Downplay a book or movie: 100 Seconds of Solitude
Steve Desch@deschscoveries.bsky.social · 6d agoDownplay a book or movie: Love in the time of a cold that’s going around
Thayne Currie 🇺🇦
@astrothayne.bsky.social
Astrophysicist at Subaru Telescope/U. Texas. Exoplanets, Direct Imaging. Empiricist. Likes scientific rigor. Fan of his golden retriever and peer review. https://subarutelescope.org/staff/currie/
Steve Desch@deschscoveries.bsky.social · 6d agoProposal writing season again, & I'm reminded of how much I learned about clear writing and effective argument structuring from the *legal* profession (not science) and have ported this into my work. The late Justice Scalia and (very much not late) Justice Kagan are grandmasters in this sense.
Betelgeuse has a friend ...
Beetlejuice Head Spin in Tim Burton's Movie
ALT: Beetlejuice Head Spin in Tim Burton's Movie
static.klipy.com
@cosmos4u.bsky.social · last wk.VLT/SPHERE images of the candidate companion of Betelgeuse: www.aanda.org/articles/aa/... -> Astronomers find strongest evidence yet that Betelgeuse has a companion: www.eso.org/public/news/... - this detection seems more significant than the one celebrated last year, marked with the red circle.
Technicians completed fueling #NASARoman, bringing it an important step closer to launch. 🚀 On July 25, the team completed operations that carefully loaded 290 gallons of hydrazine fuel into the observatory at the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
NASA Fuels Roman Space Telescope for Late August Launch
Technicians have completed fueling NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, bringing it an important step closer to launch.
science.nasa.gov
This paper is not first in my queue but it will get done this year. I've finally become sufficiently annoyed about this issue to choose violence and write up something David Kipping-style
Reminder: When fires ravaged southern California, Canada sent firefighting crews to help battle the blazes.
MeidasTouch@meidastouch.com · 3w agoTrump says he is going to increase tariffs on Canada due to the wildfires
A new planet has been found orbiting a nearby young star, Beta Pictoris. When studying the system with #NASAWebb, astronomers found the unmistakable fingerprint of a giant exoplanet where they did not expect it: https://news.stsci.edu/4aJ6IVl
surely, this will "Make America Great Again" ...
Dan Garisto@dangaristo.bsky.social · 4w agoNew: The National Science Foundation is preparing to claw back some $500 million in funds from some of its core science programs in physics, math, computer science, and engineering in order to fund a project from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
Having a bit of FOMO from not being at SPIE this year, but my postdoc Mona has *three* presentations. Relevant to today, one is "Technology and science advancing observations with Roman coronagraph informed by ground-based high-contrast imaging", reporting new PSF ref star vetting results, etc.
The future Pope Leo XIV firing up the grill.
Supreme Court upholds birthright citizenship, rejecting Trump’s proposed limits
Supreme Court upholds birthright citizenship, rejecting Trump’s proposed limits
The Supreme Court has upheld a broad conception of birthright citizenship, rejecting President Donald Trump’s executive order declaring that children born to people in the United States illegally or t...
apnews.com
Last week, I uploaded my first first-author paper as Dr. Prinoth to arXiv, and I finally have time to tell you about it. This one has been a long time coming, and I'm incredibly happy and proud that it's finally out in the #exoplanets world! 🔗 arxiv.org/abs/2606.14490 1/n
A population view of transiting hot giant exoplanets: Tracing Fe and Ti chemistry with ESPRESSO and MAROON-X
Hot and ultra-hot Jupiters offer a unique laboratory to study atmospheric chemistry at the population level using ground-based high-resolution spectroscopy. Fe and Ti are key tracers of thermal and ch...
arxiv.org
This is a good idea.
American Astronomical Society (AAS)@aas.org · last mo.✨ AAS Virtual Graduate Admissions Fair ✨ We’re excited to announce that the AAS plans to host its first-ever virtual graduate admissions fair on Wednesday, 16 September, 3:00–5:00 pm ET! Confirm your department/unit’s interest by 10 July. Registration fee: $500. aas.org/aas-virtual-... 🔭
A third giant planet for beta Pictoris! arxiv.org/pdf/2606.23801 arxiv.org/abs/2606.23789 It was fun to have an early first look at this result as a reviewer. Excellent papers.
Scientific American is being sold to LabX Media, publisher of Discover: group.springernature.com/gp/group/med... They've fired me and other union staff, ahead of June 26 vote ratification. My rates are suddenly more reasonable, if you need editing or reporting - Argonaut2026@gmail.com
Springer Nature to divest its consumer media businesses | Springer Nature Group | Springer Nature
Strategic divestment of consumer media portfolio enables Springer Nature to focus on its core business Transaction supports the long-term development
group.springernature.com
Keck/NIRC2 observing with the new HAKA adaptive optics upgrade. 0.36" seeing. Looking good so far.
It’s now official: Avi Loeb is the RFK Jr. of astrophysics. 🧪
Subaru Telescope schedule for S26B announced. SCExAO proposals for which I am PI or the Sr. Co-I on were allocated 10 nights this semester & I'm Co-I on another ~6 (89% of all SCExAO time). Here comes the data! www.naoj.org/cgi-bin/opec... www.naoj.org/Proposals/Pa...
Brandon Sanderson Avalanche Meme
ALT: Brandon Sanderson Avalanche Meme
static.klipy.com
Today, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope leaves NASA Goddard for the Port of Baltimore to begin its journey to the Kennedy Space Center. This August, Roman will launch into space, broadening our understanding of our solar system & universe. Excited to see it on the move!
Thread on our new paper on arxiv today! We stumbled across a weird sinusoidal systematic that we think appears in every observation from the NIRISS instrument on JWST. We derive a correction and see how much it impacts exoplanet spectra. (1/N) #astro #exoplanets 🔭🧪 arxiv.org/abs/2606.11983
Calibration of an Analog-to-Digital Conversion Nonlinearity in JWST/NIRISS
We quantify an unusual flux-dependent systematic which is periodic in raw counts in flight data from the James Webb Space Telescope's Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (JWST/NIRISS), used...
arxiv.org
Excellent thread on multiple levels of absurdity impacting ECRs without citizenship. @gmduvvuri.bsky.social and others like him deserve better:
Girish M. Duvvuri@gmduvvuri.bsky.social · 2mo agoFun fact: a number of long-term academic job postings last cycle (and some current off-cycle ones) flat out state(d) that they will not sponsor H1B visas for applicants because of the fee.
SCExAO observing night #2 done. The PSF looks a little bit ugly but that's because we had 3-4" seeing!!!!
In a referee's report I recently submitted, I emphasized the the evil that is passive voice and verbosity in scientific papers. I told the authors to look at a certain George Carlin monologue as a salty, colorful example of why these things are bad. Here it is: www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1kK...
Airline Announcements | George Carlin | Jammin' In New York (1992)
YouTube video by Official George Carlin
youtube.com
One of my favorite systems. AB Aurigae is awesome.
ESO@eso.org · 2mo agoTaken with our VLT over a period of four years, these images show the rotating disc of gas & dust around the young star AB Aurigae. Features like “twists” signal the places where #exoplanets could be forming 🪐 More: https://www.eso.org/public/videos/potw2622a/ 🔭 🧪 📹 ESO/A. Boccaletti et al.
In a statement to @benmullin.bsky.social, Scott Pelley disputes what Bari Weiss said in this morning's editorial meeting, claiming he was never offered "a way back" as she claimed. "These executives cannot gain the trust of the staff with lies. This is antithetical to everything we stand for..."
