First* stars** *many generations after Pop III **star clusters

Gotta find those PISNe

Good lord it has only been a week of 2026

After the killing of Ms Good, Greg Bovino of the CPB led a raid on a Minneapolis HS. An official there said: They don’t care. They’re just animals,” I’ve never seen people behave like this.” All MPLS schools now closed for the week. www.mprnews.org/story/2026/0...

Rocks are not a given!!

Slack really does not need to wish me happy new year especially once in every workspace good lord

NSF now planning to let POs largely decide what gets funded, and to send PIs reviews that are only 3-5 sentences long. They don't have to use outside reviewers (except maybe 1) and don't have to convene panels. (1/5)

Remember that lovely aurora last week? Well...um...this is what Euclid saw... 😱 🧵

Have you ever wanted @astropy.org tutorials on: – spectroscopic data reduction from a raw FITS image, – computing galactic orbits from Gaia measurements, – cross-matching astronomical catalogs? Check out the redesigned learn.astropy.org! Announcement from @numfocus.bsky.social below. 🧪🔭 #astrocode

🫠🫠🫠

Two very interesting papers about dark energy on the arXiv today, both very relevant to the ongoing interest in possibly evolving DE as suggested by the DESI results 🔭🧪 Here's the first and potentially more explosive one: arxiv.org/abs/2511.07517

Kyle Kingsbury is not a journalist. He is not an op-ed writer. He is a computer safety researcher. And he has written one of the most compelling, comprehensive accounts of the ongoing hell in Chicago that you could possibly imagine. In under 1600 words. aphyr.com/posts/397-i-...

THE RETURN OF GOOGLE READER PLEASE

30 people disappeared in this shaded area today.

More coverage of OSU’s new restrictions on conference attendance: “These conferences are open forums for us to present our work, network and collaborate. Telling us that they’re going to regulate whether or not we can participate feels very stifling, prohibitive,” said @ohdearz.bsky.social

If any of you fine folks are planetarians in (or want to be in) mid-Michigan, the Abrams Planetarium is hiring a full-time-staff position for the first time in 11 years!! Come work with the astro, scicomm, and informal ed folks at MSU!! 🔭 🧪 (reskeets welcome) careers.msu.edu/jobs/educati...

Are you someone who is interested in astronomy graduate school? This is a list of many/most departments and their expectations for admissions this year. Please feel free to spread it far and wide. If you are doing admissions and you'd like to update your entry, reach out as per the form!

MIT refuses to accept White House terms for funding, other schools still mulling reut.rs/471tkNZ

I booked a photo session tonight bc I have very few pictures of my family together, but while I’m smiling & holding my children, I know I will hear this mother’s screams. I don’t want my tax dollars supporting ICE agents dragging parents away from car line. And most moms in the US agree with me.

I’ve been asked to advise undergrads on how to get into grad school and this is all I can think about musgrave.substack.com/p/dont-do-a-...

Armed, masked thugs are kidnapping our neighbors and terrorizing our communities This was in front of an elementary school in the West Loop in Chicago today. Sharing because everyone needs to see what is happening here daily Originally posted by @erynfreepress on IG. Her story is in the alt text

I’m no expert, but we did go from coding in binary -> assembly -> FORTRAN/C -> Java/C++ -> Python/R. At each step we traded raw efficiency(/energy cost) for user convenience. It does take different thinking and teaching/learning for each step. LLM coding seems like it will be the next step..

I feel like this photo of masked, armed men pepper spraying a pastor protecting his community is going to be a defining picture of this moment in America for a long, long time.

We must now start calling this what it is: Trump’s Invasion. It started with federal agents, it will soon include deploying federalized members of the Illinois National Guard against our wishes, and it will now involve sending in another state’s military troops.

"There's artificial intelligence, and then there's actual intelligence."

For those frantically trying to submit their Gemini proposals tonight, it’s broken: www.gemini.edu/news/science...

In discussion with a computer scientist from the University of Cambridge last night: Me: "you've described some of the things that AI is good at. How would you describe the category of things it's not good at? **pause** Him: "Anything where it has to be right".

R.I.P. George F. Smoot (1945-2025) We will no doubt read many official obituaries in days to come, but all I can say is that he was a character, a very original thinker, a fine scientist, and a very nice man. Along with many others, I will miss him enormously.

😭

Here we go! Over 13,000 H-1B workers have joined 200+ land-grant, sea-grant, and R1 research institutions so far this fiscal year. I also found that public institutions in large, Republican states are disproportionately affected by Trump's $100,000 H1-B fee. Find your state or your school:

We're actually having trouble securing a spot in Chicago, our hometown :( (This is mostly because it's such short notice, btw.) Let us know if you're interested in screening Bad Pedophile and you have a big space in town: [email protected]

Here is a review article I'm giving my students that Payne-Gaposchkin wrote a year before she died, where she reflects on what's been learned on variable stars in here career. She concludes: If I were beginning again, it is there [LMC/SMC] that I should search. ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1978ARA%...

The annual pumpkin display at the entrance of Governor Pritzker’s personal residence on Astor Street. He is the pumpkin king. Illinois produces the most pumpkins, including canned, than any other state in the U.S., twice as many as the next five states combined.

Yesterday's piece from @jamellebouie.net is the only high-profile piece I've seen that specifically discusses the watchlist, its effect on academics, and its effect on public attitudes toward academia as a whole. (gift link) www.nytimes.com/2025/09/13/o...

A timeline of GW150914. A story that begins a billion years ago and ends with our first #GravitationalWave detection 10 years ago today Discover more in the @ligomagazine.bsky.social ligo.org/wp-content/u... #GW10Years ⚛️🧪🔭

ARP! ARP! ARP! ☄️🔭 arxiv.org/abs/2509.09011

CAL-CITE CAL-CITE CAL-CITE

The Path

The results of the 4th Gravitational Wave observing run are out! 👀 arxiv.org/abs/2508.18080, arxiv.org/abs/2508.18081, arxiv.org/abs/2508.18082, arxiv.org/abs/2508.18083, arxiv.org/abs/2508.18079

This is what I have always suspected…

this is due to a combination of (a) having a wayyy bigger than expected incoming class and (b) the state of federal funding as much as it sucks, it's important to be transparent about where we stand. hopefully other departments will follow

Wow we have already got 250k+ classifications with almost 1000 volunteers! I have to say it is much more satisfying than I expected to find the known objects, even when it turns out to be a simulated object. And then even better when you pick a good one and the “you found it” pop up doesn’t show up

We’ve got a new zooniverse program called Dwarf Quest! Help us find members of our Milky Way’s galactic entourage in data from the Dark Energy Camera www.zooniverse.org/projects/ywy...

So you’re telling me the Wizard of Oz presented itself as a towering force of overwhelming technology, only to be unmasked as just some guy, off-screen?

New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Spectroscopic Analysis of Pictor II: a very low metallicity ultra-faint dwarf galaxy bound to the Large Magellanic Cloud" by Andrew Pace (U. Virginia, USA) and 32 others based in the USA, UK, Canada, Chile and Spain doi.org/10.33232/001...

Powerful letter by Prof. Rashid Khalidi, on why he is withdrawing his course on Middle East history at Columbia University next academic year www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Hello, I’m an astronomer in a film. I turn the lights on in the dome when I’m observing.

Next we have Shivani Shah talking about the rise of gold, platinum and more with HWO. We don't know how these elements have built up with cosmic time. They are formed via neutron capture along with other elements, some critical for life such as iodine, and radioactive elements such as uranium #HWO25

Today, President Trump signed a bill into law that will eliminate $1.1B of federal funding for public media. This devastating act tipped the threat against journalism in America into a crisis. Millions depend on the NPR Network. Now, we’re counting on you. Donate here: n.pr/458sOhq

It's paper day! The first science paper with data from @vrubinobs.bsky.social's survey camera, the mighty LSSTCam, is a VERY quick turnaround of Rubin's observations thus far of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS. ☄️ Chandler et al., submitted 🔭 A 🧵