Why oh why? arstechnica.com/space/2025/0...

NASA Goddard is pushing through a 48% staff reduction!!! This could impact the upcoming Roman Space Telescope and many other future Astro missions. News coverage seems not sensational enough. Are we really going to let NASA (as we know it) die quietly? www.space.com/space-explor...

Many others are posting abt this too but this graphic viscerally shows how dire the presidential budget is for NASA 🔭🧪and worldwide astronomy. I can’t express how sad this makes me, as an American scientist. And it’s mostly already paid for projects, so also no logic in terms of saving money.

Also of note/horror: this budget makes the 30M downselect explicit (GMT, not TMT) --

Presidential budget is out. Here's NSF. Biggest cut, by amount, is $1 billion, or 66.8%, from MPS (Physics & Math directorate). nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/00-NSF...

TO BE PERFECTLY CLEAR, THE PROPOSED NSF BUDGET CUTS NEARLY A QUARTER OF A MILLION PEOPLE FROM NSF ACTIVITIES. FOR INSTANCE, JOBS.

A key portion of #NASARoman has cleared a thermal vacuum test. Tt was subjected to the hot and cold temperatures it will experience in space: go.nasa.gov/43cwDQL 🔭 🧪

My heart goes out to the good people who had to endure this at the NSF today www.wired.com/story/nation... 🧪

The Democrats on the House Science Committee have set up a website to collect stories from fired federal employees, anonymously if desired democrats-science.house.gov/sciencefirings

For you foodies out there, I highly recommend this conference tradition. Great food and meet new people!

Interested in black holes or the Galactic Center check out Thursday sessions at #AAS243 by MovingUniverse Lab grads, Natasha Abrams (440.05) and Anna Pusack (420.05). Lots of new results!

Update on the gravitational lensing black hole, OB110462. It is definitely a black hole and our revised photometric and astrometric analysis gives a mass of 6 +/- 1 Sun. https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.03302

ESA’s Euclid mission has reached L2 where JWST and Gaia are waiting 💕 https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Euclid/Follow_Euclid_s_first_months_in_space

AstroTechers working on grating design principles and inclusive teamwork skills today at #AstroTech!

Hello BlueSky! I'm an astronomy professor at UC Berkeley working on black holes, star clusters, the Galactic center, and the instruments and telescopes needed to study them. As a further introduction, I'll post a brief thread on my research group's latest published paper.