What I need male academics to understand is that you, YES YOU, still benefit from a system where you are seen as superior to the women students and staff around you. You don't have to lift a finger. You are not exempt because you're nice or a feminist. YES YOU. #AcademicSky

Dr Space Junk (Alice Gorman)@drspacejunk.bsky.social · 4d ago

A retired friend was remembering when there were departmental secretaries at universities who basically project managed the departments. You could give them handwritten documents, and they would type them up. He was shocked when I said it didn't work like that for female academics.

Many, many years ago I worked for a certain legal news website to which Lindsey Graham subscribed. Anyway i hardcoded it to always spell his name wrong in the top corner, no matter how many times he tried to manually correct it.

@ucobservatories.bsky.social is searching for a leader for our outreach and public education programs - looking for a scientist who is passionate about science communication and bringing astronomy to the public. Feel free to reach out with questions or interest! recruit.ucsc.edu/JPF02124

Academic Coordinator for Program Development & External Engagement

University of California, Santa Cruz is hiring. Apply now!

recruit.ucsc.edu

I was at Lawrence Livermore National Lab twenty years ago when the Bush administration did something similar to University of California and the NNSA national labs (LLNL and Los Alamos) the outcome wasn't a disaster but it wasn't great.

Gene J. Mikulka@genejm1017.bsky.social · 3mo ago

As far as I know, NASA has never put the contract to run the Jet Propulsion Laboratory out for competitive bid. Caltech has run the Lab since the 1930s. In the "up-is-down" times we live in, I'm VERY concerned for the Lab's future. This could go sideways, fast. www.nasa.gov/news-release...

It’s also an effect of running against impossible policies without a media system that points this out. If Trump says “we will raise tariffs and this will lower your gas prices by 400%“ it’s hard to sound better with proposals for EITC changes. Nothing real can compete with “magic ponies for all”

lowtax speedrun enjoyer@rickywlmsbong.bsky.social · 3mo ago

the sudden "nobody has to pay taxes" thing with even fairly progressive dems wreaks of klein/shor/eggy brainworms that has somehow merged with mmt/linux guy brainworms

VERY FEW NEWS ORGANIZATIONS ARE REPORTING THIS OUT CORRECTLY: "The House bill, though, does not restore funding levels to 2026 for all of its major programs. Exploration gets a $1.1 billion increase compared with 2026, but science funding would be cut by $1.25 billion." 🧪🔭⚛️

House appropriators approve spending bill that keeps NASA budget flat

The House Appropriations Committee advanced a spending bill May 13 that rejects many of the cuts to NASA proposed by the administration.

spacenews.com

Extremely happy to see @markmarley.bsky.social win the 2026 Kuiper prize from the Division of Planetary Sciences. Extremely well deserved. Noting a few criteria from the award page: science.arizona.edu/news/prof-ma...

The NSB is pretty important in US science policy and included a lot of brilliant people thinking about hard questions, and even though they’re presidentI’ll appointees historically have been fairly apolitical and serve through multiple administrations. This seems bad.

Colette Delawalla, PhD@cdelawalla.bsky.social · 4mo ago

BREAKING: Trump has apparently fired the National Science Board (NSB).

I'll try to have more to say about this tomorrow, but Olivier Hainaut is a global astro-hero for doing this kind of careful quantitative modeling.

Michael Brown@mjibrown.bsky.social · 4mo ago

"A large constellation such as SpaceX’s Orbital Data Center... would place thousands of satellites above naked-eye visibility threshold, comparable to the number of natural stars typically visible in a dark sky."

I feel extremely seen.

Tactical Onions Vendor@inkana.bsky.social · 5mo ago

bluesky: the website for leftists who can recite the specs of every plane used by the allies in operation torch

bluesky: the website for leftists who can recite the specs of every plane used by the allies in operation torch

Sharon 🪳🌹@sharonk.bsky.social · 5mo ago

this site is essentially built for left-liberals and socialists who read Janes's content

To be fair, he didn’t say if this was real GDP or nominal. .

Aaron Sojourner@aaronsojourner.org · 6mo ago

Snake oil sale www.wsj.com/livecoverage...

Best it could find was He II . Is ionization hell?

🌈Dr. Frizzle@swilua.bsky.social · 5mo ago

search your camera roll for hell

Happy International Women's Day! Perfect time for me to (re)share our white paper on increasing the retention of women in professional astrophysics (really full of suggestions that broaden participation in academic science in general). arxiv.org/abs/2512.24465 🧪🔭☄️👩‍🔬

If you live in the Bay Area, are bored on Wednesday night, and would like to hear flippant remarks about exoplanets and see pictures of golden retrievers, come here me talk at Foothill College: www.seti.org/events/pictu...

Pictures of Distant Worlds

seti.org

the consolidation of major media institutions by the president’s oligarch friends is obviously bad, but i do wonder about the ultimate impact. it is clear that trump and his allies believe that you can buy up media and pull an orban or a putin. but…

🔭🧪 Are you interested in having a night sky? (Like at all?) File comments with the FCC telling them to deny permission to Starlink for “a million satellites” and to Reflect Orbital for their giant sunlight mirror in space. The American Astronomical Society has info on how 👇

We all show this figure, but I seriously agree with Peter that we need to rethink that. It tells a story but doesn't actually convey more than one or two important facts. It's almost ritualistic.

Peter Gao@planetarygao.bsky.social · 6mo ago

determined to give an exoplanets talk that doesn’t show the radius-period diagram

Interesting paper on requirements for undergraduate astronomy degrees and how non-uniform they are, and how this impacts students with these degrees: arxiv.org/abs/2602.03959

The Landscape of Undergraduate Astronomy and Astrophysics Degree Requirements

In this document we summarize the results of a survey of undergraduate degree-granting programs conducted by the 2024-2025 American Astronomical Society Education Committee's Subcommittee on UndeRgrad...

arxiv.org

Bump on this - looking for an expert specifically on orbital data centres available in the next few hours. If that's you let me know!

Jonathan O'Callaghan@astrojonny.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Hey space people, I’m looking for experts to comment and provide some insight on SpaceX’s application for a million satellites. If that’s you drop me a line. Thanks! jdaoca[at]gmail[dot]com

@lickobservatory.bsky.social update: the dome is now sealed! Thanks to the summit staff, contractors, and main-campus staff for an amazing amount of work over the past four months. Now we can catch our breath and plan how to checkout/repair the telescope and the dome.

I am not, as many people know, I am not a naturally optimistic or supportive person, but let me say that this is an impressive concept by some smart people that could do some real science. (More thoughts later when I’ve digested the paper.)

ewan douglas@douglase.bsky.social · 7mo ago

New paper day! arxiv.org/abs/2601.02556 🔭🧪

One nice piece of detective work for the Christmas morning shutter failure at Lick - staff astronomer Dr. Elinor Gates (with others) figured out exactly what time the shutter fell down. The first major clue: records from the seismometer in the building. There's a sharp red spike just after 3:16 AM.

Lick updates: We got a crane up there Friday and the winds dropped enough by Saturday to get the shutter off the roof.

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.

I’m supportive of while mildly skeptical of the various fusion startups - most are smart and sincere but it’s a hard problem and after decades it’s unlikely there’s a easy solution - but nothing says “this is a complete scam” like merging with Trump social media. www.theguardian.com/media/2025/d...

Trump Media announces $6bn merger plan with fusion power company

TMTG, which owns president’s Truth Social platform, unveils link-up TAE Technologies to respond to AI boom

theguardian.com

Movie you’ve watched more than six times with a gif. Hard mode (no Star Wars or Star Trek, LOTR, Marvel, Disney, or Pixar)

Dr. Jessie Christiansen@aussiastronomer.bsky.social · 8mo ago

Movie you’ve watched more than six times with a gif. Hard mode: no Stars (Wars nor Trek), LOTR, or Marvel, Disney Animated or Pixar. Well since you already did The Princess Bride…

This suggests an obvious strategy for modifying Earth's climate cycles and delaying or hastening ice ages by destroying huge chunks of Mars with nuclear weapons or other techniques. I believe @theplanetaryguy.bsky.social would strongly support this.

Stephen Kane@exocytherean.bsky.social · 8mo ago

I'm excited to share my new paper regarding the effect of Mars on the Milankovitch cycles of Earth, and how sensitive those cycles are to the Martian mass. The paper is accepted for publication in PASP and is available here: arxiv.org/abs/2512.02108

This was inspired by the long-running (SF) Bay Area exoplanet meetings (originally organized by Tom Greene at Ames and still going strong.) It's a lovely format - local and informal with a good balance of elderly but supportive curmudgeons like me and @markmarley.bsky.social and young people.

Julien Girard@juliengirard.space · 8mo ago

The CHesapeake bay area EXOplanet Meeting #CHEXO12 has started @jhuapl.bsky.social with a nice and big crowd despite the snow! www.chexo.org #exoplanets

Hey @nature.com, have you got an explanation for how the hell THIS happened? & especially why you accepted a paper with such a bizarre piece of genAI slop in it?! & more to the point, why we should take you seriously at all going forward? www.nature.com/articles/s41...