🔭 Paper day! Ani Chiti + MAGIC discovery the first highly carbon-enhanced star in an ultra-faint dwarf galaxy. We suggest most CEMP stars form in such places. News article: news.uchicago.edu/story/ancien... Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41... Arxiv version (updated soon): arxiv.org/abs/2508.04053

Owing (probably) to some form of administrative error, I have made it to the final of the St Patrick’s Day Beard of Ireland competition. If you'd like to vote for me you can do so below. Please feel free to share the link. bsky.app/profile/keit...

🔭 Storytime! This paper consumed my soul for a month and it turns out that you have to look at your 2D spectroscopic data. Thread... ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2024OJAp...

At ~$1 billion/day, the US has spent as much on the war in Iran in ten days as the entire FY25 budget for the National Science Foundation ($10 billion). Trump's FY26 budget request for the agency declined to $3.9 billion, due to a "realignment of resources in a constrained fiscal environment."

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/...

Wise words from the hoardings on the building site of the new Graz Centre for Physics

The FCC just opened public comments on SpaceX's plan to launch a million satellites to do AI compute in space. Under the current proposal, an environmental review won't be required. Please consider submitting a public comment to oppose this damaging plan. darksky.org/news/two-sat...

Caltech astrophysicist fatally shot on porch in Antelope Valley; suspect charged with murder

🔥🐎 here we come!

After a year of protests from astronomers, authorities have abandoned plans for a giant, light-polluting renewable-energy facility in Chile’s Atacama Desert

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

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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…