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.

Vaguebooking, but one thing I’ve never stopped being surprised at is how many scientists devote careers to publishing shitty papers. Like, trivial or incremental things, taking another’s data set w a slightly different spin, etc. Just seems a dumb way to spend your precious time on this planet. 🔭🧪

Happy s39th birthday to SN 1987A- the closest to us since the invention of the telescope! 🥳 Always a good excuse to share my cross stitch evolution over time in radio of SN1987A. Everything is to the correct scale etc bc cross stitch is the original pixel art. 🔭🧪 #sciart

Found a blast of formative nostalgic childhood sci-fi so I’m rereading them. Hail the Tripod!

NEW solar system lecture, about the atmospheres of gas giants! Come learn about what they're made of, what the storms are like, and all sorts of other cool things! 🔭🧪🎢 youtu.be/p4lQXFODJoE

This is such a weird question for me as someone who just came to work to finalize slides for my class on upcoming space telescopes while over breakfast my husband kept sharing his excitement in how much power our new solar panels are generating and if it’ll be enough to charge the car today

Someone has sure already made this observation but the fact they can convert all those empty warehouses into prison camps means they could have converted them into housing, community centers, job training centers or, hell, libraries or schools all along. It’s always a matter of will not resources.

The NRAO released some radio astronomy valentines and NGL this one is making me giggle 💘 🔭🧪

Well, FUCK. Here I was excited for my first grant as a faculty member… “White House Withholds Funding for NASA Science Missions Despite Recent Budget Bill” NASA has been forced to pause funds for Chandra X-Ray Observatory and other missions until further notice. 🔭🧪 gizmodo.com/white-house-...

Had a nice profile of my research written by the UO folks, just in time for #WomenInScience day today! 😊 research.uoregon.edu/news/storyte... 🔭🧪🎢

CNN: "Another photograph - these are notes AG Bondi brought to the hearing today. This shows a list of Rep. Jayapal's search history. Lawmakers are allowed to go to a DOJ facility to search unredacted files. We learned from this photo that the searches are apparently being tracked & read by the DOJ"

My cross stitch temperature chart for 2025 is done for Eugene, Oregon! Sure I’m over a month late, but ya know, pregnant w twins #sciart

I will never tire of this spot on our visits to the Oregon coast! 🐳💥 (In Florence, OR)

Fun Olympics news today- my friend Lauren is there working for US Curling! Lauren preps ice (VERY involved process for the sport), and is the first woman to *ever* go from US Curling to do this- proud of her! ☺️ Also, she has a physics degree, for further proof that physics can take you anywhere. 🥌

For those who say American scientists will “just go abroad” when funding is cut here, just a reminder that science funding is facing cuts across the globe right now 😔

Guess who's lead author on the top science article on Reuters right now?! 🤩 🔭🧪🎢

Press release is out! 🤩

I have a big press release coming out tomorrow about my research. Reuters just wrote to me asking for comments! 😮

I basically can’t drive thru our little downtown for the foreseeable future despite major roads passing there bc twice in the last week they lobbed tear gas at protesters (which def also affected cars driving by). Tear gas is an abortifacient and I’m pregnant w twins. Thanks, I feel protected now!

Tell me five classes you took in college: Viking History 🇳🇴 The Local Universe 🌌 Advanced Creative Writing ✍️ Badminton 🏸 Pacific History 🌊 (Fun fact, I have a history minor! I did all the fun classes and skipped the boring required ones for a major.)

Finished reading apps to our program for Astronomy PhD applicants. I can only take 1 new student this coming year, but would be ecstatic if half a dozen applicants came to work with me. Sorry guys, it's so tough out there. :( I def wouldn't be getting into grad school today, SMH 🔭🧪🎢

I feel sick watching this. Which is why we should all do so.

absolutely insane article (lrt); the more i learn about astrophysics, the less it seems like we know about astrophysics; can't believe black hole in japanese is just burakku houru

Astronomer here- for anyone in Oregon, I’m speaking at the Eugene Universe on Tap tomorrow! (Jan 26) gonna talk about exploding stars, should be fun! 🔭🧪🎢

Radio astronomy is the best! 🤩

So it’s hard to share small good things right now bc of *gestures broadly*, but I’ve submitted the official paperwork for an astronomy minor at the University of Oregon! Barring unforeseen circumstances, in Fall 2026 we will offer the first astro program at ALL in Oregon 😊 🔭🧪🎢

Well this is fun- my article about black holes shredding stars has appeared in the Japanese edition of @sciam.bsky.social! Beyond looking cool, I now get the side benefit of knowing how to write “Cendes” in Japanese. 😁 🔭🧪