The most insightful discussion I seen on the Loeb and his insertion into the 3I/Atlas apparition: tinieblasyestrellas.blogspot.com/2025/11/the-...

Henceforward, define an interstellar comet as “anomalous” if and only if Avi Loeb does NOT develop a 10-point argument as to why its properties and behavior indicate it is ACTUALLY an alien spacecraft.

‘An Overview of Exocomets’ is a very comprehensive review led by Daniela Iglesias started at an @issibern.ch meeting. I worked on Figure 1 detailing comets around the Sun, Beta Pic and a white dwarf - I’m very proud of it, and it is available on @github.com: Exocomet systems #astrodon #exoplanet ☄

Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS was born with different and more ancient chemistry, has been more irradiated, and is speeding toward the Sun faster compared to Solar System comets. It's got a unique personality. But since literally Day 1 it was recognized as a comet and has only ever done comety things.

This slide by @mubdi.bsky.social at #adass2025 should be on ever astronomer's wall. Software is a central part of science and should be published accordingly!

So, I have a 2019 Macbook Pro whose battery life is now less than one hour. I asked our IT department for a quote to replace the battery, but apparently it is now considered “vintage” by Apple and would cost the best part of 1000 Euros to replace(!) or until I get the urge to fix it myself…

I am now changing all my important passwords to "louvre" in solidarity with the Louvre. We've all been there. Well, not me specifically, just *gestures towards window* out there.

Every time someone’s like “put that in the louvre,” my head now goes “and then steal it from the louvre, the security password is louvre”

pre-writing a devastating obituary for your enemy is god-tier hating of a kind you don’t often see anymore. renaissance haterism. beautiful stuff.

Lammers and Winn “On the Exoplanet Yield of Gaia Astrometry” makes breathtaking predictions for the Gaia DR4 data release in December 2026 - around 7500 new exoplanets around nearby stars! It will be revolutionary… and indicate new nearby systems to be imaged… #astrodon #exoplanets ☄️

Shah+ on “The nature of ASASSN-24fw’s occultation” going for an exoring/exodisk explanation for the occulter with a minimum mass of 4 Jupiters for the companion #exoplanet #astrodon ☄

The 1st law of thermoacademics: the amount of urgent work to be done is constant. The 2nd law of thermoacademics: the amount of work previously deemed urgent is ever increasing #academicchatter #chemsky

"America appears to be, at the moment, in a sort of benevolent hostage situation. AI-related spending now contributes more to the nation’s GDP growth than all consumer spending combined, and by another calculation, those AI expenditures accounted for 92% of GDP growth during the first half of 2025."

This follows an article A/Prof Brown and A/Prof @mattkenworthy.bsky.social (@unileiden.bsky.social) wrote earlier this month about the feasibility and potential repercussions of a US start-up's plans to deliver 'sunlight on demand' after dark. bsky.app/profile/aunz...

Just switched it off for my account.

Do not, I repeat, do not, use AI "art" in your talks unless you'd be ok with someone stealing your work and giving you no credit for it.

A polite golf clap to Suárez Mascareño with “In space there will be no need to scream Limits to the presence of giant planets in the ζ² Ret system” allowing us to all breathe a sigh of relief that Weyland Yutani will not be endangering the Earth any time soon… 👽 #astrosci #astrodon

At this point, publications that platform Loeb's comments, or feature him as the story lede (i.e., "Harvard Astronomer says....") deserve to be ridiculed and not taken seriously. If you choose to look away from the hugely negative impact is having for the sake of clicks, then that's on you.

Quoted in this Vice article about Reflect Orbital's plan for thousands of giant mirrors in orbit to shine sunlight down on Earth at night. The huge numbers of satellites needed to provide useful amounts of light to an individual site are vast. www.vice.com/en/article/t...

I think about this LeGuin essay a lot. (link in next post; you should read it too.)

Hire Mark for your space art - he is awesome.

We can see Io rotate slightly over the hour-long timelapse, tracking volcanoes on its surface! And check out the Conversation piece for a cool slider showing how NGC 1068 lines up perfectly with previous data from LBTI.

The raw data look like messy interferograms that are hard to understand by eye - and we enhance these data to restore beautiful images of the environment of the black hole in NGC 1068, Jupiter's moon Io, and a dusty binary system WR 137.

Gibson et al. “TESS Discovers a Second System of Transiting Exocomets in the Extreme Debris Disk of RZ Psc” showing 24 exocomet transits and the existence of a broken power law for the sizes of these exocomets, unlike Beta Pic’s exocomet distribution #exoplanet #astrodon #astrosci

Satellites beaming sunlight down to Earth sound like science fiction – and they have astronomers very worried. 👉 theconversation.com/a-us-st...

They're going to put an enormous lawsuit magnet in the sky. mastodon.social/@sundogplane...

A lovely morning to go rowing in #Leiden - my sculling needs improvement, but it’s fantastic to be on the water on these calm Autumn days.

A US tech startup is proposing to use mirrors in space to power solar farms on Earth at night. Is this even feasible? And what are the light pollution dangers? Myself and @mattkenworthy.bsky.social have crunched the numbers for The Conversation. theconversation.com/a-us-startup...

Startup Reflect Orbital aims to power solar farms at night by reflecting sunlight from about 4,000 satellites, has recently requested a license for a 2026 demo. But astronomers warn the bright objects could be “ruinous” to vital scientific research.

Santos-Sanz+ with “JWST occultation reveals unforeseen complexity in Chariklo’s ring system” - I’m fascinated by #exorings and seeing more activity and weirdness with small bodies in the Solar system gets me very intrigued indeed….. #astrosci #astrodon

Getting mentally prepared to read all the #slack channels on #wispit2 #JWST proposals

"Aaaah, go on Ted!"

Wolff, @andrasgaspar.bsky.social et al. with a beautiful analysis of “JWST/MIRI Imaging of the Warm Dust Component of the Epsilon Eridani Debris Disk”, the last of the “Big Four” circumstellar disks with #JWST - a smooth disk at all but the longer wavelengths and hosting an RV #exoplanet ☄️

New paper, led by @physicsuol.bsky.social PhD student @simintong.bsky.social. Simin looked at the rings we see in planet-forming discs, and combined new models with multi-wavelength ALMA observations to understand the underlying physical properties of the dust and gas. 🔭 arxiv.org/abs/2509.24818

Cugno and Grant @sierragrant.bsky.social with “A Carbon-rich Disk Surrounding a Planetary-mass Companion” detected using #JWST - an impressive detection of several different carbon molecules that are very promising for #exomoon formation around the directly imaged #exoplanet CT Cha b ☄

Herfstequinox

A very cool result! Julo+ with a paper on “Stellar halo subtraction … with integral field spectroscopy… on the PDS70, HTLup, and YSES1 systems” showing that the YSES 1b #exoplanet has a lot of emission lines - H alpha , H beta, He I, Ca H and K triplets, Na in absorption… oh my! #astrodon ☄

Some sad #exoplanets news in a paper led by me: “YSES 2b is a background star”#exoplanets A distant M dwarf star some 2 kiloparsecs behind the star just so happens to have a non-zero proper motion in EXACTLY the wrong direction: this required multiple GRAVITY observations to solve… #astrosci #astrodon

My periodic reminder for #astrosci #astrodon #exoplanets Early Career Researchers to please, please, please have a simple web site with your current email address on it - rationale here: kenworthy.space/advice/

These maps are utterly amazing, the author wrote up detailed descriptions and design choices in the GitHub repos - really detailed and brilliant work! #astrosci

Right, now I wonder where WISPIT 2 is in this box....?

Two papers announcing the discovery of a directly imaged 6 Jupiter mass planet around binary system HD 143811 AB Squicciarini+ and Jones+ in Sco-Cen - Keck, Gemini and VLT all imaging this companion and confirmed with several years of common proper motion. #astrodon #exoplanet #exosci

I can

Rings are everywhere! A new ring around Quaoar. Very cool.

We had WISPIT 2 yesterday, and today we have van Capelleveen et al. with “WIde Separation Planets In Time (WISPIT): Two directly imaged exoplanets around the Sun-like stellar binary WISPIT 1” with 10 and 4 Jupiter mass planets at 338 and 840 au respectively #astrodon #exoplanet #exosci

Cite. Women. Looking at yet another case where there are 7 papers that should be cited, 6 led by men. Only one not listed is the one led by a female ECR (even though it is more up to date than one of the male-led papers).

New protoplanet(s?) alert! I'm happy to share this LBTI image of WISPIT 2 from our team's paper led by Laird Close. Planet b was discovered at Hα with MagAO-X following the SPHERE disk discovery (R. van Capelleveen +), and CC1 might be a candidate 2nd (enshrouded?) protoplanet #exoplanets ☄️🔭🧪

Proud supervisor moment: #LeidenObservatory graduate student Richelle van Capelleveen led one of two papers on our discovery of WISPIT 2b#LeidenObservatory a 5 Jupiter mass exoplanet clearing a path in a circumstellar disk. Laird Close and his team saw it in H-alpha, indicating gas accretion #astrodon 🔭 🧪

Resorting to somewhat extreme methods to focus my easily distracted self in the last week of #astronomy grant writing #AcademicChatter

HOW IS IT ALREADY THE AFTERNOON?