Excited to be back on the Caltech campus this morning to share about infrared observations of stellar flares at the Shifting Landscapes in Astrophysics: New Frontiers to Explore with Roman” science conference! 🔭🧪 #Roman2026
Ward Howard
@wardhoward.bsky.social
Husband to Kate, father, follower of Jesus. NASA Sagan Fellow at CU Boulder in the department of Astrophysical & Planetary Sciences working on stellar flares, exoplanets, and extragalactic foregrounds. Website: https://www.wardshowardastronomer.com
To be clear, this isn’t an AI tool, it’s a form with prompts that breaks the process of composing a comment into smaller pieces with specific guidance on each piece on how to make it an effective comment. Useful!
American Astronomical Society (AAS)@aas.org · last mo.🔭 AAS has partnered with @apsphysics.aps.org and other organizations to develop a tool to help you submit unique, personalized comments on harmful proposed changes to federal grants. Please submit a comment by 13 July! www.aps.org/initiatives/...
No one informed me when our 10 month old started talking she’d sound exactly like Donald Duck
Donald Duck's Moment of Peace
Alt: Donald Duck's Moment of Peace
static.klipy.com
Important find! Will be seeing how this impacts our flare spectral extractions.
Shashank Dholakia@astroshashank.bsky.social · 2mo agoThread on our new paper on arxiv today! We stumbled across a weird sinusoidal systematic that we think appears in every observation from the NIRISS instrument on JWST. We derive a correction and see how much it impacts exoplanet spectra. (1/N) #astro #exoplanets 🔭🧪 arxiv.org/abs/2606.11983
Now seems like a great moment to share this awesome new paper explaining how the Early eVolution Explorer (EVE) - a NASA SMEX mission concept - will transform our understanding of young planets (<50 Myr old): arxiv.org/pdf/2606.04283
arxiv.org
Excellent thread on multiple levels of absurdity impacting ECRs without citizenship. @gmduvvuri.bsky.social and others like him deserve better:
Girish M. Duvvuri@gmduvvuri.bsky.social · 2mo agoFun fact: a number of long-term academic job postings last cycle (and some current off-cycle ones) flat out state(d) that they will not sponsor H1B visas for applicants because of the fee.
I am so excited to get started on wide field time domain astronomy in the near-infrared. Just like TESS did in the optical, we’ll launch to find planets in the bulge and learn so much about stellar astrophysics along the way 🪐🔭💫
Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans@astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 2mo agoSpace projects running ahead of schedule? This is rare! Huge celebratory high-5's all round to the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope team, due for early launch this August 🥳 This beast will discover >100,000 planets orbiting distant stars and so so much more 🤩🧪🔭🛰️ ℹ️: science.nasa.gov/blogs/roman/...
The link was somehow corrupted. The correct link is docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
docs.google.com
Ward Howard@wardhoward.bsky.social · 2mo ago🚨🚨🚨 Now accepting 2026/2027 applications🔭 🪐🚨🚨🚨 AMP-UP provides mentorship to senior grad students/postdocs: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F... Please forward to anyone who might be interested/share with institution listservs. The application deadline is *June 26*. -On behalf of the 2026 AMP-UP leads
🚨🚨🚨 Now accepting 2026/2027 applications🔭 🪐🚨🚨🚨 AMP-UP provides mentorship to senior grad students/postdocs: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F... Please forward to anyone who might be interested/share with institution listservs. The application deadline is *June 26*. -On behalf of the 2026 AMP-UP leads
docs.google.com
Summary of Key Changes in OMB’s Proposed Federal Financial Assistance Rule. Russell Vought is going destroy American Science. elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/summary-of...
Summary of Key Changes in OMB’s Proposed Federal Financial Assistance Rule
Russell Vought is going destroy American Science
elizabethginexi.substack.com
The final version of our Dawes Review on the Dynamic Radio Sky is now published! doi.org/10.1017/pasa... Everything you need to know about what causes radio transients: how we detect them, the history of radio transient surveys, and what new widefield radio telescopes will do. #RadioAstronomy 🔭☄️🧪
Two things have happened: the community hasn't reassembled to the same degree here, and that lots of astro groups are now internally using Slack and Discord for discussions instead of social media. That's pretty much killed it off, IMHO.
www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-... Excellent coverage of a major result from our team! 🧪🔭 @sciam.bsky.social
Astronomers Have Discovered the Pleiades’ Secret Stellar Family
The “Seven Sisters” of the Pleiades are part of a much larger complex that can help reveal our galaxy’s deep history
scientificamerican.com
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. And that light is true life 🎄✨
1/ It's press day!🔭🧪 We apply a grid of time-dependent physical models to explain TRAPPIST-1 flares, predicting the X-ray & UV flux driving escape and photochemistry in planetary atmospheres, and correcting flare contamination in transit spectroscopy down to ~60 ppm: www.colorado.edu/today/2025/1...
New research on flares from a hot-tempered star could inform search for habitable planets
A new study takes a close look at TRAPPIST-1, a little star roughly 40 light-years from our sun that hosts seven Earth-sized planets.
colorado.edu
Voyager needs to avoid Vidiian space? Problematic phage gap.
Saavik ‘Impaired Ankle’ Ford@saavikford.bsky.social · 9mo agoForgot exactly where in the book you found the details you’ve cited? Problematic page gap.
✨ Exoplanet Atmospheres 2026 registration & abstract submission are officially open! Join us in Denver (16-20 March 2026) for an unforgettable AAS Topical Conference Series! 👉 Abstracts due 19 December: aas.org/meetings/exo... 👉 Early registration ends 13 January: aas.org/meetings/exo...
Nature published a research highlight on our RZ PSc exocomet paper: www.nature.com/articles/d41...
A host of ‘exocomets’ swarms a distant star
Dimming of the starlight from RZ Piscium reveals that 24 unseen bodies are whizzing around the star.
nature.com
An attempt to stitch together my images of the aurorae above Longs Peak last night to show their dynamic and changing nature. Images are spaced about 10 seconds apart 🔭🧪
So uh, the sky above Boulder got better. A lot better, including some beautiful columnar structure 🧪🔭
Just took these of the sky above Boulder right now. Longs Peak in the foreground🧪🔭
I recommend this article by @meghanbartels.bsky.social and @leebillings.bsky.social for folks who are looking for *factual* information about why 3I/ATLAS is of interest to planetary astronomers: www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-...
The Race to Study an Interstellar Comet from Deep Space
Astronomers are hustling to use interplanetary spacecraft to study the interstellar comet dubbed 3I/ATLAS while the sun is hiding it from Earth
scientificamerican.com
And it's a wrap: one PI and six co-I proposals submitted (and then a nice Boulder autumn run!) #JWSTCycle5
Gibson et al. “TESS Discovers a Second System of Transiting Exocomets in the Extreme Debris Disk of RZ Psc” showing 24 exocomet transits and the existence of a broken power law for the sizes of these exocomets, unlike Beta Pic’s exocomet distribution #exoplanet #astrodon #astrosci
The GRFP announcement from NSF cuts out an entire cohort of 2nd year students from consideration, without warning. This is so deeply unfair that it warrants a formal protest from the scientific community. If someone wants to work with me to craft an open letter and solicit signatures, LMK.
Dan Garisto@dangaristo.bsky.social · 10mo agoNew: After a long wait, the GRFP solicitation is live! Deadlines have been extended to early November, so applicants have a bit over a month to submit. www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...
Paper #1 led by @jhuartssciences.bsky.social graduate student Jay Chittidi here: arxiv.org/abs/2509.02825
High Resolution ALMA Data of the Fomalhaut Debris Disk Confirms Apsidal Width Variation
We present long-baseline observations of the Fomalhaut outer debris disk at 223 GHz (1.3 mm) from ALMA Cycle 5, which we use along with archival short-baseline observations to produce a 0".57 resoluti...
arxiv.org
Neat! @flarelord.bsky.social used ground-based photometry to measure the flare temperature on an M7 dwarf. How do you measure temperature without spectroscopy? Trick question! You use the Earth's atmosphere as a prism and watch the star appear to jump across the sky. 🔭🧪 arxiv.org/abs/2507.19584
