The last half day of #HoRS3S kicks off with Kevin Hoy (Ohio State Astro alumnus!) presenting the first evidence of radial velocity signals from satellite(s) around a substellar companion. CRIRES+ RVs give a nice orbital solution. Exciting system! Unclear what to call objects of this kind.

#HoRS3S Day 4 starts with a keynote by Joost Wardenier on 3D effects in ultra hot Jupiters. High resolution observations often interpreted using Kp-vsys maps. The atmospheric dynamics affect the structure of these maps, but be careful of bad ephemerides, eccentricities. Lots of info in these data!

Day 3 of #HoRS3S is out of the gate with a gallop 🐎 w/ Luca Fossati discussing non local thermodynamic equilibrium in exoplanet atmospheres. "NLTE is horrible and fascinating at the same time" - every individual spectral line responds differently to NLTE, & is very important for He NIR triplet

Thanks to the generous conference schedule at #HoRS3S with sessions not starting until 10, I went out on a 7 km #birding 🪶 hike and got 3 fantastic lifers! Iberian magpie! Little owl!! European bee-eater!!! But now it's time to get back to astronomy.

I'm at the Third Conference on High-Resolution Exoplanet and Stellar Characterization Today and in the ELT Era #HoRS3S (we astronomers love our bad acronyms) this week in Granada. Will attempt to at least sporadically live-post during the conference. Stay tuned for conference updates and horse puns.

Nothing like a bit of travel chaos but I'm on my way to #HoRS3S (is that the conference hashtag??)

Last is the SOYSAUCE survey, PI Madyson Barber. Work on studying the alignment between planets and their host stars, focusing on <200 Myr systems (fast misalignment or primordial misalignments). So far, things look aligned. This was done as a twilight zone reference 🧪🔭⭐ #exoplanets

June 27, 2006: I graduate from Astronomy Camp at the University of Arizona after a visit to the then-incomplete Large Binocular Telescope June 27, 2026: I obtain the first light spectrum on the iLocater spectrograph, one of the second generation of LBT instruments 🔭🪐 #exoplanets

Time to vote on our art competition submissions! 1 like = 1 vote. The entry with the most votes wins! 🧵👇

Make sure to get submissions in and spread the word! Submissions can be print or visual media! Astrophotography, space poems, musical pieces related to space, heck you can do a nice picture of the moon hehe all can count #BSW2026.

Black In Astro@blackinastro.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Our annual astro art competition is now open! Submit your art to win beautiful prizes from our generous sponsors! We can’t wait to see your art submissions🎨🖌️ The deadline for this competition is June 18th, best of luck! The submission form can be found on our website linked in our bio! #BSW2026

I was thrilled to have played a very small part in this ornithological discovery - back in March I had recorded a fish crow in this park and posted to eBird, which was one of several things that prompted @skwinnicki.bsky.social to realize that they were nesting there. Woo citizen science!

SK Winnicki, PhD 🏳️‍⚧️@skwinnicki.bsky.social · 2mo ago

To the best of our* knowledge, these are the first Fish Crows to breed in Columbus Ohio, as the species expands south from Lake Erie. And they chose to nest across the road from my house! So grateful. *the OSU breeding bird team I'm on, plus local eBird reviewers

Magnetic fields tend to be the running joke at #exoplanets conferences. You can be sure someone asks „what about magnetic fields?“. This is the answer ⬇️

ESO@eso.org · 2mo ago

Using our VLT and the Gemini North telescope, astronomers have measured the strength of #exoplanets ’ magnetic fields for the first time. These fields turned out to be comparable to those found in our Solar System. More: https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso2606/ 🔭 🧪 #exoplanets

this is a pride flag made from real nasa imagery happy pride month 🏳️‍🌈✨

Huge congratulations to my first (co)-supervised grad student, Dr. Connor Basinger, who successfully defended his Ph.D. today! 🎉🔭🪐 His research spanned from using stellar models to tackle the Faint Young Sun probably to high-resolution transmission spectroscopy of an ultra hot Jupiter.

My #biggestweek long weekend starts with a bang before I even leave town, 49 species this morning including a golden-winged warbler! 🪶

I feel like we’re willing to make Pluto a planet again, at least provisionally, if they’re willing to fund astrophysics. I’d say $100 billion/year is reasonable But if you keep cutting our budgets, I swear we’ll keep eliminating them. Hope you like a three planet solar system!

Jeff Foust@jfoust.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Isaacman: very much in the camp of making Pluto a planet again. Working on some papers right now to escalate through the scientific community to revisit this. And that's it.

We are looking for two new PhD students to join our group at the University of Southern Queensland to work on exoplanet demographics and atmospheres. See AAS ad below. aas.org/jobregister/...

I searched the Epstein files for astronomy and astronomers, and consistent with Sean Carroll's posts about why his name is listed, it seems like Epstein was trying to rope in scientists they perceived as smart, and scientists tried to get financial backing from him. 🔭 Some examples:

Fellow academics and others who have personal websites for their work: what hosting platforms do you use that are user friendly, affordable, and not US-based? EU or Canadian company + servers preferred.

Cartoon by Mike Luckovich

You and your wife drop your 6-year-old off at school. You just moved here. You see ICE terrorizing your new neighbors. You film them, as is your legal right. Your wife complies with orders. She is then shot in the head. You still have to pick up your child later today. This could be you.

I did an impromptu Big Day today to keep my mind off (gestures vaguely at everything) and ended up having a really lucky #birding 🪶 day. Saw a merlin, peregrine falcon, Wilson's snipes, greater white-fronted geese, and short-eared and eastern screech owls, among 45 species total.

It’s 1990, I’m 1 years old, and the republican president of the US is attacking a petrol state It’s 2004, I’m 15 years old, and the republican president of the US is attacking a petrol state It’s 2026, I’m 37 years old, and the republican president of the US is attacking a petrol state

Just woke up even angrier. Impeach, convict, remove. Draft articles now. Either we have a representative government or we don’t. Do not shut up about this until there’s a vote.

Ring out the old and… …that’s it? This is not OK. 🧪🔭

Year-end #birding 🪶 roundup for 2025: 364 species observed, a new record for me! 🎉 60 lifers, the first being the Mexican jay and the last the sage thrasher, ending the year with 569 species on my life list. I don't do much photography, but here's a hairy woodpecker using its beak to get through ice

In not-very-good news, extreme winds (114 mph gusts) on the early morning of the 25th caused significant damage to the 36" Great Refractor at Lick Observatory. Half of the main shutter broke off and landed on the main building.

OSU limiting participation in SACNAS is heartbreaking. I have attended SACNAS since 2003 as an undergrad, & it was the first scientific space where I felt welcome. I always bring students (pic is OSU participants at 2022 SACNAS), & now it is in our city & OSU doesn't want us to go? So disappointing.

Very successful #globalbigday 🪶 today on a short trip to the San Francisco Bay Area -- 48 species including 8 lifers! Particularly proud that 5 of the lifers were notoriously difficult shorebirds (willet, least sandpiper, black oystercatcher, wandering tattler, and black turnstone).

Ohio State just advised all staff and students not to attend the SACNAS (Society for the advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science) annual meeting of 6000+ scientists -- which is in Columbus, OH this year! -- saying it may be exclusionary, even though it is open to all.