Question for any attorneys who know: When the NSF threatened to cut F&A down to 15%, a judge found this violated laws against "arbitrary and capricious" rule changes. I'm hearing that OMB is now going to try to do this broadly and this somehow hold up to scrutiny. Is there an explainer on why?

I have a fun new paper out that demonstrates the power of combining radial velocities (RVs), astrometry, and dynamical simulations in understanding planetary system demographics. You can access the paper here: arxiv.org/abs/2509.12334

Unpopular opinion here, but I think Schumer might be right about passing a budget. My understanding is that in a lot of ways, letting the government shut down hands Trump a huge amount of power, and lots of government services we value will disappear and be destroyed.

This is extremely good advice. If you're an astronomer, get yourself a personal website - they are *so* useful to have.

The article is now published in the Astrophysical Journal: doi.org/10.3847/1538... And data are now public on MAST: archive.stsci.edu/hlsp/owls #stellarastro #StarsAreStillInteresting 🔭

Just watched 2001: A Space Odyssey with G (15) and she GOT it. I'm a proud papa! The uplift of humans by the monoliths; the repeated incongruous and absurd adherence to Earthly (British) propriety and culture across space and time (hello, colonialism!); HAL as Polyphemus—she got it all!

Trying to describe the Trans Siberian Orchestra to my family so they'll take their kids to see them this fall and I landed on "it's the monster truck show of Christmas music" and I think I nailed it.

Sorry it took me so long to grade your August 20 assignment, Avi Loeb. Are you sure you're ready for a class on comets? You might need to learn about things like bow shocks and chemistry.

I think every astronomy teacher will find something useful in this article. We always have to talk about astrology, if only because it is so popular. I normally dislike the scrolling graphics thing but it works really well here. The illustrations are really good.🧪🔭 www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

State Collegians: the CVS on North Atherton and Cherry is, as of today, offering walk-in Covid vaccines with no questions asked. There was no line 30 minutes ago.

👏👏👏 👏👏

Nice short discussion of the evolving understanding of 3I/ATLAS as this interstellar comet continues its approach to the Sun and more observations come in from various telescopes, featuring a lot of the observing folks 🔭☄️🧪

The comet displays a broad coma—a cloud of gas and dust that forms around the comet’s icy nucleus as it gets closer to the Sun. These features are more significant than they appeared in earlier images, showing that 3I/ATLAS has become more active as it travels through the Solar System. 🔭 🧪

I love my new Kia V6, but some of the programming absolutely baffles me. The automatic tailgate open feature only works when the car is locked. Why!? If you use that feature, this somehow disables the automatic unlock function when you approach the driver side door. Why?!

It’s underappreciated that 3I/ATLAS was discovered far from the Sun before a lot of comety things would start, yet immediately was heavily scrutinized. Also its orbit so far has kept its tail pointed away from Earth but now that’s changing. Anyway, quoting Chandler, could it BE more a comet?

Spent a bunch of time this past weekend working on my passion project: a coffee table book of my midcentury garage door photo collection… ❤️📖

The 140 obstructions en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fiv...

Lost script found. medium.com/@steve.desch...

In which Loeb finally gives his "explanation" for why the HST upper limit on the size of the nucleus of 3I/ATLAS is not dispositive on the issue.

Anyone here use the Google Scholar Python interface scholarly? It's super easy to install and I'm trying to us it but it just…doesn't work. No errors or warnings, the first 3 lines of the example just return an empty iterator. I have no idea how to troubleshoot. Does anyone have any ideas? 🧪🔭

It may be at least a little weird, but hard to say by how much as there's only been 1 comet where the ratio has been measured at greater distances from the Sun.

Q for planetary-science BlueSky: Avi writes of "the surprising detection of nickel without iron" in 3I/ATLAS. Would "normal" amounts of iron have been detected with these observations? I don't see an upper limit listed, but I do see that Ni/Fe ratios are typically 15x solar in the solar system.

This is what angers me about Loeb. We live in a post-truth attention economy. The internet will give you “facts” to support whatever belief you want to have. Loeb is not the first or worst narcissist to capitalize on this and gather followers, saying “trust me, I’m the smartest one.” But

Guys, I was wrong. Avi Loeb is an artistic genius. medium.com/@steve.desch...

Sigh. sites.psu.edu/astrowright/...

And I got to make a few fun plots, so I got that going for me. Still working on variations of this, and gathering more and new data. bsky.app/profile/jrad...

I’m on holiday with the family, but excited that our new paper on technosignature studies with Interstellar Objects is on the arXiv. My goal here was to give solid motivation for SETI studies of these amazing objects 🔭🧪☄️🛸 arxiv.org/abs/2508.16825

You are so right, Bruce - I should have been more up front about how VERY cool it is that we can now characterize fragments from Other Planetary Systems (!) as those objects soar past us on their cosmic journey. Rubin and then Roman will be powerhouses for finding interstellar objects like these.

Whoa! Also dropping just a few hours ago: JWST 🔭 observations of 3I/ATLAS! science.nasa.gov/blogs/3iatla... Brilliant spectroscopy in addition to images of the CO2 coma - see link to paper. (P.S. still no evidence of alien engineering.)

Cough. Cough. It's not aliens. Cough. Cough. Most researchers are just better at knowing what the limits of their knowledge are and instead decide to collaborate with others who have the skills and/or expertise etc to fill in those blanks to unlock great science.

Yay! 🎉 what a great demonstration of how JWST will allow us to study these things better. …and I probably have some writing to do tomorrow morning once a certain astronomer contrives how this, despite establishing that this is a comet more firmly than ever, somehow proves he was right all along…

Not as exciting as aliens, but if you want to see how actual planetary scientists study interstellar objects like 3I/ATLAS, this new paper just dropped on arxiv arxiv.org/pdf/2508.15469. The SPHEREx and IRTF 🔭 data are consistent with known physics and expected chemistry. Just sayin'.

I'd forgotten about SPHEREx, but this new paper seems to support that the Swift OH detection is probably not real, with a far lower upper limit on water: arxiv.org/abs/2508.15469 Pretty convincing CO2 though. But obviously alien spaceships are gas powered. Or breathing. Or something...

I would stop, but I have to put in a good word for NASA and how it selects and funds science. I'm starting to think maybe Avi Loeb doesn't know what he's talking about? medium.com/@steve.desch...

Hike up Mt. Nittany

Opening address

Order of the Octopus photos

Had a fantastic 4 days of SETI at the Third Penn State SETI Symposium!

Proud adviser with a whole host of @pseticenter.bsky.social students, postdoc, and alumni! Winter Parts, Olivia Curtis, @cayladedrick.bsky.social (honorary), Nick Tusay, @mhuston.bsky.social, Pinchen Fan, Evan Sneed, Sofia Sheikh, Lennon Nichol, and Arianna Nielsen.

Hello everyone! We have joined BlueSky!!

Avi is still writing new and clearly incorrect things about 3I/ATLAS.

Yes! A referee is a proxy for your audience. When a referee asks a question, it’s usually not that they’re just curious or want to have a conversation with you. They are asking because your other readers will wonder, and your paper will be better if it contains the answer.

So as far as I can tell my Kia EV6 (which I generally really like!) has no way to turn off the radio. Like, once you turn it on, it literally cannot be turned off. You can switch to other media, but whenever you start the car, the radio will come on.

Day 1 of #PSETI2025 went really well. I gave a talk about a series of projects lead by @setiinstitute.bsky.social and Breakthrough Listen scientist and had a fun time exploring communication and hazard response. Looking forward to day 2. Image: @astrowright.bsky.social kicking us off.

I love this, it's so broken, an inconceivably small unit combined with an inconceivably large unit to produce a unit that is easily understood by itself yet has no practical significance and does not help you understand the scale of either of its components.

Still can't get over @deschscoveries.bsky.social parodying Loeb, and Loeb straight-up playing out the parody a 3 days later. Is Desch a clairvoyant, or did Loeb read this mockery of him and think—hey, that's actually a great idea!—and just plagiarize him?!

JESUS, MARY, AND JOSEPH! This gave me old Google back! It killed the AI results dead!

Where are my royalties? He said there was no evidence of a dusty coma. I said lean in, claim the spaceship is dirty. Now he likes dust and “can’t rule that out”. 😂