Bye, Seattle! For those who didn’t know: as of today I’m moving out of the US to start a faculty job at the University of São Paulo, in Brazil. I’m excited to be back home, but it’s sad to leave this amazing region of the US

Oh gods…

Hello! I'm the grad program coordinator and past admissions chair summoned to answer your questions. It is a multi-part decision (one many departments are currently navigating.) For us, we got an awesome class last year that was larger than our larger than our target by ~x2.

Sad to see the University of Washington Astronomy Department has suspended graduate admissions for the 2026-2027 Academic Year. astro.washington.edu/graduate-adm...

On the 🔭🧪 postdoc job market? Excited about science with Rubin and big surveys? Come join us at DiRAC. I’m so excited that we’re able to offer a few of these Fellowship positions this year! Please share, LMK if you have Q’s! aas.org/jobregister/...

Are you looking graduating and looking for fellowship opportunities? The UW is a host institution for 51 Peg b! Applications are open now, and due October 3rd. We have faculty available in multiple departments available to host, across subfields in Planetary Science. Reach out for more info!

Cool thread with one of my favorite plots of all time!

It's paper day! The first science paper with data from @vrubinobs.bsky.social's survey camera, the mighty LSSTCam, is a VERY quick turnaround of Rubin's observations thus far of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS. ☄️ Chandler et al., submitted 🔭 A 🧵

New paper on arXiv, analyzing Rubin Observatory data of interstellar object 3I/ATLAS. This is the first science paper with data from LSSTCam!!!!! arxiv.org/abs/2507.13409

That was quick!

Oh look, a point source!

Think you can spot a comet? ☄️ Try your eye with the *very first* citizen science project on @zooniverse.bsky.social that uses data from NSF-DOE Rubin Observatory, Comet Catchers! 🔭🧪 We can't think of a more fitting project for #AsteroidDay 🤩 ☄️ cometcatchers.net ☄️

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

[space coven] Mary Robinette Kowal: listen up, boys! Kowal: I've got a story for you... the story of the lady astronaut! Kowal: that's right Kowal: a lady wants to be an astronaut Kowal: how about that?!

Always great to see wide coverage of our papers!

The sky doesn’t wait—and neither will we!💨 NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory has an automated scheduler that takes into account current weather conditions, moon phases, and observatory capabilities to determine the best next place to point the telescope. 🌙 #CaptureTheCosmos 🔭🧪 📷: P. Assunção Lago (Rubin)

How many objects of your favorite (main) Solar System population will @vrubinobs.bsky.social discover? See thread for the answer and sorcha.space for more details

🚨 SAVE THE DATE: The world's First Look at images from NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory is coming June 23, 2025! 🔭🧪 Get ready for a preview of how Rubin will soon #CaptureTheCosmos in its decade-long survey 🌌 More details soon—stay up to date at rubinobservatory.org/news/rubin-first-look

“Why do we even plan on doing great things if, on a whim, we can just decide ‘nah’?” the senior space scientist says. “These things take a generation to build and enable multiple generations of scientists. They should not be blithely thrown away.” www.scientificamerican.com/article/nasa...

Eye to the sky…on-sky engineering tests have begun at NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory using the world’s largest digital camera! 🔭🧪 After installing and testing the LSST Camera, we turned the telescope to the sky—a moment 20 years in the making! With that, Rubin #CommissioningNotes are back ✍️ 🧵

An astonishing headline reporting on new observations from a team led to Nikku Madhusudhan claims they’ve found ‘hints of life’ on a planet orbiting a dwarf star some 124 light years away. What’s going on? (1/n) www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... 🔭 🧪

As a Penn alumnus, this makes me incredibly sad.

SO much fun hosting a panel again at @emeraldcitycon.bsky.social today! Thank you to my amazing expert panelists, & the great audience who asked brilliant questions. As promised, here's the building files for my Minecraft Rubin Observatory... LMK if you use them! #ECCC github.com/jradavenport...

NEXT weekend, we'll be at @emeraldcitycon.bsky.social for #ECCC 2025 with our panel of amazing astronomers talking bout one of the most amazing telescopes ever built. Come see us Sunday afternoon! 🔭

This is Brazil celebrating the Oscar for Best International Feature Film for I’m Still Here 🎉 #Oscars

If you're going to @emeraldcitycon.bsky.social, come see our panel and hang out with the coolest astronomers in the PNW!

For people who may not be familiar with the NSF grant lifecycle, here's my experience in Astronomy (1 call per year, ~15% success rate): * Applications due: November * Panels held: February-May * Initial rejections: March-June * Funding notification: July/August * Money available: September [1/]

When you turn it on and it works spectacularly! The Rubin team has successfully completed the first on-sky engineering tests using the 144-Mpx engineering camera. Up next: installing the largest digital camera in the world, LSST Camera! 🔭🧪 rubinobservatory.org/news/rubin-completes-comcam-tests

Joao and I spend a lot more time than we should discussing how to make pretty plots. Look at this beauty!

New paper on arXiv! This paper concludes our outer Solar System efforts with the Dark Energy Survey. Long thread, because this is a ridiculously long paper. Paper link: arxiv.org/abs/2501.01551

I managed to crash BlueSky twice writing this thread... At least the second time I was smart enough to write it elsewhere

Starting the year with a paper submission, and my first time cross-listing a paper on arXiv's physics.data-an category! I'll write a thread on Sunday night when it goes live :)

NEW: Does Planet 9 exist? No telescope has been capable of finding it—but in 2025, the Rubin Observatory will come online, and with its remarkable eye, it will find out, once and for all, if the elusive world is truly there. My cover story for SciAm: www.scientificamerican.com/article/if-p...

We have an incredible Astronomy on Tap program at the University of Washington, run by our creative and passionate students. We're raising money for new tech to enable big ideas to improve AoT Seattle, and take this show on the road around WA. Join us here: together.uw.edu/campaign/ast...

I’ve successfully hosted a Thanksgiving dinner for the first time. Does that mean I’m going native…?

you can have a cold classical in any color, so long as it's very red -henry ford, presumably

Hey all -- if you have any questions, I'm happy to chat! I am a DiRAC fellow, and I have to say I'm very happy being at UW!

Are you on the Postdoc market and excited about early science with @vrubinobs.bsky.social, especially time domain, solar system, near field cosmology, or SETI? Well check out the @dirac-institute.bsky.social fellowship position that just got posted! apply.interfolio.com/158267

Types of 🔭 software papers

Photons, meet the Commissioning Camera 🤝 On October 24, Rubin staff successfully completed the first end-to-end on-sky test of the full telescope system using the testing camera — from capturing the sky to transferring data to SLAC! 🔭🧪 🔗: https://rubinobservatory.org/news/test-camera-sees-sky

No official job posting yet, but if you're on the postdoc market and looking to do early @vrubinobs.bsky.social science, excited about time domain & transient astronomy at @dirac-institute.bsky.social, and looking for weird things in data (esp aliens!), then send me a note!! 🔭

🎉 🎉 Paper + Press Release Day 🎉 🎉 Using 3 million Hyper Suprime-Cam galaxies, we demonstrate with >5σ confidence that galaxies in denser environments are up to 25% larger than their counterparts with similar mass and morphology in less dense regions of the Universe. (1/n) 🔭, #astro

I ended my #TNO2024 summary talk with a video message from Mario Jurić who welcomed everyone to the next meeting in the series. #TNO2027 will be in Seattle!!!!

Each one of these TNO meetings makes me realize a bit more that I’m a fake Brazilian: - TNO2018, Portugal: not being able to read restaurant menus in Portuguese - #TNO2024, Taipei: struggling with the tropical heat What identity crisis awaits me in TNO2027?

The LSST Camera is at the summit. Construction of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory is on the path to completion - The camera was the last major piece of equipment/component - still lots to do, but we're getting closer to the start of commissioning and operations with Rubin Observatory and LSSTCam!

I've looked at tens of thousands of DECam images, almost all of them low-S/N point sources - so I completely forgot that one could point DECam at something pretty. This image is a treat!!!!

Super excited for TNO 2024 - TNO 2018 was my first field-specific conference - back then we were still trying to figure out how to tackle the challenge of finding TNOs in DES. Six years and a few tens of millions of CPU-hours, I'll have the opportunity to talk about what we've done since then!

Outer Solar System folks: abstracts for TNO 2024 close soon: the 16th! Last one of these was in 2018. See you in Taipei 🔭