🤩 moving doors!

Are you a grad student interested in writing for Astrobites, or do you know one? We're recruiting! Apply by November 26 :) astrobites.org/2025/10/31/a...

We are awarding our President's Medal to 'In Our Time' as it has done so much to showcase humanities & social sciences. We'd decided this before the news of Melvyn Bragg stepping down, but glad we got our timing right & had a chance to celebrate with him! www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/news/renowne...

📈 Record interest in ERC Starting Grants 2026! 4,807 proposals - a 22% increase compared to last year’s call. 👩‍🔬 Women submitted nearly 43% of proposals - the highest share ever recorded in an ERC call. More stats 👉 bit.ly/4hcYJln #ChooseEurope

Cosmologists! We have a faculty job going here in Oxford - happy to answer questions. Brief version is that this remains a great & collaborative place to do science and the students are superb. 🔭 www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DOP628/a...

w/ Oli Shorttle, @johannateske.bsky.social & Eliza Kempton we reviewed our current understanding and prospects for peaking on the inside of small #exoplanets in "Constraining exoplanet interiors using observations of their atmospheres": www.science.org/stoken/autho... & arxiv.org/abs/2510.08844 🔭🧪⚒️☄️

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Happy 30th discovery day 51 Peg b! We're at Observatoire de Haute Provence where it all happened, listening to Michel Mayor & Didier Queloz tell us all about that extraordinary radial velocity discovery with ELODIE on the 1.93m in 1995 and the incredible exoplanet science that followed. What a day!

If any of you fine folks are planetarians in (or want to be in) mid-Michigan, the Abrams Planetarium is hiring a full-time-staff position for the first time in 11 years!! Come work with the astro, scicomm, and informal ed folks at MSU!! 🔭 🧪 (reskeets welcome) careers.msu.edu/jobs/educati...

We *absolutely* should celebrate it. Do your part by enjoying the 200+ page masterpiece in its entirety on ADS! ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1925PhDT... 🔭 Special shoutout to Figure 2, an incredible piece of art that I want on my wall (and suspect could even make an excellent tattoo if executed well?)

Cantiello @kantyellow.bsky.social at @flatironinstitute.org explains, in terms of fundamental physics, why we won’t be simulating stars in full 3D, ever. I likey.

The official number of exoplanets has surpassed 6,000! And you can access data on all 6,007 of them right here at IPAC 📈 🪐 Watch the video & read all about the center of the exoplanet universe (also known as NExScI!) here: www.ipac.caltech.edu/news/the-nas...

1/ A rising telescope under a rising Sun and Moon! 🔭☀️🌕 This montage is a kaleidoscope of moments from the construction of our Extremely Large Telescope. Creating this #ELT collage took Boris Häußler, an ESO astronomer in Chile, years of meticulous planning.

My periodic reminder for #astrosci #astrodon #exoplanets Early Career Researchers to please, please, please have a simple web site with your current email address on it - rationale here: kenworthy.space/advice/

😮🤩 safe journey HARPS3!

Serious Q for the 🔭 community: is anyone planning to observe the 3I/ATLAS comet with any of the large ground-based telescopes (VLT etc) any time soon before it gets too close to the Sun (which is when)? Or have maybe already done so? ☄️💫

I am community sourcing a list of people who are actively in search of MS/PhD students in planetary science/astrobiology/exoplanets for Fall 2026. If you are such a person, please fill out the following google form: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Yes, high spectral resolution in space is surely the future for exoplanets. It doesn't even need to be that "high" res, JWST's R=2,700 is delivering great science, just think what could be done with a R=3,000-5,000 integral field spectrograph behind a coronagraph on HWO 🤯

gorgeous new JWST spectrum of the rogue planet PSO J318 from @paulmolliere.bsky.social ! Strong absorption at 10 microns likely due to small SiO particles, acting as seeds for cloud formation arxiv.org/pdf/2507.18691

Hubble Space Telescope images of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS are out! These were taken 5 hours ago. Plenty of cosmic rays peppering the images, but the comet's coma looks very nice and puffy. Best of luck to the researchers trying to write up papers for this... archive.stsci.edu/proposal_sea... 🔭

Want to come and join our lovely facilitation team in Oxford Physics? my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...

Stunning data, brightness maps of the supergiant star Antares showing its convective cells 😲 congrats Pilate et al.! ⭐

You can read more about how high resolution spectroscopy can constrain sub-Neptune atmospheres (and provide constraints that are comparable with JWST…) in the paper we published this year! (ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2025MNRA...)

One of the many #ExoclimesVII groundhogs, enjoying a nibble of grass on a sunny Montreal day

Exoclimes VII has officially begun!! 👽🧑‍🚀👩‍🚀🚀🚀 Things have kicked off with some welcoming words from our fearless leaders Lisa Dang @astrolisadang.bsky.social & Romain Allart! And now off to our first review talk from Nicolas Cowan about Exoplanet atmospheric Dynamics 🪐☄️

In our new paper we model the complete evolution of L 98-59 d from 'birth' up to the present day. We show that it cannot be a gas dwarf or a water world; it's a 'hybrid' planet with an H2-rich atmosphere containing H2S and SO2 (photochemistry!), and a deep magma ocean. @timlichtenberg.bsky.social

Absolutely thrilled for Dr Sophia Vaughan, winner of the RAS Michael Penston Thesis Prize! Congratulations @sophiavaughan.bsky.social, very much deserved and it's been an absolute pleasure working with you! Bring on the ELTs! @oxfordphysics.bsky.social www.physics.ox.ac.uk/news/dr-vaug...

New paper out! This is a review of the published JWST observations of rocky exoplanets so far: arxiv.org/abs/2507.00933 Quick summary of the key points:

It’s paper day 🎉!! If you are interested in seeing how supergranulation changes over a solar cycle in RVs give it a read! arxiv.org/abs/2506.23693

PSA: ExoMol has a special high res data base, ExoMolHR which now also contains a column with ✨energy uncertainties✨ You can now choose to leave out lines with high uncertainty when making high res model spectra! #AllTheWavelengths @trovemaster.bsky.social

Mitchell Yzer (Oxford): The Prospects of Using High-Resolution Spectroscopy to Search for Technosignature Gases on Nearby Rocky Exoplanets with the ELT. #AllTheWavelenghts

Mitchel Yzer: techno signatures in exoplanets using high resolution methods #Allthewavelengths

Wakeford: near-infrared wavelength spectra are not good predictors of what happens at UV/optical wavelengths. We need the information from the broader spectral range. #exoplanets #allthewavelengths

Thank you for the summary thread Ryan @distantworlds.space! #AllTheWavelengths

J. Tennyson: ExoMol updates #AllWavelenghts - We now provide Atoms, ExoAroms database - We have tackled line broadening using semi-classical, quantum mechanical, ML methods What else do we need @exomol.bsky.social to provide? Please let us know!

J. Tennyson: ExoMol updates: .... - ExoMlolHR database is to provide a selection of High Res lines - Predissociation ; new methodology - Dissociation : New methodology - Photodissociation data does not exist in abundance, mostly room T or even no T (T=0) in Leiden database 1/n #AllTheWavelengths

@plotastro.bsky.social This is a pretty visualization of hydrocarbon opacities in the atmosphere of Titan in arxiv.org/abs/2506.12144

Status: lost in Rubin images @vrubinobs.bsky.social skyviewer.app/explorer

‼️We're just TWO DAYS from Rubin's first images! #RubinFirstLook‼️ So let's talk images📷 NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory's LSST Camera — the largest digital camera ever built — produces 3200-megapixel images... 🔭🧪 But what does that mean, exactly? 🤨 📷: J. Orrell/SLAC Lab

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

We're celebrating today with the release of the first images from @vrubinobs.bsky.social. (Image credit: NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory). This one, of part of the Virgo cluster, is my favourite.

Carly's looking for a postdoc to join her team at @oxfordphysics.bsky.social to work on Europa exploration - go join them! #planetaryscience

The GMT has received official approval from the National Science Foundation (NSF), confirming that the observatory will advance into its Major Facilities Final Design Phase, one of the final steps before becoming eligible for federal construction funding: bit.ly/3SO8Di0

📣 Calling all rocky enthusiasts! We are thrilled to announce that the ROCKY WORLDS 4 Conference will take place 19-23 Jan 2026 in Groningen, NL 🇳🇱 This is the 4th Meeting in our series & we can't wait to see you there! Abstract submission is NOW OPEN groningen2026.rockyworlds.org/groningen-2026 🪐☄️🔭

😮 The Sombrero galaxy as seen by the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope 🧪🔭 @science.esa.int @stsci.edu

'Galaxy Rise' 777 images captured by Don Pettit are processed, graded & interpolated to create a video from ISS Expedition 72 with music by Chris Zabriskie. Cropped and edited from 6m04s 4k original. Credit: Don Pettit / ISS / NASA / ESRS / Seán Doran

Together with Sebastiaan Haffert our review on “High-Contrast Coronagraphy” is out - writing an ARA&A review has been on my academic bucket list, and I’m very proud of the result. It uses the showyourwork! framework, making it a completely reproducible paper. #FAIR #astrodon #exoplanets

The abstract submission for Rocky Worlds 4 is now open! groningen2026.rockyworlds.org/registration... 🌋🔭🧬😱

Because you can never see too many rainbows, and the HARPS3 grism is just so awesome ... take a look at the HARPS3 lab through the eye of the grism

It might be many years in the future, but it's great to see ESA getting organised and thinking about participation in future flagships - including Habitable Worlds Observatory. See below for details of an ESA Townhall meeting next week: