Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson on Feb. 3 joined the ranks of the Twitter elite when he reached 1 million followers on the popular microblogging service.
The director of the American Museum of Natural History’s Hayden Planetarium in New York commemorated the occasion with a special tweet to his newest follower.
“Welcome @halfsail as my millionth Twitter follower,” Neil deGrasse Tyson wrote in a Twitter post from his handle, @neiltyson. “FYI: I tweet mostly random, occasionally coherent, cosmic brain droppings.”
Tyson is known for his somewhat irreverent tweets about space and science.
“In 5-billion yrs the Sun will expand & engulf our orbit as the charred ember that was once Earth vaporizes,” Tyson wrote Jan. 24. “Have a nice day.”
He even had a conversation with a popular anthropomorphized tweeter, the Mars Rover Curiosity.
“Dear @MarsCuriosity, Neil deGrasse Tyson here on Earth, tweeting you, via a wormhole, through deep space. Do you copy?” Tyson wrote after Curiosity landed safely on Mars.
In 2014, Tyson will host a reboot of the famed TV show “Cosmos,” originally hosted by astronomer and writer Carl Sagan. The original program focused on exploring broad scientific ideas like the origin of life, and humanity’s place in a vast universe.
Tyson is no stranger to television. He hosted five seasons of the educational science show “NOVA scienceNOW” on PBS, and he often makes guest appearances on news and commentary programs like “The Daily Show” and “Real Time with Bill Maher.”
Although Tyson might be the latest space-obsessed tweeter to garner 1 million followers, he is not the first. Veteran spaceflier Michael Massimino (@Astro_Mike) not only surpassed 1 million followers, he was also the first NASA astronaut to tweet from space.
