@sundogplanets@mastodon.social
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sundogplanets

@sundogplanets@mastodon.social

Professor of astronomy, farmer of goats. Asteroid (42910). She/her.

Has mostly lived in warmer places, now learning to live respectfully on Treaty 4 lands (Saskatchewan, Canada)

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sundogplanets, to random
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May you all sleep as comfortably as this pile of baby goats.

sundogplanets, to random
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Less than 30 min after my partner left for a school overnight camping trip he's leading, one dog escaped to go visit the neighbours and I had to run over to retrieve him, and the other dog (the floofball puppy) figured out how to wriggle her way into the chicken coop and eat eggs (fixing that problem requires completely redoing a gate, which I'm not going to have time to do before meetings today. Sigh.)

So far no llama or goat escapes, though I did watch the llama eat dirt... llamas are weird.

A pile of black, white, and brown baby goats all laying in a sunny patch on straw, all snuggled together into one big pile and a couple of smaller piles.

sundogplanets, to random
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Less than half an hour after my partner left for a school overnight camping trip he's leading, one dog escaped to go visit the neighbours and I had to run over to retrieve him, and the other dog (the floofball puppy) figured out how to wriggle her way into the chicken coop and eat eggs (fixing that problem requires completely redoing a gate, which I'm not going to have time to do before meetings today. Sigh.)

But so far no llama or goat escapes...

sundogplanets, to random
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Have to use MS Teams to talk to a federal gov't person. Send good vibes.

sundogplanets, to random
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It's perhaps the ugliest haircut ever, but I managed to shear my llama over the weekend!

At first I tried to get him into a small pen, but he knew it was a trap. So I just started cutting (with hand shears). He tolerated it for about a minute at a time, then he'd walk away, and I'd give him a little break, then start cutting again.

I got close to 10 pounds of (really dirty) wool, and now he looks like he's carved out of mattress foam. So weird. Hopefully he'll be cooler for the summer now!

A bunch of dirty brownish wool in a clear plastic bag, with my foot for scale. The bag is maybe 4 feet tall by 1 foot across. It's sitting on straw.
The llama standing out in a grassy pasture, surrounded by eating goats. He's still got a lot of long, fluffy fur on his neck, but his sides are MUCH less poofy than they used to be, with very roughly cut wool all along his sides.

sundogplanets,
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Here's a before haircut picture for reference.

And yes, I do plan to try to work with the wool, but it'll definitely be a winter project.

sundogplanets,
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@BashStKid hand shears because I had them. And because I didn't need to be close to an outlet.

sundogplanets,
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@msquebanh This llama is SO good! Didn't try to spit even once. I've only had him a few months so I'm still learning llama body language, but I think this is maybe the most magically chill llama on the planet

(Side note: you are SO amazing! You do so many incredibly good things for the world! Thank you)

sundogplanets, to random
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I had to edit a MS word thing through my new university microsoft account, and holy cow, all the mansplainy suggestions microsoft thrusts in there are like Clippy went and got an MBA and needs to make sure that you know the $60k he paid for it was absolutely definitely worth it.

sundogplanets, to random
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I am talking o a reporter about this in a couple hours: https://regina.ctvnews.ca/from-outer-space-sask-farmers-baffled-after-discovering-strange-wreckage-in-field-1.6880353

This is about an hour away from my farm, so this'll be a fun conversation, and yet another great opportunity to tell a lot of people about what a huge problem we have with unregulated commercialization of orbit. (Also I just redid my slides for my public talk next week, this is going in!)

sundogplanets,
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One aspect of this story I haven't really let myself get angry about until just now: this particular SpaceX Crew Dragon trunk that dropped garbage on Sask. was from the Axiom 3 "private astronaut mission."

"Private astronaut" = billionaire space tourist.

Billionaires own companies that other billionaires pay for joy rides that drop potentially lethal garbage on us from orbit. This is fine.

I already knew billionaires are horrible, but this particular situation really lays it out starkly.

sundogplanets,
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@aarbrk I have an album of close-up photos that I took that I've been sharing with journalists. Maybe I should just post it on here? Hmmm

sundogplanets,
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@markmccaughrean Thanks for clarifying - I spent a little time wading through Axiom propoganda and it's really hard to figure out what's real. But...they did still pay their own way, correct? They're just very qualified billionaires? Or something? This just keeps getting weirder...

sundogplanets,
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@markmccaughrean Wow, thank you for spelling that all out! I wish they'd made that more clear on their website...

This is all just bizarre.... and I wish Axiom and SpaceX would BOTH take responsibility for dumping garbage on Canada! SpaceX has still not publicly admitted anything, which is just totally obnoxious.

sundogplanets,
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Thanks to @markmccaughrean for correcting my assumptions! I guess "private astronaut" really is the correct terminology here - they were all trained astronauts with their tickets paid by their government or employers (I guess other Axiom missions were more for space tourists?) Still kind of weird.

And it would still be great if SpaceX and Axiom would publicly admit they made a big engineering mistake and state they will fix it, rather than just giving farmers piddly little private payments.

sundogplanets,
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Anybody remember that documentary filmmaker who brought a crew out here back in Feb? His whole film "Shifting Baselines" is effectively about how recklessly dangerous SpaceX is.

The Sask space junk fell about 30 km away from where the film crew and I went to access Bortle 2 dark skies, only a couple weeks later.

So, I just chatted with him again! Editing is almost done on his documentary, but he thought he could squeeze in a bit of a recording of me talking about space junk for an epilogue.

sundogplanets,
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I talked to the farmer again and apparently SpaceX is coming on Thursday to pick up the space junk. He said he'd be happy to host some journalists at his farm to record the hand-off and keep SpaceX honest.

So, I just emailed a large fraction of the local journalists who have interviewed me about this to give them a heads-up 😈

sundogplanets,
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@otte_homan Oh my gosh that is a HILARIOUS idea

sundogplanets,
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Wait wait wait wait... a piece of the SpaceX Crew Dragon trunk that landed in North Carolina last week actually hit someone's house?! https://abcnews.go.com/US/north-carolina-men-find-suspected-space-debris-same/story?id=110809039

sundogplanets,
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@markmccaughrean @ranx Wow...what a crazy story! Thanks for sharing

sundogplanets,
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@jmcrookston This is why it's suddenly a problem: https://planet4589.org/space/stats/active.html

Thanks, Starlink

sundogplanets,
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@michael_w_busch @andy Really?? Meteorites are covered?! Wow I never thought to check that in mine... guess I should!

sundogplanets,
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@megsouth Yeah, there are probably dozens.

sundogplanets,
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@carlysagan Did you see in the article the guy who found it thought it was a dead crow at first?!

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