@robthacker
Astrophysicist & photo geek✨Graduate Coordinator of astrophysics at SMU. Regular co-host of Science Files on CityNews Halifax and Science Wire on CFRA Ottawa. You are made of the ♥ of stars. Halifax/K'jipuktuk (he/him)
Close up of a yellow crocus. The petals are open and stamens are visible. All around are fallen leaves from the previous fall.
Since it's become a bit of a tradition, here is the first crocus bloom of 2026 in our garden 😀🌷#photography
Cut through of the mixing surface looking from above, there is much more looping of the mixing surface and it is tightly wound in the centre region.
Cut through the mixing surface at right angles, while it still goes from top to bottom, the central region is now tightly wound.
And a 6 Giga years later...
A slice precisely through the mixing plane shows the detailed structure of mixing as systems punch and ripple back and forth.
A slice directly across the mixing plane showing the beautiful folding occurring under the subtle motions around the mixing plane.
I'd love to be able to promote the work of Emily Fisher and Jorge Mesa as undergrads on bsky, except they aren't on bsky! 😜 Anyway here is their work on looking at the mixing of gas in collisions of galaxy subclusters. #scicomm
You could also have gone with "In udder news..." 🥁
But it is pretty cool she'll use the brush or stick end depending on what itch she wants to scratch...
Looking towards a stream that meanders in an S-shape from the bottom right through to the top left. Trees fill the top of the frame.
Looking down a snow-covered path, a tree on the right hangs over it and is covered in snow. Two tires tracks cut through the white of the snow on the path.
Looking up in to the canopy of a tall white pine. Boughs reach out from the central trunk, framed against a sky that is a combination of blues and whites.
Got out for a quick walk around Mt Olivet cemetery with it being a #snowday. Gorgeous little scenes all the way around. #photography Halisky.
A box surrounds a region with two roughly hemispherical lobes that are radiating out from a central point. A colour legend on the bottom right gives scaled values for the plotted fields.
Doing some coding while recovering from an infection. Don't often post work stuff here, but here's a fun little plot of shock lobes following a collision of a pair of galaxy clusters. For the interested this is a div v * grad ln P tracker, seems to work pretty well. #sciviz
It was worth it... Mops with a napkin....
When you spend about 1 hour 10 mins on food prep caramelizing, and you still have to sit through another hour of the casserole cooking in the oven... Sorry, have a mouth full of saliva right now. 😋It smells so goooood.
There should be a boot pic in there 😉
The root ball of a spruce tree that fell a few years ago. The dirt that was pulled up has finally been washed off by the rain, revealing the detailed root structure.
Close-up of a tree trunk covered in a filamentary fungus that eaks its way across the surface to reveal a network of dark patches.
The end of a branch curls down and toward the bottom right, while bokeh balls fill the background of the image.
A young tree grows up and curls over to the right, the end hanging down almost like the head of a horse.
The structures that nature puts together always draw your eye in and in and in... Here's a few quick pics from #Hemlockravine park in #Halifax on a - not so cold for once - Sunday afternoon. #photography
A crescent sun rises over distant trees. A thin band of cloud crosses the image.
Just a little reminder that in the space of two years the Maritimes were treated to a total solar eclipse, and then this year a partial solar eclipse at sunrise. Incredibly (and it really is!) the sky co-operated for both! Here's the partial sun rising on March 29th 2025 over Halifax harbour.
White on white! 🎄🐿🤍❄️🌲
Very glad to see the local Frog Pond leucistic squirrel still active!
All the best for the holiday break.
Close-up of birch leaves still hanging on the tree. A shallow depth of field holds the middle leaf in focus while the others slide in and out. The leaves are crinkled and copper in colour.
View of frozen ice, covered in striations from the different way it has frozen.
Intentional camera movement applied to a woodland scene. Four trunks are visible while in the background green of the wood dominates. The overall image is blurred by upward camera movement.
If you are celebrating Christmas Eve, sincerely hope it is full of fun & laughter. Got out to #oakfieldprovpark for a walk in today's chill. Lots of beauty ❤️, but a few limbs waiting to fall on the paths (be careful!) Beech leaves, ice and some intentional camera movement. #photography #mikmaki
Diagrams showing the locus of the spinning top axis (precession and nutation) drawn on unit spheres. On the right is a red bauble with a white patch that paints the lines of diagrams on to a bauble.
Here's really fun entry by student Matt Corbett in the SMU Science Xmas Dec comp. One of the hardest things we do in the 3rd year classical mech course is the spinning top. The final part the analysis is to plot behaviours of the spin axis (below). Matt turned the diagrams into a bauble! #scicomm
Well, I'm standing by a river
But the water doesn't flow
It boils with every poison
You can think of
And I'm underneath the streetlight
But the light of joy I know
Scared beyond belief
Way down in the shadows
"Road to Hell" - RIP Chris Rea, one of the "truly human" people of music.
Looking vertically upwards to the glass roof of the atrium. The metal frame holds panels of glass which are covered in snow on the outside. A few small patches of blue sky are visible in places.
The little bit of snow this morning has settled on top of the @smuhalifax.bsky.social Atrium roof. We half jokingly call this the "igloo effect!" - it makes the light inside really soft. Imaged with a superwide lens, hence the off-axis distortion. #photography #halifax
Featherlike fronds of ice criss-cross on an ice-covered surface. The pattern is random and yet strangely organized.
It's that time of year. The feathery touch of winter is upon us. #photography #mikmaki
In full 2018 mode: Yassss!
I really wish bluesky served me more of your posts...
A series of round bicycle locking frames arcs to the left along a path. Each of the frames has an orange snow-plow warning stick attached to it that points directly upward.
There's gotta be a ringette pun about this image! 😊On the @smuhalifax.bsky.social campus this morning. #Halisky
At the request of Canada Post, to avoid confusion with New Brunswick, in 1969 Nebraska agreed to change its shortening from NB to NE.
Marcus wept.
TY!
The source of bias in a probabilistic system lies in its construction, not in its use of probability.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
AI can easily be biased. Please don't argue because it is probabilistic it isn't biased. That's just not true. With that logic you'll end up arguing a loaded die is fair.
ASL interpretation will be provided at the event #deaf
Dr Rousseau-Nepton can also be seen in this Canada Film Board documentary: www.nfb.ca/series/north...
Delighted to announce the 2025 Dan MacLennan Memorial Lecturer in Astronomy as Dr Laurie Rousseau-Nepton of the University of Toronto. Her talk (Fri Nov 21st 7pm) title is: Solving the Universe: Past, Present and Future. All ages welcome. Free event (with tix): www.eventbrite.ca/e/dan-maclen...
Panoramic view of an inlet, the waterline cuts across the middle of the image. On the right is a stand of trees with a red maple that reflects in the water. On the left many of the leaves have fallen, revealing structure in the woodland that is reflected in the water.
Looking out towards the centre of the lake, a single island is reflected in the water. Birches reach up to the sky and their reflection in the still water is equally strong. The distant shoreline presents a dark band across the horizon.
It's been a crazy fall with new course preparation on top of additional things like contract negotiations. But can't complain too much when you have amazing places like Shaw Wilderness just a few mins drive away. Here's a couple of fun little reflections. #photography #mikmaki
A view of two cedar planters, each with the surface covered in straw. The new planter is on the left and the cedar is still it's new warm colour. The older planter on the right is going grey having weathered through many seasons.
I'm not sure if getting chores done counts as procrastinating on work work 😅but got a new garlic bed assembled today and @lmcampbell.bsky.social got our next crop of garlic planted. Shout out to allthingscedar.ca for their cedar planters (yes could do it cheaper with pine or by hand, no time!)
Yellow branches of ginko leaves reach out beyond a bright red maple in the background. In the top left of the image some green oak leaves fill the corner.
Have to admit this was a pretty awesome combination of the fall colours. The reds are so vivid this year! The yellow is a ginko, the red is a maple behind it, while the tree that is still green is an oak. #halifax #photography