Want to hear about some of the cool science our authors are doing at #AAS247? Two of our authors are giving talks today! Kicking us off at 10:10 AM in room 222c is Skylar Grayson ( @skylargrayson.bsky.social ) with her dissertation talk! 🔭

Happy AAS week to those who celebrate! If you’re attending catch my dissertation talk this morning 👀

As light travels through an expanding universe, it changes. And those changes can have some interesting implications for how we perceive time… 🧪🔭

My favorite experience: looking around the room during a conference session and realizing there’s not a single other woman there. It doesn’t happen frequently but it does still happen, and that is absolutely wild.

If you’re a PhD student, don’t fall into the trap of only caring about your research and nothing else. I love what I do for a living, but it’s not all that I am. There’s so much more waiting for you out there.

We’ve taken images of two supermassive black holes…why not more? 🧪🔭

One of the most impressive equation slides I’ve ever seen at a conference 😂 as the speaker said: don’t try to understand it, you shouldn’t try to understand it

In a shocking turn of events, the interstellar comet is still an interstellar comet and not an alien spaceship 🧪🔭

Paper day!!! My most recent first-author paper is officially published. I’ll make a post breaking it down soon but TLDR I compared X-Ray observations of hot gas around galaxies to cosmological simulations and it looks like simulations aren’t consistently able to match the real universe! 🔭🧪

Life update 🥹💚

I find this fundamental misunderstanding of science so fascinating. Eventually I’ll have figured out my thoughts enough to articulate why, but for now just gonna drop it here for your reactions 😅

Have you heard our standard model of cosmology might be wrong? A new paper puts forth some interesting evidence, let’s discuss! 🧪🔭

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. So where’s the evidence? 🔭🧪

If you live in the Phoenix area, come hear me talk at Four Peaks tomorrow!!!

ScIenTistS aRe bEinG pAId tO hiDe tHiNgS frOM Us. Y’all we literally PAY thousands of dollars to publish in open access journals so that things AREN’T hidden!!! We love people knowing about the science that we do!

Sometimes I feel like debunking conspiracy theories is a waste of time. So many people are simply not interested in the truth. (1/4)

Let’s talk about why the University of Tokyo just dug a giant cave out of bedrock…🧪🔭

It’s not fair that the only way to cure exhaustion from jet lag is to stay awake longer. It is 7 pm and I am sooooooo tired

Had 24 hours of travel over the weekend but I just woke up IN JAPAN and I’m here to talk about my ASTROPHYSICS RESEARCH what is my life?!?? 🤯

Welcome to the largest day of peaceful protest we’ve ever seen in our lifetimes. Today, we’re gonna speak out on a grander scale than Trump has ever seen. No Kings Day is going to be big, loud, boisterous, and joyful. Find your local event and let’s make history: www.nokings.org?SQF_SOURCE #NoKings

This week I had a family wedding in Canada, gave a seminar talk, submitted FIVE postdoc applications, had my tech review (my PhD committtee decided I’ll be ready to graduate in the spring), and tomorrow I leave for a conference in Japan! I am…so very tired. But also happy 😊😅

Someone asked for a dumbed down summary of my PhD thesis so here you go: Black holes make galaxies fart but don’t ask any follow ups because that’s just about the extent of our current knowledge.

What’s the deal with this comet/alien spaceship really? 🧪🔭

AoT Valley of the Sun is back for the next event in our monthly series! This October, we’re thrilled to hear from ASU Professor Jim Bell and PhD student Hailey Nelson about an ASU-led mission to the asteroid Psyche. (1/2)

Woooohooooo! I’m very proud of this work and excited to see it published ☺️

Sorry that I’ve been a bit quiet of late…in the month of October I have: -7 fellowship proposals due -2 invited talks -1 overseas conference -2 paper drafts to submit -19 days of travel Sooooo I’ve been a little busy preparing for all that 😅

Cool space news: one of the biggest black holes in the universe is doing something WEIRD! You probably remember this picture, the first ever image of a black hole, in the galaxy M87. What you’re really seeing here is the disk of gas around the black hole. (1/n) 📸: EHT Collab.🧪🔭

Exciting new black hole results today! 🔭🧪

I present to you: the Astronomer’s Periodic Table. Hydrogen, Helium, and….everything else is a metal. But why? Well, mostly because there’s not much out there besides the first two elements. In the early universe, nothing could form except H, He, and a tiny bit of Li and Be. (1/n)

Why is he sleeping like this? 😂

Should we be excited about the recent results from Mars? Absolutely! But we also need to understand exactly what they do, and do not, mean. 🧪🔭

Here’s the problem about the whole “NASA found life on Mars” thing-they didn’t! 🧪🔭 What they found were some very interesting mineral deposits that could be a potential biosignature, caused by microbes at some point in Mars’ past. That is an amazing discovery! But… (1/n)

Gotta love old physics buildings that only have women’s restrooms on every other floor…because cmon guys we’re obviously not gonna have a woman on EVERY floor that would just be ridiculous 😂

Why are we getting big Mars news AND big gravitational wave news on the day I’m travelling???? Just atrocious timing 😅

Did we find life on Mars??? Well, no, but we did find maybe the best potential evidence yet. Let’s break it down 🧪🔭 Much like a toddler on a hike, the Perseverance rover has been collecting samples of interesting rocks it finds around the Martian desert. (1/n)

This statement is so icky. From slyly trying to credit Trump for Perseverance (which was a project first announced in 2012) to talking about “American boots” on Mars…I don’t like the vibes at all. Also touting “Gold Standard Science” while supporting all the anti-science shit of this admin…🤮

Studying small planets 40 light years away is hard! But we’re learning more and more, which is exciting 🔭🧪

Listen I know it’s kind of a bit for him at this point but I enjoy lunar eclipses and don’t find them “long and boring”. Anything that makes people pause and look up and reflect on the cosmic cycles we’re a part of is wonderful in my book

I know this is not a groundbreaking never-before-heard take about AI 😂 but I do get asked about my feelings on it, so here’s my best attempt to unpack them!

How’s your Thursday? Mine’s going great-found out I have two herniated disks in my lower back 😭 starting PT tomorrow, I’m too young for this sh*t

We just got another incredible image from JWST 🤩 This is a look into the Lobster Nebula, a star-forming region 5500 light years away. In the center you can see a newly formed star cluster, containing some of the biggest stars we’ve seen (74 times the mass of the sun!) 1/n🔭🧪 📸: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

Hold onto your butts because a new JWST image just dropped!

Oh my goodness it’s a double butterfly week! 🧪🔭 First we got this look of the Butterfly Nebula, a planetary nebula formed at the end of a star’s life. The outer layers are expelled and illuminated by the remnant core, creating something resembling butterfly wings! (1/n)

The weird trick that makes distant galaxies look bigger than closer ones…🧪🔭

Hold on to your butts because a new JWST image just dropped! 🔭🧪

Watching a haboob roll into Tempe, AZ 😳

I think I personally lean more towards there being a natural explanation but who knows?

Let’s talk about that black moon, because it really is not that big of a deal. To understand it, let’s start with the phases of the moon. When the moon is full, we are seeing the whole half that is illuminated by the sun. (1/n) 📸: NASA, JPL-Caltech 🧪🔭

Is that black moon a big deal? (Hint: no)

Y’all ever heard of those mysterious radio signals from space? Well we’re getting closer to figuring them out! 🧪🔭