalltrades @stekopf @gerrymcgovern I think we have little grasp of how inefficient cars were when we were young (I live in France). A current BMW consumes half as much as a 1990's Ford Sierra. There has also been bounds in energy efficiency of most home appliances and heating devices. You'll also notice that there is more stuff, but most of it is so much lighter than it used to be.
Yes, but there were less cars when I was young. The playground next to my parents' house has been converted into a parking lot. 🙁
The car sizes also changed drastically. Our family of five drove on vacation in Fiat 126p. Now my two parents drive alone in Toyota RAV4.
The lighter stuff may still have a bigger environmental impact / material input. Just ask yourself: how many kilograms of raw materials must be mined to produce a single cell phone?
@jackofalltrades A single cell phone? Last time I checked up, it was about 60 - 90 kg of mining waste for that 140 grams of specialness. And about 14,000 liters of water. Not to worry, we've only made and dumped about 16 billion of them since 2007.
@jackofalltrades Excellent points. Bigger and worse. Lighter and more throwaway. Planned obsolescence and all that. Driven by the corrupted concepts of innovation and efficiency.
There's more materials in a modern tire than there used to be in an entire car. What that means is that tires are toxic time bombs, with a car’s four tires generating one trillion toxic nano particles of dust for every kilometer driven. But, heh, innovation and efficiency!
@gerrymcgovern @jackofalltrades @MathieuP @stekopf yeah, the average car is also a LOT heavier, as well as bigger (and electric vehicles are the worst, as they are both heavier and don't become lighter as the fuel is used up) causing more damage to roads, which have to then be repaired. And they even take up more space when parked...
No, I'm arguing that deriving a marginal cost for digital goods is not as straightforward as one could wish. Unless we externalise pretty much everything, which would make your original point about "less inputs" moot.
If 10 more subscribers to Amazon Prime causes Amazon to run an additional server, is that part of their fixed cost or marginal cost of the new subscriptions?
If 10 more people are streaming movies every day causing the ISP to upgrade their routers is that part of their fixed cost or marginal cost of the new subscribers?
Since there’s no algorithm, it’s kind of interesting to go on here when I can’t sleep and see things in languages I don’t understand and remember we’re all on this same planet together. Kinda makes me sad and happy at the same time.
Prior to getting my Masters and PhD in Nuclear Engineering at Berkeley I was a nuclear trained officer on a submarine. After graduating I worked in reactor core design at a nuclear company. I now work as a nuclear physicist at a national lab.
I just wanted to establish my bona fides before assuring you that yes, your assumption is correct that bombing any kind of nuclear infrastructure is dangerous and reckless as fuck.
We've had experience mixing radioactives and high explosives for almost exactly 80 years now and in all that time we have not solved the problems of atmospheric dispersion, aerosol transport, inhalation and submersion dose. We quibble over details but the fundamentals remain - if you do not want radioactive material all over, you should not blow it up.
I've been working on this problem professionally on and off for 30 years on the civil nuclear side; power plants, legacy defense waste. Your assessment is spot on - bombing nuclear facilities is reckless, dangerous, and egregiously irresponsible. There's no other way to spin it. (diagram from osti.gov/biblio/4743102)
Euro notes contain a pigment which includes (very appropriately!) the rare earth metal Europium. It glows red under UV light.
On this week's Rare Earth on BBC Radio 4 we dug deep into the environmental benefits & costs of rare earths and other critical minerals. Do listen! bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002dlh3
I remember Andries Meijerinck from Utrecht telling the story of how he had a visit from some people from the European Central bank who wanted to learn about luminescence. He spent a few hours talking to them and then didn't hear from them. When the euro banknotes appeared he recorded the spectra of the inks - sure enough they were a mix of Eu(III) and Eu(II)… And I think they're in other banknotes, including pounds, though I've never got round to recording the spectra. 1/2
When I was interviewed for my EPSRC SMF I showed the luminescence of euros with a black light, an then managed to get Robert Winston to pull a £20 note out of his wallet to show the inks on the notes. I pointed out the luminescence and suggested that perhaps Gordon Brown had a stealth plan to bring the pound closer to the euro. I got a laugh for that, but got an even bigger one when I "carelessly" slipped the note in my pocket. To my astonishment, I got the fellowship. 😜
Recording banknote spectra would be an interesting task... just to identify the list of elements included. With a sweepstake beforehand to guess the number.
We’re hosting online install parties, come set up your server alongside others! Bring your questions and curiosity, we’ll figure it out together and support each other through the process.
✅ Ideally have a (sub)domain + server with DNS set up, or just follow along and take notes.
On June 21, join meteorologists, journalists, content creators, climate scientists, and cities around the world for "Show Your Stripes Day” – an event dedicated to growing global awareness about human-caused climate change.
The NOAA Merged Land Ocean Global Surface Temperature Analysis (NOAAGlobalTemp, formerly known as MLOST) combines long-term sea surface (water) temperature (SST) and land surface (air) temperature datasets to create a complete, accurate depiction of …
Trump’s nominees are backed by major players in the world of climate obstruction – from Project 2025 and Koch network fixtures to oil-soaked Christian nationalists.
And now here is visualization of these changes in temperatures over land areas for the last 100 years. Heating up over the long-term and now record warm.
The NOAA Merged Land Ocean Global Surface Temperature Analysis (NOAAGlobalTemp, formerly known as MLOST) combines long-term sea surface (water) temperature (SST) and land surface (air) temperature datasets to create a complete, accurate depiction of …
What are the current and future environmental impacts of data centres/AI? Who is responsible - companies or individuals? This week's Rare Earth (on BBC R4 at 12:04 and available online afterwards) got pretty lively as we dug into it all. One not to miss!
Sea ice was much thinner than average across large parts of the #Arctic Ocean in May 2025. These anomalies were particularly notable in the Kara and Laptev Seas, which likely corresponded to some of the recent early melt.
With the world/feeds as they are, I hope you keep fighting.
If you can afford, or NEED a moment of guard down, we've popped up the #radioFreeFedi #comfy channel for June in lead up to our next artists streaming series #RFFF25 in July.
A chance to discover and directly communicate with and support rad independent artists to keep creating. Hopefully improving your day with some quality sonic hugs.
Mastodon Migration
in reply to ESO • • •Kim Possible
in reply to ESO • • •ESO
in reply to Kim Possible • • •clacke: exhausted pixie dream boy 🇸🇪🇭🇰💙💛 likes this.
Kim Possible
in reply to ESO • • •ESO
Unknown parent • • •clacke: exhausted pixie dream boy 🇸🇪🇭🇰💙💛 likes this.
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ESO
Unknown parent • • •Adaptive Optics | ELT | ESO
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Sharlatan
in reply to ESO • • •ESO
in reply to Sharlatan • • •ESO - Instrument Pipelines Page
www.eso.orgSharlatan
in reply to ESO • • •Would you be interested in boosting some #reproducibility with #guix ?
Currently there are 200+ most popular Astro related software projects nicely packaged and being refreshed monthly
codeberg.org/guix/guix/src/bra…
Some related topics from Software Heritage and reproducible research in medicine science
mstdn.social/@swheritage/11471…
social.edu.nl/@the_dr_leonardo…
social.sciences.re/@zimoun/114…
scholar.social/@khinsen/114715…
Publications
guix.gnu.org/en/publications/
guix/gnu/packages/astronomy.scm at master
Codeberg.orgLeonardo Lenoci ✅
2025-06-15 11:48:44
ESO
Unknown parent • • •Wolf_Baginski
in reply to ESO • • •I was confused, earlier this week, about which new telescope in Chile had just reached #FirstLight
You will have a lot of things to look at.
ESO
in reply to Wolf_Baginski • • •Scimmia di Mare
in reply to ESO • • •700 mastodons, only 1 instance.
You're welcome! (Again)
Hrafn
in reply to ESO • • •Look forward to what you'll share here!
Perhaps you know this already, but if not then, Mastodon has the ability for accounts to verify who they are by way of their domains (in your case esa.org). Think of this as Mastodon's version of the blue checkmark from other platforms.
It is easy to set up, and would signal to everyone that your account is in fact the official ESA account.
joinmastodon.org/verification
Verification
joinmastodon.org