At today's UKRI board meeting, the fate of UK particle physics and astronomy will likely be decided. Have we done enough to convince the powers-that-be to halt the proposed funding cuts? 🤞 Read Prof. Hiranya Peiris in Nature today eloquently explaining why these cuts are wrong.🧪🔭⚛️ 📖: rdcu.be/friwM

Royal Astronomical Society@royalastrosoc.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Stars of physics are in Westminster right now to call on the Government to halt funding cuts to astronomy and particle physics research. Professor Brian Cox called them "inexplicable", urging the Government to instead "trust, inspire and continue to invest in the next generation of scientists".

(1/3) 🔭🧪☄️ #extragalactic PHANGS-HST DR5 is now available on MAST, delivering the largest #hubble catalog to date of star clusters & associations with ages, masses, E(B-V): ~100,000 sources across 39 nearby spiral galaxies! archive.stsci.edu/hlsp/phangs (scroll to Galaxy Sample and Data Access)

MAST - Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes@mast-news.bsky.social · 2mo ago

HLSP Update: PHANGS-CAT has built an integrated dataset for multi-phase, multi-scale studies of star formation. Data Release 5 (DR5) provides HST photometry with improved estimates of age, mass, and reddening, across the full sample of 38 PHANGS-HST spiral galaxies. archive.stsci.edu/hlsp/phangs/...

GO ROMAN!! 🔭🧪☄️ #exoplanet #galactic #extragalactic

Senator Chris Van Hollen@vanhollen.senate.gov · 2mo ago

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!

(1/n) 🧵 Now published in Part 1 of the HWO25 conference proceedings, this collection of 60 science cases illustrates the extraordinary scientific reach of the #HabitableWorldsObservatory from... 🧪🔭☄️ #extragalactic #exoplanets #galactic

Accepted for publication in ApJ!✨🔭🧪 ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2026arXi... the result of a new collaboration with machine learning experts to explore modeling of the evolution of environments around star clusters with CNNs @jwuphysics.bsky.social #extragalactic

To what extent are star cluster ages encoded in their environments? Congrats to my coauthors Javier Viaña, Janice Lee, Andrew Vandenburg, and the PHANGS collaboration on this paper! (and be on the lookout for a part two 👀) arxiv.org/abs/2603.07289

NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory 🔭 has issued its first scientific alerts, marking a historic milestone in astrophysics. Expected to increase to seven million alerts per night (!!!), these first alerts start a new era of dynamic, real-time observation of the night sky. More: noirlab.edu/public/news/...

This galaxy is one of the most enigmatic in our PHANGS survey✨🔭🧪☄ Today's @apod.shinyakato.dev compares our Webb infrared and Hubble optical images... (Find these color-composite images, science-ready imaging data, plus catalogs of star clusters at archive.stsci.edu/hlsp/phangs ) #extragalactic

Astronomy Picture of the Day 🪐@apod.shinyakato.dev · 5mo ago

🔭 Webb and Hubble: IC 5332 Image Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA, J. Lee and the PHANGS-JWST and PHANGS-HST Teams Text: Cecilia Chirenti (NASA GSFC, UMCP, CRESST II) apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap26022...

Congrats @leefeinberg.bsky.social !! 🎉🧪🔭

SPIE@spie.org · 7mo ago

Lee Feinberg: The 2026 SPIE George W. Goddard Award in Space and Airborne Optics For outstanding leadership through the design, integration, and delivery of optical systems that brought the objectives of #Webb and #Hubble into clear focus. @leefeinberg.bsky.social spie.org/news/lee-fei...

A new census of OB associations with Gaia! In this study, we took advantage of my OB stars map to find new OB associations within 1 kpc. The goal was to create a useful reference catalogue for this era, and to trace the star formation and structure of the local Milky Way. #stellarastro #galactic

My recent PhD paper, titled “The Hidden Life of Stars: Embedded Beginnings to AGB Endings in the PHANGS-JWST Sample. I. Catalog of Mid-IR Sources”, is out! The paper presents a catalog of JWST MIRI 10 µm and 21 µm sources across 19 nearby galaxies. arxiv.org/abs/2509.16459

The Hidden Life of Stars: Embedded Beginnings to AGB Endings in the PHANGS-JWST Sample. I. Catalog of Mid-IR Sources

We present a multiwavelength catalog of mid-infrared-selected compact sources in 19 nearby galaxies, combining JWST NIRCam/MIRI, HST UV-optical broadband, H$α$ narrow-band, and ALMA CO observations. W...

arxiv.org

so grateful to everyone who showed up and made the case for sustaining science and discovery 🔭✨🧪

SpaceNews @spacenewsinc.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Congress passes minibus spending bill that rejects proposed NASA cuts Congress has approved a fiscal year 2026 spending bill that largely restores funding proposed for deep cuts to NASA while canceling one major mission.

“The Habitable Worlds Observatory is exactly the kind of bold, forward-leaning science that only NASA can undertake...” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman... 🔭✨🧪🧵☄️ #exoplanets #extragalactic

NASA Selects Tech Proposals to Advance Search-for-Life Mission - NASA

NASA announced Monday the selection of industry proposals to advance technologies for the agency’s Habitable Worlds Observatory concept – the first mission

nasa.gov

🔭☄️ #extragalactic #exoplanets

Jeff Foust@jfoust.bsky.social · 7mo ago

House and Senate appropriators have released a "minibus" appropriations bill that includes CJS (NASA, NOAA, NSF). NASA would get $24.44 billion, slightly less than FY25 but much better than the proposed $18.8 billion. docs.house.gov/billsthiswee...

🔭🧪☄️ #habitableworldsobservatory #extragalactic #exoplanets #galactic #stellarastro

22.1 billion euros subscribed. A record. A first. And a clear message that Europe is serious about space and that @esa.int is the agency it trusts to deliver. A historic Ministerial. A united Europe. A stronger ESA. www.esa.int/About_Us/Cor...

ESA Member States commit to largest contributions at Ministerial

The largest contributions in the history of the European Space Agency, €22.1 bn, have been approved at its Council meeting at Ministerial level in Bremen, ...

esa.int

Our special November issue, celebrating 30 years of exoplanets, is now here! https://bit.ly/483MH9I #astronomy #exoplanets

arxiv.org/abs/2511.03715 #habitableworldsobservatory 🔭🧪☄️ The search for life is one frontier. HWO will be built to unlock all the others too.✨ #extragalactic

Echoes of the First Stars: Massive Star Evolution in Extremely Metal-Poor Environments with the Habitable Worlds Observatory

A remarkable span of frontier astrophysics, from gravitational-wave archaeology to the origin of the elements to interpreting snapshots of the earliest galaxies, depends sensitively on our understandi...

arxiv.org

NASA's #habitableworldsobservatory building a #superhubble in the race to answer fundamental questions about life in the Universe, the place of humanity in the cosmos, and where explorers could dare to go next✨🧪🔭☄️ #exoplanet #extragalactic

Jonathan O'Callaghan@astrojonny.bsky.social · 9mo ago

NASA’s Habitable Worlds Observatory will do more than hunt for life in the 2040s. This summer scientists put forward 100 ideas for the ‘scope including planetary defense, studying Venus, and even observing individual stars in distant galaxies. Me in Nature Astronomy www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Chatbots — LLMs — do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they’re “right” it’s because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That’s all.

post-JWST deadline reflections... the ESA/Hubble Picture of the Week returns to the galaxy that started our PHANGS team journey with JWST ✨🔭🧪 iopscience.iop.org/collections/... and so much still to be learned 🤞 #extragalactic

ESA Space Science@science.esa.int · 10mo ago

A well-studied spiral 🌀 Several powerful observatories 🔭 have looked at this dusty spiral galaxy featuring a supermassive black hole at its heart.  This latest image includes data from Hubble that highlight the galaxy’s star clusters 👉 https://esahubble.org/images/potw2541a/

Now on @sciam.bsky.social: NASA’s next-gen Habitable Worlds Observatory may be our best chance to find alien life. But can a nation busy ripping itself apart unite to launch a mission to solve life’s cosmic mysteries? By @nadiadrake.bsky.social (and me). www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-...

NASA’s First-Ever Alien-Hunting Space Telescope Could Enlighten Our New Dark Age

The Habitable Worlds Observatory is poised to tell us whether Earthlike planets are common—if it can get off the ground

scientificamerican.com

One of my faves, among the galaxies that we're studying. Uncommonly beautiful because of its striking "flocculent" spiral morphology. We've learned its star clusters tell a story of gas accreted from a neighbor, rejuvenating the disk🧪🔭 iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3... #extragalactic #astrosci

ESA Space Science@science.esa.int · 11mo ago

Spiral, elliptical or neither? 🤔 The latest image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope features a hard-to-categorise galaxy, NGC 2775. It has features of both elliptical and spiral galaxies – so what type is it? Read more 👉 esahubble.org/images/potw2... 🔭

🥳PLATO, @esa.int's planet-hunting space telescope, has arrived at their ESTEC facility in the Netherlands, after its successful integration in Germany in June. We're looking forward to the next steps, when its solar panels and sunshield are fitted ahead of the planned launch in 2026! 🔭 #Exoplanets

German Aerospace Center (DLR)@dlr-en.bsky.social · last yr.

🛰️ @esa.int's #PLATO is one step closer to launch!🚀 The telescope’s 26 cameras are now mounted on its service module. This includes the 2 'fast' cameras developed by the DLR Institute for Space Research to help PLATO align itself as it searches for Earth-like planets🌍 www.dlr.de/en/latest/ne... 🔭🧪

Today, we mourn the memory of those we lost on September 11, 2001. We also come together to honor the brave heroes, like our first responders, who risked their lives that tragic day to save countless others. Their sacrifice can never be repaid. We will never forget.

Heads up to attendees of #epscdps2025 - there will be a splinter session about Solar System planning for the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) in the Ganymede Room TODAY (Weds) at 3 pm!

"no evidence supporting a statistically significant trend of [O star] multiplicity properties with metallicity" still high (~70%) in the SMC - interesting! 🔭🧪 #AstroSci #extragalactic

A high fraction of close massive binary stars at low metallicity - Nature Astronomy

The analysis of radial velocity variations of O-type stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud reveals a large fraction of close binaries, suggesting that binary physics also plays a prominent role in the l...

nature.com

Another fantastic paper that arose from our @kitp-ucsb.bsky.social GalEvo23 program. This one is from the inimitable Kartheik Iyer, who also shared a fantastic takeaway figure on how simulated feedback affects galaxy star formation histories. #AstroSci #extragalactic

AstroArxiv@astroarxiv.bsky.social · 11mo ago

How does feedback affect the star formation histories of galaxies?. Kartheik G. Iyer et. al. https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.21152

The Habitable Worlds Observatory is early in its development as a large infrared/optical/ultraviolet space telescope. Many designs are under consideration, including this artist's concept animation. More about the planned observatory: go.nasa.gov/HWO #HWO2025 #HWO25 🔭 🧪 ☄️

There was a photographer for the first two days of the Habitable Worlds Observatory conference in Washington DC a few weeks ago - it's so rare to actually get a nice photo dressed up and giving a talk!