"There are shades of the departed Starmer government in this saga: @ukri.org wants to tell a big story about science funding going up, but instead is mired in a row over a fairly minor sum.... One does not have to be an astronomer to know that optics matter." 👌🔭 www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

The Guardian view on the Lovell telescope: budget cuts to physics are bad science and worse politics | Editorial

Editorial: Funders have picked a damaging fight with scientists and the public. They should reconsider their plans

theguardian.com

Can a planet survive the death of its star? ☠️ For WD 1856 b, the answer is yes, based on Webb observations. 🔭 🧪 ☄️ 1/2

🚨 New research alert 🚨 We have found an atmosphere on a planet orbiting a dead star 🔭✴️💀🪐 Our James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observations of the white dwarf planet WD 1856b give us a preview into the fate of planets like Jupiter after the death of the Sun. 🧵⬇️ (1/10)

Kicking off #BPSC26 with a workshop on exoplanet atmosphere spectroscopy for planetary scientists. Be sure to follow @bpsc2026.bsky.social for updates over this 3 day conference! 🪐 🔭

"Someone, somewhere, has taken the decision to defund astrophysics research in the UK, but no-one seems quite sure who that was, or why." The latest on the impact of the catastrophic funding cuts to UK astrophysics, by me, in @natastron.nature.com 👩‍🔬🧪🔭 ✒️ www.nature.com/articles/s41...

These are awesome positions where you'll play critical roles in STScI's missions (HST, JWST, Roman)! Definitely apply if interested! Feel free to reach out if you've any questions.

Brett Morris@brettmorr.is · 3mo ago

Graduating with a bachelors or masters in astronomy (or related field)? Want to keep your eyes on the skies without a PhD? Opening for YOU at @stsci.edu: Science Support Analyst on Hubble 🔭 recruiting2.ultipro.com/SPA1004AURA/...

Woohoo! Robert Frazier, PhD student who did his pre-candidate project with me, had it accepted for publication today! An impressive comparison of a JWST spectroscopic phase curve to a set of 3-D models (of the ultra-hot Jupiter WASP-121b). Preprint here: arxiv.org/abs/2605.01589

The Days Drag On on WASP-121 b: Interpreting its NIRISS Spectroscopic Phase Curve with General Circulation Models

Ultra-hot Jupiters present extreme atmospheric phenomena not found in the Solar System. These planets' daysides experience strong temperature inversions, molecular species (including H2) dissociate, a...

arxiv.org

Calling all planetary scientists: The #BPSC26 abstract and early-bird registration deadline of May 9th is soon approaching! Email us your abstracts following the instructions at tinyurl.com/4x8tm6bu, and register for the conference at tinyurl.com/yvnxf6jw. Come share your science with us in June!

Abstracts and Presenter Details – BPSC2026

You must be registered to have your contribution (oral/poster) included in the conference.

tinyurl.com

Incredible to see the #Artemis II mission finally launch! 🤩 For the first time in my life, humans are going back to the Moon 🌎🚀🌕

I had a great time chatting to Max Klymenko on the Career Ladder! Can he guess my job at @uniofstandrews.bsky.social within 2 minutes? 🤓 youtube.com/shorts/JaclY...

His job is BIZZARE and asks a question? 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Ep. 531 🪜

YouTube video by Max Klymenko

youtube.com

✨ Applications for the 2026 International Astronomical Youth Camp are now open! ✨🚀 Join us in Spain for the 60th lAYC celebration and experience an unforgettable total solar eclipse! 🌘 Head to our First Info page via the link in our bio to apply! Clear skies 🌌 🔭🎢 #EduSky #scicomm #astroedu

🚨 Job vacancy! We are recruiting a Computing Officer for the School of Physics and Astronomy at St Andrews ⚛️🔭 High-Performance Computing is critical to our work on understanding the Universe, including the search for life on other planets. 🪐🧑‍💻🖥️ www.vacancies.st-andrews.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/...

Quite the crowd today in St Andrews for Max Klymenko filming the Career Ladder. I had a blast discussing our search for life of #exoplanets 🪐 🔭 Max asked many @uniofstandrews.bsky.social staff and students about their jobs - keep an eye out for the episode!

We have written to Science Minister Lord Patrick Vallance urging him to step him and help reverse the cuts to astronomy and space science proposed by the Science and Technology Facilities Council last month. Read the letter in full 👉️ ras.ac.uk/news-and-pre...

'Reverse the cuts': RAS urges Vallance to avert scientific crisis

The Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) has called on science minister Patrick Vallance to step in and prevent the "catastrophic damage to astronomy and space science" ...

ras.ac.uk

BPSC2026 Registration and Abstract Submission is open! Information on rates, discounted accommodation and abstract format can be found here bpsc2026.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/registration/ Early bird rates are available til 9th May 2026, which is the same day as the abstract deadline!

We're excited to be hosting the British Planetary Society Conference in St Andrews this summer! One of our aims for BPSC 2026 is to connect the Solar System #planetaryscience and #Exoplanets communities. Be sure to follow the conference page for more details: ⬇️🪐🌍🧪⬇️

British Planetary Science Conference 2026@bpsc2026.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Our website for the British Planetary Society Conference 2026 is now live! 📅 9-11 June, 2026 🎯 St Andrews, Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Our website contains details on how to get to St Andrews and the conference accommodation. Registration details will be added soon. bpsc2026.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk

Job vacancy 💻📝 Passionate about building vibrant professional communities? The RAS is seeking a dynamic Head of Membership to develop and deliver our membership strategy and play a pivotal role in growing our membership through retention and recruitment. Apply here👇 ras.ac.uk/news-and-pre...

The Norman Lockyer Fellowship is a great opportunity for postdoc research in #Exoplanets, and we'd love to host you at St Andrews! Feel free to reach out if you're interested in joining our exoplanet group in beautiful Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🪐

Royal Astronomical Society@royalastrosoc.bsky.social · 10mo ago

🧑‍🔬 Need funding to support your research?🧑‍🔬 We're now accepting applications for the Norman Lockyer Fellowship, offered to outstanding candidates to enable them to pursue research in the UK in the disciplines advanced by the Royal Astronomical Society. 🔭🪐 ⤵️

We observed the habitable zone planet TRAPPIST-1e with JWST to search for an atmosphere. You've seen the headlines, now let's dive into the science! 🧪 THREAD (1/N) #Exoplanets 🔭

A rocky planet in its star’s ‘habitable zone’ could be the first known to have an atmosphere – here’s what we found

The largest telescope in space has been trained on a rocky exoplanet.

theconversation.com

We looked for an atmosphere on TRAPPIST-1d using JWST, but we didn't see any atmospheric absorption. So TRAPPIST-1d is quite different from Earth, despite lying just inside the habitable zone. The planet is either: ➡️ A bare rock. ➡️ Very cloudy. ➡️ Has a thin, Mars-like atmosphere. #Exoplanets 🔭

ESA Space Science@science.esa.int · 12mo ago

The TRAPPIST-1 d exoplanet may be Earth-sized 🌍 but it has no Earth-like atmosphere. Webb’s #NIRSpec has found no traces of molecules that are common in Earth’s atmosphere. Read more 👉 www.esa.int/Science_Expl... 🔭 🧪

If you want know all things #HabitableWorldsObservatory then follow @drjovian.bsky.social for the next two days as she posts from the #HWO25 meeting in Washington DC. Thanks Jo for keeping us posted ☺️

Dr Joanna Barstow@drjovian.bsky.social · last yr.

This week I'm lucky enough to be at the #HWO25 meeting, hearing and talking about the Habitable Worlds Observatory, its design and the (many) science cases feeding into it. We're being treated to a fantastic opening talk about the search for biosignatures from interim project scientist Giada Arney.

Wow! I wonder if astronomers using AI to 'assist' their coding also have the same overall *slowdown* found by the study below? 👇🔭

METR@metr.org · last yr.

We ran a randomized controlled trial to see how much AI coding tools speed up experienced open-source developers. The results surprised us: Developers thought they were 20% faster with AI tools, but they were actually 19% slower when they had access to AI than when they didn't.

Seems I'm a trusted news source for astronomy! 🔭 I'd encourage other professional astronomers to fill in the short official Bluesky form to apply for verification: bsky.social/about/blog/0...

Thank you @distantworlds.space and @drjovian.bsky.social for bsky covering the conference.

Last talk of the conference! Patricio Ernesto Cubillos (INAF Osservatorio Astrofisico di Torino): Upper-Atmosphere Exoplanet Constraints from Ultraviolet Transmission Observations. #Exoplanets #AllTheWavelengths

Marco Pezzella (Università G. Annunzio Chieti-Pescar): NRMolCol: Inelastic Scattering Data for (exo)Planetary Atmospheres. #Exoplanets #AllTheWavelengths

Rafael Rianco-Silva (Instituto de Astrofisica e Ciencias do Espaco / UCL): A Study of Very High-Resolution Visible Spectra of Titan: Line Characterisation in Visible CH4 and the Search for C3. #AllTheWavelengths

Oleksiy Smola (UCL): Towards a Spectroscopic Potential Energy Surface of Methanol. #AllTheWavelengths

Final conference day of 'Spectroscopy of #Exoplanets: Across #AllTheWavelengths'. Helgi Hróðmarsson (Paris-Est Créteil): Addressing Laboratory Challenges in the VUV for Exoplanet Atmospheres: Photodissociation and Photoionization.

Haitao Li (Chinese Academy of Scientists): The Earth 2.0 (ET) Space Mission. #Exoplanets #AllTheWavelengths