Astrophysicist @erikahamden.bsky.social‬ breaks down how our galaxy alone contains hundreds of billions of stars, and the observable universe holds hundreds of billions of galaxies spread across an unimaginably vast volume of space.

The universe is packed with galaxies, but still most of it is astonishingly empty. 🌌

Saturn. By Cassini.

Kudos to LPL's Head and Director, Dr. Mark Marley, for being awarded the 2026 Lecar Prize! science.arizona.edu/news/lunar-p...

You HAVE to watch this 55 second video. When the muscle of University sports marketing meets the expertise of space science. Features LPL's Ty Robinson and Kris Klein. youtu.be/fhxf4XpescY

If you stood on the Moon, you’d see Earth frozen in one spot in the sky. 🌍🧪 Astrophysicist @erikahamden.bsky.social‬ unpacks how tidal locking, a gravitational effect that causes the Moon to rotate once for every orbit around Earth, keeps one side of the Moon permanently facing us.

What happens when the universe runs out of stars? ⭐️🧪 Astrophysicist @erikahamden.bsky.social walks us through the far future of the cosmos, where expansion pushes galaxies apart and star formation comes to a halt. The stars that do exist will eventually burn out, leaving behind black holes.

Our NASA’s Pandora space telescope is on orbit!! Congrats to the team and NASA, LSP, SpaceX, and everyone who helped to get to this exciting point! What will Pandora do and why is it important for exoplanet science? Read my short article on this: theconversation.com/nasas-pandor...

Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system, but did you know it nearly became a star? ⭐️🧪 Astrophysicist @erikahamden.bsky.social explains that while Jupiter is massive, it would need to be about 80 times more massive to initiate nuclear fusion and become even a small star.

There’s a cloud in space with 140 trillion times more water than Earth 🌧️ Astrophysicist @erikahamden.bsky.social explains how astronomers discovered a massive water vapor cloud near a black hole. The extreme heat from the activity of the black hole keeps it in vapor form, making it easier to spot.

Want to slow down aging? 🕒🧪 Astrophysicist @erikahamden.bsky.social breaks down a mind-bending reality of motion and time: the faster you move through space, especially near the speed of light, the slower you experience time.

NASA revealed they found some of the building blocks of life in a sample brought back from an asteroid (on a University of Arizona-led mission, by the way). It raises some big questions about whether there’s other life somewhere out there in the universe. According to my math, probably.

The stanning of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS in this account continues Image credit: Victor Sabet, Julien De Winter

The main problem is that space telescopes in Low Earth Orbit share the similar orbits as the telecommunication satellites. Here we show a simplified representation of the increased orbital crowding between 1958 (Sputnik) and the projected satellite population at the end of the next decade.

It's that time of year again

From Ansh Gupta: Astronomers have spent decades searching for seeds of the earliest black holes. Did JWST just glimpse the very first ones? ⚛️🔭☄🧪 astrobites.org/2025/11/27/g...

The dinosaur extinction event is my personal unit for getting a sense of astronomical time. For instance, if the local bubble formed 1-2 Myr ago, that’s After Dinos = very recent!!

What does a giant cloud in space smell like? 🍓✨ Astrophysicist @erikahamden.bsky.social explains how a giant cloud called Sagittarius B2 smells like raspberries because it’s full of ethyl formate, the molecule behind the fruit’s sweet scent. Astronomers were searching for amino acids.

How heavy is a teaspoon of neutron star? 🥄💥🧪 Astrophysicist @erikahamden.bsky.social explains how this stellar core remnant weighs more than a mountain because it’s packed with neutrons under crushing gravity. Watch the video here:

i’m excited to announce that i am hiring (again)! i am looking for a postdoc in computational astrophysics that’s excited about models of stellar transients and multi-messenger astronomy to join my group (star stuff @ steward) at @uarizona.bsky.social! apply here ✨💥: aas.org/jobregister/...

This weekend I read that the entire Breaking Bad franchise is estimated to have had $385M in economic impact for the state of NM and this is celebrated by a statue at the ABQ convention center. Meanwhile University of Arizona space science has an economic impact of $560M on our state every year.

Some stars don’t just shine, they steal. 🧛⭐️🧪 @erikahamden.bsky.social ‬dives into how, in close binary star systems, one star nearing the end of its life can expand so much that its outer layers are pulled in by the gravity of its companion.

You might’ve heard the news: SpaceX just passed 10,000 Starlink satellites launched. And that number is already old news, as there’s now a new Starlink batch launched every other day. Here’s what that looks like in a short animation of Comet A6 Lemmon courtesy of Michael Jaeger:

A part of you has existed since almost the moment of creation. 🌌💥🧪 Astrophysicist @erikahamden.bsky.social ‬breaks down how the hydrogen in your body was formed within the first 20 minutes after the Big Bang.

#NASAWebb provides high-resolution details of Herbig-Haro 49/50—an outflow from a nearby still-forming star and background galaxies. Webb reveals the fuzzy object at the tip of the outflow in the Spitzer image is actually a distant spiral galaxy: https://bit.ly/4mXuQHW 🔭 🧪

How did the Moon form? 🌕💥🧪 Astrophysicist @erikahamden.bsky.social breaks down the giant impact theory, which suggests an object the size of Mars collided with early Earth, liquefying the surface and launching debris that formed ... Watch the full interview here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2Zl...

Juno is an AMAZING mission. The camera onboard was never supposed to last this long (the radiation around Big J should've zapped it a while back) but it just keeps on ticking. Killing this mission while it's still working and producing great science is a crime.

Which would you choose: 5 pounds of diamonds or 5 pounds of gold? 💎🪙 Astrophysicist @erikahamden.bsky.social breaks it down: Diamonds are made of carbon, one of the most common elements in the universe. Gold is forged in incredibly rare events like neutron star collisions.

My latest paper on interstellar sulfur was highlighted recently in a NASA press release 🥳 science.nasa.gov/centers-and-...

Hubble observations of interstellar visitor 3I/ATLAS show that it looks like a comet. It has a teardrop-shaped cocoon of dust coming off a solid icy nucleus. The nucleus is roughly no wider than 3.5 miles (5.6 kilometers): go.nasa.gov/3UenJhD 🔭 🧪

Hey, wanna see a weird Mars rock? Here you go

A reminder that LPL, along with Steward Observatory, is a host for 51 Peg b Fellowships. Whether it's exoplanet or legacy planetary science you are interested in, be sure to contact me or our faculty!

‪On Venus, every day is your birthday, thanks to some wild planetary physics. 🪐🎉 As @erikahamden.bsky.social explains, the planet spins backward, and so slowly that one day lasts 243 Earth days. But a year on Venus? Just 225 Earth days. So its year finishes before a single day ends. 🧪

Okay I finished the @erikahamden.bsky.social book Weird Universe. I’m not sure I understood it all, especially the part about dark energy, but I definitely learned a ton. Get a copy. Read it. And then let’s go outside and stare at the wonder that is our universe.

Congratulations on the book! 🥳 This article was so fun to read. Time to pick up a copy of Weird Universe! And I might have to bring it to the next SPIE conference you attend so that you can sign it, of course! 🪐 -Emily

Chuan Luo, PhD candidate at the University of Arizona, has been awarded the 2025 Michael Kidger Memorial Scholarship in Optical Design. 🎊 The $7,500 award honors Kidger’s legacy + supports excellence in lens, illumination, and computational optical design. spie.org/membership/...

A recently discovered extraterrestrial "visitor" is hurtling toward the inner solar system at 130,000 miles per hour and has quickly captured the attention of astronomers and space enthusiasts around the world, including here at LPL. news.arizona.edu/news/emissar...

What’s really at stake if NASA’s science budget gets slashed and entire science missions are canceled? We asked the scientists leading those missions, and their stories reveal what we all stand to lose. Here’s what they told us: www.planetary.org/articles/sci...

LPL’s Dani DellaGiustina explains the impact of the proposed APEX cancellation.

A lovely article about "Weird Universe" on Tucson Daily Star!! tucson.com/news/local/e...

@spacelawshitpost.me taught me the basics of space law on the latest Pale Blue Pod! Listen to find out if a billionaire could buy the moon 🌙 art19.com/shows/pale-b...

Please join us in congratulating Samuel Myers, who today successfully defended his Ph.D. Dissertation, Understanding the Limits of Simple Thermal Models for Characterizing Near-Earth Asteroids. Congratulations, Sam! 📸: Sam is pictured with his Ph.D. advisor, Dr. Ellen Howell

I got to appear on the fabulous "Talk Nerdy" with Cara Santa Maria, talking about space and my new book, "Weird Universe"!- listen for a fun and wide ranging discussion! www.carasantamaria.com/podcast/erik...

Have you read @erikahamden.bsky.social’s new book Weird Universe? It’s so fun! Erika came on Pale Blue Pod to talk about it podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/p...

The Rubin asteroid discoveries are amazing, but note that very few are Near Earth Objects. The observing cadence isn't optimal for such objects so there is still a big niche for ground based dedicated discovery, like Catalina Sky Survey and Spacewatch.

Introducing...your sneak peek at the cosmos captured by NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory! Can you guess these regions of sky? This is just a small peek...join us at 11am US EDT for your full First Look at how Rubin will #CaptureTheCosmos! 🔭🧪 #RubinFirstLook ls.st/rubin-first-look-livestream

The summer solstice has passed, and now we enter into my favourite half of the year

U of A space sciences now ranked #4 in the world in US News ranking as we climb past Princeton and MIT since last time. I take rankings with a huge grain of salt but the US News subject ones are citation focused so not so bad. Harvard, 0.1 ahead, needs to look out. www.usnews.com/education/be...

An international team of astronomers including researchers from LPL has unveiled groundbreaking findings about the disks of gas and dust surrounding nearby young stars, using the powerful Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, or ALMA. news.arizona.edu/news/reveali...