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Made another handy #accessibility guide, this time for your science plots!

Our plots can have lots of messages in them, so try and tell the story of the main message. Here's a guideline/template and some tips on how you can describe your plots that works for me.

Hope folks find this useful!

(I am using one of our pulsar observations to demonstrate how I have used this template in the alt-text for this image)

#Science #Astrodon #ScienceCommunication #SciComm

This is a plot of a pulsar observation, with the x-axis representing the pulse phase and the y-axis representing flux density in units of millijansky. The plot contains thre curves, one in black which represents the pulsar's profile intensity, one in red which represents the linear polarization and one in blue which represents the circular polarization. The pulsar's signal forms a sharp narrow peak around pulse phase 0.35. The intensity profile is much larger than the polarization profiles, which both form a more variant profile, rising up and down. The circular polarization even goes negative. This plot is representative of an observation for the pulsar PSR J2241-5236. Above the main plot there is also a smaller sub-plot, which shows the position angle (P.A.) data as a function of the same pulse phase, as well as degrees. The data in this plot is small clusters of data points and their error bars. The P.A. represents the orientation of the linear polarization of light from the observer's perspective. There is also text on the plot, which provides handy accessibility tips and a template for the wording to use, as this image is being used to demonstrate science plot accessibility.
#Accessibility #science #scicomm #Astrodon #sciencecommunication

#PPOD: This stunning photo was taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) onboard the ESA's Mars Express spacecraft. Phobos is the larger and closer of Mars's two moons, the other being Deimos. One hypothesis of their origin involves the possible capture of primitive asteroids. Unfortunately, Phobos is being pulled apart and closer by Mars's tidal forces and gravity. Credit: ESA/DLR/FUBerlin/ @andrealuck CC BY (flickr.com/photos/192271236@N0…)

#mars #phobos #space #science #scicomm

Phobos over Mars - ESA Mars Express

Credit: ESA/DLR/FUBerlin/AndreaLuck CC BY Download full size image 3570x2000: www.flickr.com/photos/192271236@N03/53635851891/sizes/o/ I was kinda tired of seeing this epic photo online only in black and white, so I decided to jazz it up with some …
Flickr
#science #scicomm #space #mars #PPOD #phobos @Andrea Luck

Phew! Thanks to new data from ESO's Very Large #Telescope, we now know that a white dwarf that was set for a close encounter with our Solar System in 29000 years isn't actually headed our way. Turns out that the intense magnetic field of the #star had biased the previous measurements of the approach speed. You're welcome everyone! 😉

We tell you everything in our latest ESO #blog: eso.org/public/blog/rogue-star…

#astrodon #astronomy #space #scicomm


ESOblog: Rogue star not heading for Solar System collision after all

Rogue star not heading for Solar System collision after all
www.eso.org
#blog #scicomm #astronomy #space #telescope #Astrodon #star

Be ungovernable, like birds who make nests OUT OF ANTI-BIRD SPIKES. A new study describes resourceful Dutch & Belgian corvids besting evil architecture by stealing metal anti-bird strips and using them like thorny twigs, to construct their homes.

Like thorns, the spikes may protect their nests from predators.

Lead author Auke-Florian Hiemstra wrote an epic 🧵 about his research that's worth a read: twitter.com/AukeFlorian/status…

Paper: hetnatuurhistorisch.nl/organis…

#science #SciComm #birds #netherlands

A bird's nest made of metal anti-bird spikes, against a white background.
A bird's nest in a tree in Antwerp. The nest is made of metal anti-bird spikes.

Deinsea 21

www.hetnatuurhistorisch.nl
#science #birds #scicomm #netherlands

I feel like I can announce this now. I want to put on a conference for math communicators in the US. Inspired by @TMiP. Please share with those interested. You can sign up for updates at mathcommunications.com #scicomm

Math Communications

A potential new US math communications conference.
mathcommunications.com
#scicomm @Talking Maths In Public

We are all stardust.

That oxygen you breath? That comes from dying massive stars, ending their light in a supernova.

The iron in your blood? Some massive stars dying, but mainly white dwarfs, the leftovers of dwarf stars like our own Sun, exploding.

The gold ring on your finger? Mostly merging neutron stars, leftovers from supernovae.

#astrodon #scicomm #astronomy

Graphic showing the periodic table of elements with elements colored by their most likely origin in different astrophysical processes. From https://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/johnson.3064/nucleo/
#scicomm #astronomy #Astrodon

Hi, fellow #journalists ... in an attempt to make the Twitter diaspora a little easier, I'm compiling a list of #journalism types on mastodon. Currently it's biased toward #science / #scicomm types, but there are others in there.

I'll post the names, but the ongoing project is available on Github here: github.com/cgseife/mastodonpeo…

From the top:
Jason Abbruzzese
@JasonAbbruzzese

Hilda Bastian
@hildabast

Alan Boyle
@alanboyle

Bethany Brookshire
@beebrookshire

Siri Carpenter
@SiriCarpenter (+)


GitHub - cgseife/mastodonpeople

Contribute to cgseife/mastodonpeople development by creating an account on GitHub.
GitHub
#science #journalism #scicomm #journalists @Hilda Bastian @JasonAbbruzzese @alanboyle @beebrookshire @SiriCarpenter

Because there's no obvious onboarding nor page dedicated to accessibility features, notice that this is how you put alt text into images on Mastodon. I'm not sure what the upper limit is on characters per img. Use the "Edit" in the upper right-hand side of an uploaded image in a draft toot to access this area. #a11y #SciComm
Screenshot of the "Edit Media" window that opens up when you click on the "Edit" area of an image in a draft toot. It shows "Click or drag on the circle on the preview to choose the focal point which will always be in view on all thumbnails. Describe from the visually impaired" A link says "Detect text from picture" and a button says "Apply".
#a11y #scicomm

> The ecology of fear, the idea that the presence of a predator causes a cascade of ecological effects across a landscape, is a fundamental concept in wildlife ecology. In recent years, ecologists have come to appreciate how much animals, even apex predators, fear humans, with myriad effects on animal behaviors and, in turn, ecosystems.

Ecologist Asia Murphy writes about humans' role in the "ecology of fear" and the implications for wildlife management & conservation: americanscientist.org/article/…

#SciComm #ecology #biology #science #anthropocene 🐘

A Landscape of Fear of Humans

Animals, even apex predators, take great pains to avoid people—a pervasive problem when these changes disrupt what they eat and where they go.
American Scientist
#science #biology #scicomm #Ecology #anthropocene

Because it launched folded up, #JWST spent the first several weeks verrryyy carefully unfolding itself in space as it traveled to its orbit.

The scariest part was the sunshield tensioning! The sunshield is the pink/grey part and is used to keep the mirrors and instruments nice and cold so we can see the very faint heat from the early universe!

#Science #SciComm

#science #scicomm #jwst

Do people like threads here? I guess we'll find out!

Between meetings today I thought I'd talk about #NASA #JWST and all the exciting #science we can expect from it starting in a few months!

(Yes, I made this travel mug ❤️)

#SciComm #Exoplanets #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Telescope #MastodonNewbie

A selfie of Erin (brown hair pulled back in a bun, hazel eyes, large clear glasses, noise ring) smiling while holding a travel mug she made featuring the JW Space Telescope
#science #scicomm #astronomy #astrophysics #jwst #nasa #telescope #MastodonNewbie #exoplanets

Quick #introduction: I'm Mars (she/her).

I'm a PhD researcher for CSIRO + software engineer for the University of Tasmania, where I make software that runs on big radio telescopes. My work is used to track space debris, planetary spacecraft, asteroids, solar weather, spectral line emissions, and more!
💻___📡~~~🛰

Side hustles in #SciComm, #SwiftLang and #GameDev. Big nerd for space fiction on any medium. Wife of @parisba ❤️

A large radio telescope sits atop a grassy hill, with a wide river in the background. Beside it and down the hill a bit sits a smaller dish. This is the Mount Pleasant Radio Observatory outside Hobart in Tasmania.
A single radio telescope in front of a backdrop of snow-capped mountains. It is one of the ten 25 metre dishes scattered around the United States that make up the Very long Baseline Array (VLBA).
An array of five large radio telescopes. These are five of the six 22 metre dishes that make up the Australia Telescope Compact Array, otherwise known as ATCA (at-cuh).
#gamedev #introduction #scicomm #swiftlang @Dr Paris (he/him)

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