So I’ve thought about it and having twins after a singleton feels like stages of the academic journey. Like doing your BSc was hard at the time, but feels easy once you’re doing your PhD, ya know? “But most people don’t have twins!” I hear you say. Guess what nerds, more ppl have twins than PhDs…

Springfield Springfield, it’s a helluva town! The school yard’s up and the shopping mall’s down!

This is exoplanetortion

One month into life with twin newborns and I can confidently say it’s easier than finishing my PhD was. More than anything this is an indictment of my first PhD adviser. 🙃 🧪 #womeninSTEM

Good sign at the Eugene marathon today 😂

This is very bad guys

Nothing quite like a Pacific Northwest farmers market! 😊💐 (Taken at the granddaddy of them all, Eugene Saturday Market.)

Applications are still open for this! Sign up if you’d like to come hang out at @perimeterinstitute.ca with an awesome group of physics/astronomy science communicators!

NEW video on my free lecture series about the solar system! “All The Small Things”- comets, asteroids, and yep even Pluto! 🔭🧪🎢 youtu.be/2I5UTPeFvQo

Four years ago today I saw the Artemis I rocket up close on its launchpad! (It rolled out and back a few times until its Nov 22 launch.) My biggest impression at the time of the SLS is it was VERY impressive and big IRL in a way pictures can’t grasp. Just what you want from a moon rocket! 🧪🎢🔭

Got our toddler twin baby dolls because she has twin little sisters now. Problem I did not foresee is after changing and feeding real babies I now get to do it for her babies too 🙃

Finally made it out for the martini I’ve been dreaming about for months! 🍸

Ah, moms- some colleagues came to visit and hold babies and after they left my mom said “physicists are always nice!” I was like I like that you think that but the better adage is I only introduce you to nice physicists 😂 🧪🎢

Want to support #WomeninSTEM? Don’t hold back an invite for something bc they’re pregnant/ just had a baby/ have a small child. People always say they’ll invite “later” but later never comes- let me lean on my support network and figure it out instead! 🔭🧪

Re: Hungary 🥳🇭🇺 We’ve been waiting for years for this. Never forget that we can still win when we all show up and stick together!

As a Hungarian-American it is downright weird to see so many people caring about Hungarian politics today. The last time that happened was never. Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice! But still weird. 😅

Exciting good news- I’m delighted to share that the new astronomy minor at the University of Oregon has been APPROVED and sent to the registrar! Starting this Fall 2026 we will be offering the FIRST EVER astronomy program in the entire state of Oregon!!! 🥳🤩🔭🧪🎢

I feel sick to my stomach waiting around to see what atrocity Trump has in mind for the people of Iran this evening. It's hard to fathom our other elected leaders aren't able to check him in any meaningful way. It's an indictment not just of voters but of our whole system. We're ruled by a mad king.

NASA isn't why the US doesn't have universal healthcare, or a social safety net. The US doesn't have those things because politicians with the power to provide them choose specifically not to (with varying levels of support from voters). Enthusiasm for human spaceflight doesn't drive that choice.

First child is seeing possibilities here of twin little sisters. She dumped a sleeve of diapers out and said “babies clean it up?” when told that wasn’t nice 🙃

“Look again at that dot. That’s here, that’s home, that’s us.”

It’s pretty cool to wake up for 5am newborn baby feeds and watch the moon knowing humans are going there. One for the “tell me about when I was born” story for sure. 😊

Sleep when the baby sleeps! Rocket launch when the baby rocket launches! 🚀🌕

I lost 40 pounds this week! Pregnancy is WILD

So I guess this might actually happen tomorrow? 🚀🌕 www.nasa.gov/blogs/missio...

Just checking in to say the twins arrived last week! Faster than anticipated- I suppose they were too excited to get on exploring to wait. :) Despite delivery at 35 weeks, they were a combined 13lb10oz (6180g)- you know you’ve impressed the hospital when everyone’s in shock about how big they are!

Today is the 6th anniversary of what my mom still insists is the best landscape photograph I’ve ever done. (We had just settled down in rural New Hampshire for the pandemic- little did we know how many months we’d be there!)

DONE 🥳🥳🥳 🔭🧪🎢

MRW, yet again, a major NASA Great Observatory (or other major observatory) does not list the University of Oregon as an institution so I have to manually enter all the info (Heck at this point I'd be excited if I ever see Oregon State listed down the road!) 🔭🧪

Did you see today's fireball over Ohio? You can report it!

I’ll say it once and I’ll say it again- Oregon spring has to be the most spectacular of all the springs I’ve ever seen 😍

You haven’t lived as a kid in Western Pennsylvania until you’ve gone on your first field trip to test water outside an old coal mine to confirm that yes, you really really probably should not drink or touch that water

Not my best effort, but it would have been sad to not make ANYTHING for my twins’ nursery 🪡

If anyone wants to know how it’s going lately, I just learned that I’m now carrying ~12 lb of baby and have 2.5 weeks to go. Man I’m such a good incubator

astronomy is so funny because it's this fairly niche interest for a small community of nerds and also it's 99.9999% of everything that exists

I think the "AI use by college students" dialogue often misses a key point. Yes, cheating is bad, but AI use is also bad bc at their age they're basically robbing themselves of bettering themselves. Which I know many don't believe in this, but is really the point of going to a university.

NEW lecture from my free class on the solar system on YouTube! Today are the planetary rings! 🪐 All about how they formed (and why Saturn has such cool ones), how they impact their environments, and LOTS of pretty pics 🤩 🔭🧪🎢 www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeOq...

Looking at some radio data hot off the MeerKAT telescope today! MeerKAT is a South African radio telescope with a huge field of view for astro. I'm calling this one "Radio Starry Night" bc a calibration error off that bright source has made a lovely swirly van Gogh sky if I may say so myself. 🔭🧪

Just stereotypically pretty spring in Oregon things 🌈🌸

Today one of my students said in a presentation that they wanted to get into astronomy since they saw a discovery about Europa “in 2016, when I was in 3rd grade” and my TA looked on in horror. Told her later “welcome to the first experience of how the students are definitely younger than you.”

The @axisprobe.bsky.social team learned that the phase A concept study report of AXIS (the Advanced X-ray Imaging Satellite) will not be reviewed because the lost personnel at NASA Goddard and government shutdown impacted our schedule and budget. 🔭 Here is the PI's e-mail with the explanation.

My husband is so excited that our new solar panels are enough to charge our car for free right now

Sign of the publishing times- Nature sent me a survey allegedly about open access for their publications. IRL almost all the questions were variants of “if we charged you $299 just to SUBMIT, how likely would you be to submit to our journal at this price point?” 🙄🙄🙄 🧪

TFW you turn a corner and realize you unwittingly interrupted something

Woo! 🥳 www.bbc.com/news/live/cj...

I assume this happened because the Dow is now below $50,000

Check out the front page today for our local paper, Eugene’s own Register-Guard!!! 🤩 🔭🧪

I will say, MAGA got it right here. They told me if I voted for Kamala we’d have war in Iran. Well I did vote for Kamala, and we have war in Iran. 🙃

I live in Oregon so can almost guarantee we won’t see this due to cloud cover. But the one nice advantage about the final month of a twin pregnancy is I’ll be up anyway at some point in the wee hours so don’t need to set an alarm just in case

It’s… the final countdown! One month out from identical twins. Two more weeks of class to get through. 🥴 Let’s just say, having done both kinds, twin pregnancy is an entirely different beast than singleton pregnancy. Genuinely excited for newborn stage so I get my body back.