The final Calvin and Hobbes, which appeared in papers 30 years ago today.

🚨 Postdoctoral Opportunity for Female Scientists🚨 The University of Vienna is awarding at least 20 fully funded 4 year postdoctoral positions to outstanding female scientists Interested? Get in touch via direct message careers.univie.ac.at/en/postdoc/e... #MicroSky 🧪 #PostDoc @univie.ac.at

AGU petition to save NCAR. Please share widely! agu.quorum.us/campaign/151...

Time to repurpose #AGU25 as a mass mobilization in support of NCAR, NSF, NOAA, NASA, USGS, DOE BER, and the Congressional power of the purse.

NCAR is quite literally our global mothership. Everyone who works in climate and weather has passed through its doors and benefited from its incredible resources. Dismantling NCAR is like taking a sledgehammer to the keystone holding up our scientific understanding of the planet. Unbelievable.

Exoplanet folks: we now have a separate Bluesky account for the BOWIE+ Seminar Series ( @bowieseminar.bsky.social ). If you are interested in links to videos of the talks and other updates going forward, give it a follow. #exoplanets #astronomy

A great talk by final-year PhD candidate Morgan Saidel about atmospheric escape from hot Jupiters around F stars, and what we can learn from a large survey of these planets. #astronomy #exoplanets www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jh6...

Cows aren't often spherical and neither are aerosols. Final-year PhD student Matt Lodge has investigated how non-spherical aerosols in exoplanet atmospheres impact their transmission spectra. Listen to him explain the implications here. #astronomy #exoplanets www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHIV...

The MPIA call for summer interns is now live! This is a great opportunity for bachelors & masters students from anywhere in the world to come an complete a three month, fully funded research project in beautiful Heidelberg. Check it out here: www.mpia.de/en/careers/i...

I see this a fair bit and I think it's representative of entire generations that just fundamentally do not understand building a network through your own actions (subscribing to feeds, following ppl) rather than having it handed to you by a corporation's secret algorithm

Information and traveler recommendations from @agu.org for #AGU25 regarding US "Federal presence in New Orleans": www.agu.org/agu25-neworl...

I'm sharing this again since I neglected to add #astronomy and #exoplanets, and I don't want you to miss out on the great work done by final-year PhD student Cyril Gapp.

It was great getting to share these exciting results as part of the BOWIE+ seminar series. Ariel has the potential to revolutionise our 3D understanding of exoplanet atmospheres, with a phase curve survey of ~100 targets within its reach. Let’s push to make it happen!

Dan Valentine (@danvalentine.bsky.social) has done some great work looking at using ARIEL to eclipse map exoplanet atmospheres. #exoplanets #astronomy www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrtL...

My family are useful canaries of what news the public actually sees from astro, and only yesterday did my mum ask me about a study (one article of many linked below) who said they "trained an AI" to simulate the Milky Way. This was NOT AI as how the public sees "AI", and this is disingenuous.

Journalist challenge: Use “Machine Learning” when you mean machine learning and “LLM” when you mean LLM. Ditch “AI” as a catch-all term, it’s not useful for readers and it helps companies trying to confuse the public by obscuring the roles played by different technologies. 🧪

As we are in the midst of job season, and as hiring committees no doubt ask themselves if applicants looked at the departmental webpage to see who works at their institution and what they do, it's a great time to make sure those websites are up to date. #astronomy

Lorena Acuna @astrolore.bsky.social combined beautiful JWST spectra with mass and radius measurements for a warm Saturn, finding evidence for either a hot interior or a very small core - both unexpected! arxiv.org/abs/2511.13483

and Evie Ahrer @eahrer.bsky.social wrote a Nature comment on the JWST revolution for exoplanet atmospheres, from CO2 and photochemistry on gas giants to the push to smaller/cooler worlds www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Lots of fun work out from APEx postdocs in the past week! first up was Sophia Vaughan @sophiavaughan.bsky.social on a deep search for reflected light from a hot Neptune w/ the VLT. This summed up light from ALL FOUR 8m telescopes over 2 nights- a preview of ELT-like data! arxiv.org/abs/2511.08691

If women are underrepresented in STEM, it's at least partly because men like this offer mentoring, then embarrass themselves by assuming their mentees must be into them, then decide the best solution is to cut ties, which sends the signal to other faculty that the mentee must not be good enough.

Interested in hearing about the 3D structure of silicate, chloride, and sulfide clouds on warm Jupiters? Nishil Mehta has you covered 👇 #exoplanets www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5Mf...

The care that has to be taken when analyzing transmission spectra of ultra-hot Jupiters due to 3D effects is always really fascinating. Here is Cyril Gapp's recent talk on his work on the ultra-hot WASP-121b and the cool things going on in its atmosphere. www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuZU...

Astro PhD applications for Edinburgh are open! Deadlines are: * 24 Nov: Career Development Scholarship (for students of Black heritage) * 5 Dec: Bell Burnell Scholarship (for all URM students) * 5 Jan: all applications Come to beautiful Scotland! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Applying is free! 🔭🧪 ifa.roe.ac.uk/phds-jobs-fe...

Great piece by astronomer and SETI leader Jason Wright on the endless, exhausting claims about 3I/Atlas by Avi Loeb. "zero planetary scientists give Avi’s claims any credence... because he’s demonstrably wrong" sites.psu.edu/astrowright/...

Looking to start a PhD in Physics & Astronomy in 2026? The team @physicsuol.bsky.social have announced their STFC-funded projects on offer next year, spanning astrophysics, planetary science, and space instrumentation. Deadline: Jan 18th, contact us to learn more! le.ac.uk/study/resear...

The agency has already been irreparably damaged, capacity and culture destroyed, decades worth of experience shown the door. "NASA" is the strongest name brand in the world, a metonymy for our highest ideals as humans. It is being bulldozed by people who don't understand (or care) what we're losing.

I will also just remind you that NASA used to have a bunch of advisory committees that all would have raised the red flag on this... But we were all disbanded, along with most advisory panels, in the spring.

You might ask why... It seems to be two things. One, Project 2025 makes it clear the authors do not believe that government scientific capacity should exist. They are doing everything they can do to make that happen. And Goddard is in a blue state. They are making an example.

This is how you incinerate a field of science. 🔭🧪

We’re now watching the murder of space sciences in America. Unless someone can stop this, this is the beginning of the end. The brain drain will accelerate until there’s nothing left to stay for. 🧪🔭

EXPEDITIOUSLY AT LOUD VOLUME

It's motivated by AI slop being posted, but I would like to see this extended to other arXiv categories. blog.arxiv.org/2025/10/31/a...

“We are told that AI is inevitable, that we must adapt or be left behind. But universities are not tech companies. Our role is to foster critical thinking, not to follow industry trends uncritically.”

Last chance to turn it off. On Monday, November 3rd, Microsoft will start using your LinkedIn data for AI training. And remember, you're opted in by default. To toggle it off 👉 Account - Settings & Privacy > Data privacy > Data for Generative AI Improvement.

We've collected 65 individual exoplanet atmosphere composition measurements to look for population-level trends 🔭 #exoplanets To do this, we had to create a toolkit to standardize between definitions of . We call it ExoComp. (Yes, that's a Star Trek reference 😀).

TLDR; The PSF has made the decision to put our community and our shared diversity, equity, and inclusion values ahead of seeking $1.5M in new revenue. Please read and share. pyfound.blogspot.com/2025/10/NSF-... 🧵

Alastair Claringbold ( @exoarcturus.bsky.social ) gave a great talk this week on Temperate Jupiters as a part of the BOWIE+ ECR Highlight Series. www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmCD...

SAVE THE DATE! The 11th AAS Topical Conference Series (AASTCS): Exoplanet Atmospheres 2026 will take place in Denver. Join astronomers, planetary scientists & researchers from around the world for an in-depth exploration of one of the most dynamic fields in science today. More details soon 🔭

Do you know how many of 340 astronomy/astrophysics PhDs earned in 2024 were by Native Americans? Zero. Do you know how many of 323 astro PhDs earned in 2023 were by Native Americans? Zero. How many of 289 in 2022? One. 1 / 952 PhDs in 2022-2024 = 0.1%. (Data from NSF Survey of Earned Doctorates) 🔭

PhD opportunity here at MPIA to work with @paulmolliere.bsky.social !!

One of the terrible things about the conservative elites’ attacks on higher education is that they are giving their constituents the impression that the universe isn’t big, complicated, and fascinating — that it really does take this many people to work out how even a small fraction of it works

Fascism is such a fundamental attack on wonder and the human imagination and I think everyone should have the opportunity to let their imagination wonder as it wanders — doesn’t matter what you do for a living. Your mind matters! Your relationship with the universe is meaningful!

after millions of views and shares of my Portland Frog art. (thank you all🙏🏾) I got requests to highlight priests, and chickens, and Chicagoans, and T-Rexes, and more… all of us who refuse to bend the knee. so this is for US. 𝚂𝚝𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚃𝚊𝚕𝚕. 𝚆𝚎 𝚆𝚒𝚕𝚕 𝚆𝚒𝚗.

Are you someone who is interested in astronomy graduate school? This is a list of many/most departments and their expectations for admissions this year. Please feel free to spread it far and wide. If you are doing admissions and you'd like to update your entry, reach out as per the form!

I think for me the most compelling answer for "why fund basic research?" (and the one most relevant to the people doing the work) is that humans are curious and finding stuff out makes us happy and fulfilled. Science is a thing humans like. Life would be more dull and sad if we didn't do it. end/🧵

New paper alert 🔔 If you like eclipse mapping and are excited for the future opportunities that Ariel will provide, then check it out! (Bonus: writing an eclipse mapping proposal? We've ranked all the best eclipse mapping targets for both Ariel and JWST!) arxiv.org/abs/2510.03147

📣 Germany's close to reversing its opposition to mass surveillance & private message scanning, & backing the Chat Control bill. This could end private comms-& Signal-in the EU. Time's short and they're counting on obscurity: please let German politicians know how horrifying their reversal would be.

🚨🚨 My dear friend and fellow academic, the Palestinian American sociologist @emanabdelhadi.bsky.social has been taken by the Cook County Sheriff near Chicago. They have not mirandized her. Please signal boost. All eyes on Broadview for Eman and the community she was defending 🚨🚨

You know, this might be important. "Bayesian Model Comparison and Significance: Widespread Errors and how to Correct Them" www.arxiv.org/abs/2510.00169