Dr. Alison Duck
@astroalison.bsky.social
Exoplaneteer - OSU Astronomy PhD
This morning's launch of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope from the Kennedy Space Center was amazing! Roman is now on a million-mile journey to Lagrange point 2, where it will soon reveal the universe’s darkest secrets: https://go.nasa.gov/4qIa69I #NASARoman 🔭 Credit: J. Barrientes/STScI.
"There is so much out there to explore," said Patrick Lowrance, the Roman Science Support Center co-lead at IPAC. Congrats to NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope on a successful launch 🚀 🔭 🧪 ⚛️ 👩🔬 www.ipac.caltech.edu/news/ready-t...
Ready to Roman: Caltech Teams Celebrate Telescope Launch, Look Ahead to Future
The next generation of exoplanet imaging technology, designed and built at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which Caltech manages for the agency, has launched aboard NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Sp...
ipac.caltech.edu
Liftoff of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope! NASA’s next great observatory is on it’s way to showing us the stars
Roman launch transits the sun. From NASASpaceflight feed.
Getting to share the excitement for all the cool exoplanets #Roman will find at the Kennedy Space Center!
I'm so pleased to have made my debut in @sciencenews.bsky.social with this story about (a taste of) all the cool science NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope--launching Sunday!--is due to tackle 🧪 🔭
NASA’s new space telescope will reveal the universe like never before
NASA’s new Nancy Grace Roman space telescope will tackle nearly every aspect of astrophysics, including dark matter, dark energy and alien planets.
sciencenews.org
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is poised to discover ~100,000 planets through the transit method! My talk on charactering the stars Roman will observe to search for planets for the 2026 Sagan Summer Workshop is now on YouTube! youtu.be/W8JQO21Cq8Y?...
Characterizing Transit Host Stars - Alison Duck (JPL)
YouTube video by Sagan Summer Workshop
youtu.be
If you're at #Sagan2026, come check out my *interactive* #exoplanet poster! The Near-Infrared Transit Explorer (NITE) is a survey mission concept designed to find Earth-sized planets in the habitable zones of M dwarfs!
#Sagan2026 is off to a great start!! We have many amazing posters everyone should check out! And if you are curious about designing your own poster the video recording of my PROTO session “Communication Tips & Tricks for Posters and Pops” is live on YouTube! youtu.be/1V4c64xlr7M?...
PROTO: Tips and Tricks for Effective Communication with Scientific Posters
YouTube video by Sagan Summer Workshop
youtu.be
It's paper day! *with a typo in the title* arxiv.org/abs/2607.09851 In this work, we conducted a small spectroscopy survey of 32 FGK stars that all host brown dwarf companions. This host star sample includes 14 brown dwarf companions that have already obtained or incoming JWST data.
Benchmark Brown Dwarf Systems I: Chemical Abundance Analysis of FGK Stars with Wide-Separation Brown Dwarf Companions Using PEPS
We present results from a spectroscopic survey of 32 FGK stars hosting brown dwarfs, using high-resolution optical spectra (R = 130,000 and 50,000) obtained with the PEPSI spectrograph on the Large Bi...
arxiv.org
New paper led by Andrew Hotnisky (grad student, University of Florida)! COUNTESS I: A Uniformly Vetted Catalog of Known and New Transiting Exoplanets in the TESS Northern Continuous Viewing Zone arxiv.org/abs/2606.13789 #Exoplanets #AAS248 🔭
COUNTESS I: A Uniformly Vetted Catalog of Known and New Transiting Exoplanets in the TESS Northern Continuous Viewing Zone
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has transformed the study of nearby exoplanetary systems; however, its nominal observing strategy limits sensitivity to planets with orbital periods sh...
arxiv.org
TESS confirms what we saw with Kepler and K2 - on average, ***every single small red star has a planet around it***! And a short-period one at that (<30 days). And you know what the galaxy is mostly made of? Small red stars. PLANETS. PLANETS EVERYWHERE!!! Happy weekend pondering that, everyone.
Kevin Hardegree-Ullman@kevinkhu.bsky.social · 7mo agoInteresting new M dwarf #exoplanet occurrence rates paper! I'm glad to see that the new TESS result (with much lower uncertainties) is consistent with our Kepler result! arxiv.org/abs/2602.23364
Really interesting white paper! And a great reminder to align our methods with the outcomes we desire. If our outcomes value human discovery and wonder, our methods (and training of students) should value those too!
Mike Boylan-Kolchin@mbkplus.bsky.social · 7mo agoDavid Hogg has written a white paper on doing astrophysics in the age of LLMs. It looks to be thought-provoking. My initial reaction is that either LLMs will destroy the field or they will force a reckoning with and re-imagining of the current system that often prioritizes output over quality. 🧪
The new #ASPIRES3 Physics report is difficult reading. Physics: * remains male-dominated (24% fem) & privileged * aspirations decline from the start to end of school 😔 * is considered the least interesting, most difficult science 😭 * is for brainy "geeks" 😮💨 Lots of useful recommendations though🎢🧪👩🔬⚛️
How a solar radiation storm created January 2026’s aurora The first good auroral show of 2026 began not with a solar flare nor a coronal mass ejection, but a solar radiation (particle) storm. It's the first big one since 2003! bigthink.com/starts-with-... #space #particle #sun #astro #heliophysics
How a solar radiation storm created January 2026's aurora
The Sun often produces solar flares and coronal mass ejections, but a rare solar radiation storm made the 2026's first great auroral show.
bigthink.com
Read more about the bills passed yesterday (aas.org/posts/news/2...), and thank your members of Congress today! aas.org/action-alert...
Now that I can take a breath, I'm SUPER EXCITED we can share that NASA's first Pioneer-class mission, Pandora, is launching this weekend, January 11, at 5:19am!!! I was the Mission Archive Scientist on the proposal, and the NASA Exoplanet Archive will host the mission data. svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14945/
NASA Scientific Visualization Studio | NASA’s Pandora Satellite to Explore Exoplanets and Stars
Artist’s concept of NASA’s Pandora mission, which will help scientists untangle the signals from exoplanets’ atmospheres — worlds beyond our solar system — and their stars.Credit: NASA's Goddard Space...
svs.gsfc.nasa.gov
The final Calvin and Hobbes, which appeared in papers 30 years ago today.
We've added a tool to upload your published parameters to the NASA Exoplanet Archive! This tool can help us get your new planets and planet parameters onto the archive, so check it out and consider using for your next #exoplanet paper! 🔭🧪 exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/support/uplo...
Exoplanet Archive Published Data Submission Page
exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu
First time at #AAS247? You’re not alone! ✨ Check out this orientation guide from the AAS Education Committee, created to help students and first-time attendees navigate the meeting. 🔭 aas.org/meetings/aas... @education.aas.org
You see the printed black square from a page in Robert Fludd's "Utriusque cosmi maioris" (1617) that represented the nothingness that was prior to the universe. The square is framed by four sentences in Latin: "Et sic in infinitum" (And so on to infinity). #earlymodern #skystorians
New orbit movie just dropped. This one is for the newly discovered circumbinary planet HD 143811 AB b. This 9-year timelapse was made through an international collaboration with me, Nathalie Jones (Northwestern graduate student), and Vito Squicciarini (Exeter postdoc)
CIERA@nuciera.bsky.social · 9mo agoA discovery fit for Star Wars: CIERA astronomers have directly imaged a Tatooine-like planet orbiting two suns — and it’s closer to its stars than any other directly imaged planet in a binary system. 🌟🌟🪐https://bit.ly/4q8Dfto @thejason.wang #Exoplanets #Astronomy #Northwestern #CIERA
A discovery fit for Star Wars: CIERA astronomers have directly imaged a Tatooine-like planet orbiting two suns — and it’s closer to its stars than any other directly imaged planet in a binary system. 🌟🌟🪐https://bit.ly/4q8Dfto @thejason.wang #Exoplanets #Astronomy #Northwestern #CIERA
🚀The Roman Cycle 1 Call for Proposals is OPEN! Unlock new discoveries with the Wide Field Instrument—your science starts here! Apply for funding to analyze Roman data, perform theory/lab research, and propose new observations. 🔭☄️ 📅 Deadline: Mar 17, 2026 (5 PM PDT) 📝 bit.ly/4q3jbbL
New paper led by Fabian Polnitzcky & with @sratzenboeck.bsky.social + @joaoalves.bsky.social: based on the ages of stars with infrared excess in Sco-Cen, it seems planet-forming disks last around twice as long as previous estimates suggest - giving twice as long for planets to form. 🔭☄️ #exoplanets
