This is my old Division at Ames. The SST branch produced some fantastic planetary science by Jim Pollack, Chris McKay, Jeff Cuzzi, Carol Stoker, Natasha Batalha, and of course Kevin Zahnle. The only one still there is Natasha so sending her good vibes. nasawatch.com/space-scienc...

These guys are more athletic and chonkier than I expected.

The purpose of the silver bowl is to catch overflow from the big bowl, not javelina amusement.

I was privileged today to visit Copper Creek with @crytzerfry.bsky.social and her husband today. It’s a an exceptional biodiversity hotspot and I got to see my first ever coatimundis!

Decent sunset tonight.

As good as PHM was, I still think Arrival is still the most accurate on screen depiction of a scientist.

It’s been so long since I’ve seen a movie in theaters that it’s almost surprising to hear the audience laughing together.

Spouse just searched for a kind of fabric she hadn't heard of (just a different type of Rayon). The Google AI response, after explaining what it was, said "since you shop at Land's End you might be interested in these specific products made with this fabric". So targeted advertising in the answer.

I have had the solar cover on my pool in this heat wave and now it’s up to 80°. In March.

Yes and! Newsrooms spent *a lot* of time and effort crafting heds, not just to get clicks (I know, shocking!) but to convey what that newsroom thinks is important, and to speak in its unique voice. Ceding control of headlines is ceding editorial control and responsibility (which are the same thing).

In the category of “you had one job” the bobcats are supposed to eat the snakes.

The record for our earliest ever 100F day in tucson has officially been beaten by a bit over 3 weeks. The previous record was set (wait for it) last year. Appropriate classic gif is appropriate

Heard about a new exoplanet molecular detection. Looked at one of my photochemistry papers with Zahnle to see if we predicted the molecule. We did, but helpfully write that the molecule is "not labeled" in the relevant figure for clarity.

Yuk was new faculty when I was an undergraduate studying planetary. It always felt like he was unchanging and ageless. He made so many contributions while remaining positive and joyful. Truly will be missed.

Astronomers continue to puzzle over asteroid 16 Psyche's formation. LPL grad student Namya Baijal and team have predictions to help interpret the data from NASA's Psyche mission when it arrives in 2029. The predictions may help settle the mystery of Psyche's makeup. news.arizona.edu/news/large-c...

This figure from Sanghi+ ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2026arXi... shows an exceptional test of our substellar evolution models. 3 coeval objects with 3 very different masses all matched by the same model isochrone shows that our models are capturing the cooling of brown dwarfs relatively well.

Thirsty rabbit.

Good news: palo verde trees are blooming. Bad news: they bloom in May

Called customer service for an app I occasionally need. Recording says "never give your account number". Amazingly a human picked up. First question was "what is your account number". I gave them the number. Then they asked what is the expiration date "I don't know since I can't get into the app".

If we are doing a period piece movie from 1500 I’m not expecting realistic period English but can we not use “ok” and “hello” please? Both showed up in Hamnet tonight.

Steward teams are building instruments for Lazuli — a new space telescope launching by 2029 as part of the Eric & Wendy Schmidt Observatory System. Our adaptive optics will image giant exoplanets nearly a billion times dimmer than their host stars! bit.ly/4dkXYH1

Here come the cold giants! A combination of RV and astrometry reveals several "Jupiter analogues", among them one planet (around HIP 39330, a G5V star, ca. 100 ly away) that matches Jupiter quite nicely: a=5.05 au, e=0.078, M=1.67 M_jup. If only we could quickly check for terrestrial planets inside!

The latest run of the European ensemble model has 500 mb heights a week from now around 5960 m over southern AZ. To give some perspective on how insane that is, that would be the orange dot on the SPC graph of Tucson historical 500 mb heights (red line is all-time highest)

Unleaded swallows.

Battle of the planetary science universities.

LPL is now the proud home of this Chelsey Bonestell painting, on permanent loan from Flandrau Planetarium. I believe he painted three versions of this scene and he was present at the unveiling at Flandrau when they first opened.

The University is running a marketing campaign on our greatest hits accomplishments. LPL gets two mentions, starting off with Kuiper and Whitaker and the Consolidated Lunar Atlas. news.arizona.edu/news/bear-do...

Will have a thread soon about our new paper. I never thought I would do a HZ paper but it turns out the literature had missed some key points of the problem. LPL grad student Kayla Smith led our effort (and her first brown dwarf paper).

Happy eps Ind Ab day! Possible water clouds on this cool (also literally) planet from JWST images in the near- and mid-infrared. Sanghi+ arxiv.org/abs/2603.08787 Matthews+ arxiv.org/abs/2603.08780 🧪🔭 #exoplanets

I ended up having to pull a few strings ahead of my visit in a few hours.

It was 20 years ago today... The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter arrived at Mars with the best camera ever sent to another planet: HiRISE! A massive thanks to all our team @uarizona.bsky.social , JPL and @baesystems.com who keep this adventure going on strong. 😃 #uahirise

Running my home scope tonight. Bumped into Potentially Hazardous Asteroid 89830 up near Ursa Major. It was discovered in 2002 by the LINEAR survey. This is a huge PHA, with a diameter of ~5km. 🔭

Being on vacation in Hawaii from Arizona while everyone complains about arrival of DST.

The undergraduate textbook: An Introduction to Planetary Astrophysics: Exoplanets and the Solar System in Context, has now been sent to my editor! 4+ years in the making so far. 270 pages (good for a 1-semester class). Now on to peer review! Hoping for the printing press in Spring/Summer 2027.

When the US govt terminated the National Nature Asst, @phillevin.bsky.social + the author team were determined not to let that stop them. They re-organized, set up an advisory committee, found funding…and now the brand new Nature Record is open for public comment. 👏🌳👏🌲 Check it out (link below)!

We're hiring a Research Engineer at the U. Arizona's Imaging Technology Lab (ITL; itl.arizona.edu). If you have hands-on lab experience and are interested in working on cutting-edge tech development for astronomy / scientific sensors, I encourage you to apply! arizona.csod.com/ux/ats/caree...

Hey, so, we have some news about something that won't be happening in 2032.

I poked an ice pick in my eye in 3rd grade. Every eye doctor exam since includes the phrase “you have no idea how lucky you were”.

Brown dwarfs.

This morning's Lunar Eclipse was fairly typical, with orange tan predominating in the shadow through binoculars and to the naked eye. Through the telescope the variety of regional colors could be examined as they came and went. This is my painted portrayal of the colors seen inside the Earth shadow.

My long largely hypothetical textbook manifests! No path to purchase physical copies in the US yet unfortunately (these are author copies), but you can buy the e-book anywhere!

Today's arXiv has a notable preprint: humanity's latest direct imaging attempt of the nearest Jupiter analogue exoplanet! arxiv.org/abs/2602.23423 It's a non-detection. Which implies it may be similar to Jupiter (high-Z or water clouds)! Also the star is expected to be older (1.1 ± 0.1 Ga) now.

I’ve been surprised at how little interest the critters have shown in my Rube Goldberg watering hole equipment. Coyote today is first to check it out, including giving the hose a bite for good measure.

Hey #sciart! This is "Punching Above (Normalized)". This piece is a view of the Earth from space through the lens of my plasma physics research. The piece reveals Earth's true intention is to become the next Jupiter. It won 2nd place at the Art of Planetary Science show, open this weekend!

'Fire in the Sky' reveals the core of Earth's ionosphere and the dynamics that result when unstoppable forces meet. Come check it out in person at the Art of Planetary Science show this weekend at the U. of Arizona! #sciart lpl.arizona.edu/art/

Mathematically inclined friend texts to congratulate me on upcoming "last ever" power of 2 birthday, "medical miracles not withstanding".

OH DANG. Tonight is the night. See you at the Art of Planetary Science! Come say hi, I have stickers. 😎 #Tucson #Arizona

Publication day for our paper on the T2.5 brown dwarf/exoplanet analog SIMP0136! We find cloud formation appears to drive upper atmospheric temperature and chemical structure. We also debut a new, novel method for vertical mapping extrasolar atmospheric dynamics. iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...

Big congrats to NOM group member, Elana Alevy, whose first paper with has been published in Applied Optics as of today! Elana led this work demonstrating how our multiphoton microscope can provide unparalleled 3D fluorescence images and spectral analysis of gemstones. doi.org/10.1364/AO.585412