My first presence in Exoplanets conference series featuring our KPIC spin work! #Exo6 #Exoplanets6

We are proud to announce that William Balmer has been named Northwestern University’s first Heising-Simons Foundation 51 Pegasi b Fellow and a member of the Tenth Class of 51 Pegasi b Fellows! Congratulations William! bit.ly/4e53ePl #Astrophysics #PlanetaryScience

CIERA Announces Northwestern’s First 51 Pegasi b Fellowship Recipient

The Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA) is proud to announce that William Balmer (they/them) has been named Northwestern University’s first Heising-Simons Fou...

bit.ly

Check out this great work by @maddielam.bsky.social and @johannavos.bsky.social for a deep dive in silicate cloud absorption and inclinations! From L dwarfs in AB Dor, we find an interesting trend that lower inclination correlate with the stronger silicate cloud absorption!

Maddie Lam@maddielam.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Proud to announce that my first PhD paper has now been accepted and is live on arXiv!! arxiv.org/abs/2603.24662 In this paper I provide the first analyses of JWST spectra of a sample of young, co-eval L dwarfs, focusing on the silicate absorption and whether there are any equator-to-pole variations.

I am super excited to share our new paper on the spin of brown dwarfs and giant planets, accepted to AJ earlier this month. With the large spin survey, we found the first clear evidence that the spins of giant planets and brown dwarf companions (>5 au) are distinct. arxiv.org/abs/2601.05976

The Fomalhaut system continues to deliver unexpected surprises!

CIERA@nuciera.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Hubble has imaged the aftermath of two rare collisions between rocky bodies in the nearby planetary system—events once thought to happen only every 100,000 years. CIERA member Jason Wang helped confirm the discovery. bit.ly/4s66Pl1 #Science #Astrophysics #CIERA

I’m attending the #AAS247 this week. Look forward to catching up with friends and colleagues!

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 · 8mo ago

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

A remarkable old, low metallicity, transiting brown dwarf. arxiv.org/abs/2512.06069

We are hiring a new Assistant Professor in Astrophysics at Trinity College Dublin!! ☘ Job ad here: aas.org/jobregister/... Deadline: Jan 02 2026 Please share widely! 🪐🔭

We've collected 65 individual exoplanet atmosphere composition measurements to look for population-level trends 🔭 #exoplanets To do this, we had to create a toolkit to standardize between definitions of . We call it ExoComp. (Yes, that's a Star Trek reference 😀).

SAVE THE DATE! The 11th AAS Topical Conference Series (AASTCS): Exoplanet Atmospheres 2026 will take place in Denver. Join astronomers, planetary scientists & researchers from around the world for an in-depth exploration of one of the most dynamic fields in science today. More details soon 🔭

Evan has extended our cloudy Diamondback evolution models to higher Teff with PHOENIX models at the high end. This permits all model tracks to start at the same young age. We call this model variation Red Diamondback.

arXiv astro-ph.SR Solar and Stellar Astrophysics@astrophsr-bot.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Davis, Fortney, Iyer, Mukherjee, Morley, Marley, Line, Muirhead: The Sonora Substellar Atmosphere Models VI. Red Diamondback: Extending Diamondback with SPHINX for Brown Dwarf Early Evolution https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.08694 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.08694 https://arxiv.org/html/2510.08694

Two papers announcing the discovery of a directly imaged 6 Jupiter mass planet around binary system HD 143811 AB Squicciarini+ and Jones+ in Sco-Cen - Keck, Gemini and VLT all imaging this companion and confirmed with several years of common proper motion. #astrodon #exoplanet #exosci

A quick advert for the ✨✨✨Official✨✨✨ release of the Virga cloud code (the python version of everyone's favorite EddySed model by @markmarley.bsky.social and Andy Ackerman). arxiv.org/abs/2508.15102

Condensation Clouds in Substellar Atmospheres with Virga

Here we present an open-source cloud model for substellar atmospheres, called Virga. The Virga-v0 series has already been widely adopted in the literature. It is written in Python and has heritage fro...

arxiv.org

I liked Caroline Morley's Exoclimes poster describing our Sonora model set so much that I'm going to hang up a replica in my office.

The 51 Peg b postdoctoral fellowship is out and Northwestern is one of the possible host institutions. Come join us! More information about the range of planetary astronomy research and other opportunities (like PI of Keck proposals) here: ciera.northwestern.edu/opportunitie....

51 Pegasi b Fellowship at Northwestern

Northwestern University is excited to be a host institution for the Heising-Simons Foundation’s 51 Pegasi b Fellowship. Fellows can collaborate on planetary astronomy research and can benefit from aff...

ciera.northwestern.edu

CIERA@nuciera.bsky.social · last yr.

PhD in planetary science, astro, or physics (2024–2026)? Launch your independent research career with the 51 Pegasi b Fellowship! Northwestern is a host—join top researchers, access elite telescopes, & receive up to $450K over 3 years. bit.ly/4nEmSnX #Astrophysics

We are delighted to announce fourteen postdocs will be joining the CIERA community in fall 2025. Please join us in extending a warm welcome to these fantastic researchers!

Fourteen new postdocs to join CIERA

Welcome New Postdoctoral Researchers! We are delighted to announce fourteen postdocs will be joining the CIERA community in fall 2025. Please join us in extending a warm welcome to these fantastic re...

ciera.northwestern.edu

Maybe these slow rotating weirdos are binary star systems! Find out more in this @aunz.theconversation.com article by Iris de Ruiter theconversation.com/mysterious-r... 🔭🧪

Mysterious radio pulses from space have been tracked down – and the source is not what astronomers expected

Recently, astronomers have been puzzled by an unknown type of cosmic radio signal. A new breakthrough has finally traced one of them.

theconversation.com

Tired of wondering which atomic lines are in your spectra? You need: *whose line is it anyway?* An interactive tool for identifying atomic spectral lines. 🧪🔭 #stars install: pip install whoseline source: github.com/bmorris3/who...

Very excited to share that I was selected as a Sloan Research Fellow! Really thankful to all my mentors, colleagues, collaborators, and my amazing research group. Wouldn't have been possible with all of them!

Alfred P. Sloan Foundation@sloanfoundation.bsky.social · last yr.

🎉Congrats to the 126 early-career scientists who have been awarded a Sloan Research Fellowship this year! These exceptional scholars are drawn from 51 institutions across the US and Canada, and represent the next generation of groundbreaking researchers. sloan.org/fellowships/...

Registration is now open for the (free, hybrid) 2025 Sagan Summer Workshop! This (25th!) workshop will be focused on Exoplanet Demographics and our overall picture of exoplanet populations through various detection techniques. 🪐🔭🧪 nexsci.caltech.edu/workshop/2025/

Final week to apply for the Code/Astro workshop! Come learn about open-source software development in Python.

Sarah Blunt, PhD 🇵🇸@blunt-comma-s.bsky.social · 2y ago

Hey bluesky! Do you want to develop your own open-source software in Python? Apply to attend Code/Astro! Website: semaphorep.github.io/codeastro/ Scroll all the way down for the application link. :) Apps are due Feb 1! (1/2)

Excited to share our interdisciplinary work on developing new methods to subtract off the glare of the star to reveal fainter exoplanets. We show in simulation that we can build a full optical model of JWST/NIRCam and generate images of the star to subtract off and reveal faint planets (1/3)

Hey bluesky! Do you want to develop your own open-source software in Python? Apply to attend Code/Astro! Website: semaphorep.github.io/codeastro/ Scroll all the way down for the application link. :) Apps are due Feb 1! (1/2)

Want to learn how to make your astronomy code open source? The Code/Astro workshop is happening this Aug 4-8th at Northwestern! We typically get a strong demand so we ask those interested to fill out an application by Feb 1st. See Sarah's post below for details.

Sarah Blunt, PhD 🇵🇸@blunt-comma-s.bsky.social · 2y ago

Hey bluesky! Do you want to develop your own open-source software in Python? Apply to attend Code/Astro! Website: semaphorep.github.io/codeastro/ Scroll all the way down for the application link. :) Apps are due Feb 1! (1/2)

I can validate that working with @philosicist.bsky.social is amazing, and a great opportunity to enjoy sunny San Diego!!

Chris Theissen@philosicist.bsky.social · 2y ago

Hi everyone, I'm looking to hire a postdoc this upcoming year, so if you're interested in coming to San Diego to work on low-mass stars, brown dwarfs, and exoplanets, please apply! aas.org/jobregister/...

Northwestern press and Nature Astronomy research highlights nicely summarize our new paper on a baby planet’s atmosphere news.northwestern.edu/stories/2024... www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Young exoplanet’s atmosphere unexpectedly differs from its birthplace

New study shows planet formation might be more complicated than previously thought

news.northwestern.edu

So excited to share the news that Northwestern is joining the GMT consortium! news.northwestern.edu/stories/2024...

Northwestern joins Giant Magellan Telescope’s international consortium

Faculty will contribute expertise in astrophysics, engineering and artificial intelligence

news.northwestern.edu

Hey folks! Just popping in to announce that the full recording of the 2024 Code/Astro workshop is up on youtube. Playlist here: www.youtube.com/playlist?lis... Code/Astro is a week-long software development workshop for astronomers. More info about the workshop here: semaphorep.github.io/codeastro/

Code/Astro 2024 - YouTube

Hello world! This is the full recording of the 2024 Code/Astro workshop. Here are some useful resources: Workshop website: https://semaphorep.github.io/codea...

youtube.com

🔭🧪🎢 Check out this awesome Python Notebook that my NITARP alumni made for making SEDs. There is also a Colab version! github.com/jimmynewland...

sed-computational-essay/Make_an_SED_for_YSOs_in_IC417_AAS_WM_2025.ipynb at main · jimmynewland/sed-computational-essay

This Google Colab Notebook is in the form of computational essay explaining how to produce spectral energy distribution plots for young stellar objects. - jimmynewland/sed-computational-essay

github.com