May your holidays be full of light — and just the right amount of dark matter 🌌 Happy Holidays from all of us at NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory! We hope your festive season sparkles with cosmic wonder ✨🔭🧪

i saw 'waiting for godot' last night in NYC. still such a weird + confusing play but the set was nice and the actors were good. they commissioned a soundtrack for the show which plays before/after -- it's good and def reflects the vibe of the show open.spotify.com/track/2Zl8Aq...

The diversity visa lottery is the closest thing to a "line" to immigrate to the US that exists. Yesterday Kristi Noem suspended it indefinitely. I've spent the last few years following someone waiting in that line. Today I published his story timhirschelburns.substack.com/p/the-end-of...

sorry for the blur but this was the last of the unannounced 4-truck fire department Christmas parade

I was awoken this morning by an unannounced (cannot convey this enough) 4-car Christmas parade made up of two (2) full-lights, full-sirens emergency-ready fire trucks; 1 full-lights, full-sirens dept. truck leading the charge; and 1 full-lights no-sirens dept. truck pulling a christmas float

just absolutely unbelievable beauty

🔭 Le télescope spatial SPHEREx de la NASA a complété son premier scan complet de la sphère céleste 🤩 Et grâce à sa caméra, cette image est composée de 102 couleurs ! En utilisant des combinaisons différentes, on peut révéler les étoiles ou la poussière par exemple www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-s...

this is really nice today www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lwsh...

14 two-year postdocs for academics of any nationality who cannot continue their research due to US politics. Do share if you know of such.

Space news is the best. Like, what do you mean there's a runaway supermassive black hole 10 million times bigger than the sun moving through space at 2 million miles per hour www.space.com/astronomy/bl...

Europa Clipper has imaged interstellar comet 3I/Atlas with its ultraviolet spectrometer! This is only the 3rd interstellar object discovered so far: an icy wanderer from a distant planetary system, and now we’ll learn more about what it’s made of!! 🔭 www.swri.org/newsroom/pre...

she was so young; may she rest in peace

Wow. CERN has secured a promise of $1 billion (!) towards its planned Future Circular Collider from private donors (such as the Breakthrough Prize Foundation & Eric & Wendy Schmidt Fund) - the first such donation for CERN, which has until now been taxpayer funded home.cern/news/press-r... 🧪⚛️

A new NOIRLab composite image featuring X-ray, ultraviolet, optical, and near-infrared data of the luminous fast blue optical transient (LFBOT) named AT 2024wpp. The transient is the bright spot at the upper right edge of its host galaxy. ☄️🔭🧪👩‍🔬🦖

Fantastic to see this transient in the news! It got the focus of the whole community and even got extremely fast turn-around Hubble Space Telescope observations! Many astronomers think it is a normal Type IIb SN, but this team posits the identity as a 'superkilonova.' Very interesting, indeed! 🧪🔭☄️👩‍🔬

nearly literally a thousand billion dollars in defense funding…

It was definitely time to revisit one of the most famous supernova remnants. www.iflscience.com/first-hubble...

this is, unironically, one of my most favorite songs. it makes me feel future nostalgia open.spotify.com/track/6KsjZG...

A year-long SETI Institute investigation into a flickering pulsar has revealed how radio waves warp as they travel through deep space, offering a powerful new tool for distinguishing natural cosmic noise from potential alien transmissions. 🧪 Learn more: thedebrief.org/seti-institu...

this blue image of the comet is so beautiful

ah !! such a great "transients" review from @annfinkbeiner.bsky.social ft. comments from many familiar names !! "'when the transient’s name is a description,' says astrophysicist Raffaella Margutti [...], 'that tells you we know nothing intrinsic about them.' That’s about to change." ☄️🔭🧪👩‍🔬🦖

New Chandra Observatory composite image of AT2024wpp -- the most luminous FBOT ever discovered! Fast, blue, optical transients (FBOTs) have an uncertain progenitor path, but we think this one may have come from the tidal disruption of a star. read more in the releases linked below :) ☄️🔭🧪👩‍🔬🦖

A moment we've all been waiting for.... NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory will be open for public visits starting in January 2026! 🔭🧪 Visits will be hosted by NOIRLab, and reservations are open now — book your spot at https://noirlab.edu/public/visits/cerro-pachon-rubin/

First look at Steven Spielberg’s next film ‘DISCLOSURE DAY’, starring Emily Blunt and Josh O’Connor The film follows the disclosure to the world that aliens might be real.

Very excited to be speaking at the Liberty Science Center in the 'Space Talk' series on Jan. 22 on the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) and Adele! Get tickets at the link below. lnkd.in/eJVEW-aP

really liked this apartment design/build www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpZL...

Orange toad species discovered so tiny it fits on pencil tip

DEADLINE TODAY! Today is the last day to apply for an AWIS microgrant. These grants are available to assistant professors and nontenured faculty who have lost federal funding. Applications are due by 11:59 p.m. ET. Apply here: https://awis.org/awis-bridge-grant-program/ #WomenInSTEM

Oh this is very clever. Perspective effects play a bigger role in astronomy than you might think at first. Astrobites, BTW, writes about journal papers at a moderately technical level. It's a great resource for undergrad/grad students, or high school students who are into the science.

Sunset from October of Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz Island, Marin Headlands and Telegraph Hill in San Francisco. #sunset #sky #eastcoastkin

The 14th day of the 18th annual Space Telescope Advent Calendar features undulating dust lanes at the edges of a distant galaxy. Every day until December 25, this page will present a new image of our universe:

v vera c rubin observatory of them to pick this www.wgsn.com/en/blog/colo...

From @noirlabastro.bsky.social: New spectrum from Gemini South confirms #3I/ATLAS is actively emitting CN, C3, and C2 gases, plus a visible dust fan! #astronomy @brycebolin.bsky.social www.astronomerstelegram.org?read=17503

Each semester I go in my classroom and I try to figure out what we would use to block the doors, if it would be safe to crawl out the windows, where we could hide if there was a mass shooter in campus. It’s such an indictment of this country how we have normalized these preventable tragedies.

oh this is deeply upsetting

so great to see supernova science in the news !!! this one is pretty special ! 🧪🔭☄️

🧪☄️🔭 #highenergyastro

NEW: When she worked at NASA’s JPL, Amy Mainzer used to rack up high scores on the 1979 Atari game ASTEROIDS. Very apt, now she’s in charge of a space mission that will save the world from killer asteroids. Planet Protector, my new feature for @science.org, is live. www.science.org/content/arti...

rudolph spotting

☄️🩻 La nostra missione @science.esa.int XMM-Newton ha osservto la cometa 3I/ATLAS alla luce dei raggi ✖️.

had a great day today !!!!

🔭 Now it's official, the nebula was never in Andromeda! Our paper has been published and we show that the large 🧪 oxygen nebula is in the Milky Way. This arc was discovered by amateurs photographing Andromeda with an [O III] filter, and now we have new things to say... ⚛️

For the first time, astronomers have detected a coronal mass ejection from a star other than our Sun, and it was a big one – powerful enough to strip the atmosphere from nearby planets. That's bad news for the search for extraterrestrial life. Here's why: physicsworld.com/a/astronomer... 🧪⚛️🔭

With the news that the US wants to have five years of your social media history allow me to remind you of the tool I built to scrub your skeets

In the latest of our #UndergradResearch series, discover how to estimate the metallicities of early galaxies using line ratios from JWST with Vidit Bhandari. ⚛️🔭☄🧪 astrobites.org/2025/12/09/u...

It's helping the kids stay engaged in math class, what's not to love?

This two-part illustration represents supernova GRB 250314A as it was exploding and three months after that when #NASAWebb observed it. Webb confirmed the supernova occurred when the universe was only 730 million years old. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Leah Hustak (STScI).

Scientists say the best explanation for an extraordinary gamma-ray burst is that a black hole consumed a star, but they disagree on exactly how it happened. Astronomers have been analyzing data from observatories, including #NASAWebb, as they try to work out what was responsible for the outburst. 🔭

Another #NASAWebb record breaker: a supernova that existed only 730 million years after the big bang! Learn how Webb delivered the conclusive evidence when it followed up on a fleeting event known as a gamma-ray burst: https://bit.ly/3Y782ul 🔭 🧪

!!! yay to GRB science being done with JWST