Astronomy has a number of cursed units and conventions. While on my parental leave time, the lack of good sleep time has brought me to these new cursed units: 1 parmilliarcsec (pmc) = 1 kpc 1 parmin (pn) ~ 3438 AU 1 pardeg (pg) ~ 57 AU 1 parrad (pd) ~ 0.6421 AU Maybe this is why one needs sleep?

A nice paper by @asborlaff.bsky.social showing that launching telescopes to space doesn't necessarily solve the light pollution issue from satellites. These are satellite trails seen by NASA's SPHEREx space telescope, which appear in 73% of all its images. Eek. arxiv.org/abs/2605.27501

🔭 A cautionary tale for undergrads (and above!) using AI for #astro plots: our BSc student wanted to make a "quick" HR diagram showcasing M-dwarfs & thought some chatbot could make one and... well... ...extra credits are now offered to students who can correctly find all errors on cursedHR.png 🫠 🧪

It makes me quite depressed when I see a paper whose abstract looks interesting and I load up the PDF and the introduction was clearly written by an AI model . Complete with garbage or weird citations and all! Especially when I see that even the methods section seems to be written by an AI model...

This week I had another horrifying experience with the SOCIALIST healthcare system in Germany! I needed new crutches for long term use. It took me 6 days to get my appointment (sure 2 were the weekend and 1 was a holiday, LAZY!!). They had the audacity to charge 5€ for them! For SHAME! (!sarcasm!)

It took me way longer than I care to admit, but I figured out how to get the journal style of DOI links in bibliographies in #typst. A combination of weird, janky hacks into the csl and regex matching in the template, but it seems to work! (The templates will be public if/when I get the ok!)

Two HPC clusters in separate countries sent emails today saying they have to disable login access due to security vulnerabilities...

The award for the most bizarre #coffee I've had yet now goes to this coffee from Concept. It actually smells of strawberry, which is a very bizarre experience. However, it is also one of the best coffees I've had in my office! Sadly, this one was a limited run, so I can't get it again!

"Humanity's next great voyage begins" - from the broadcast

1 minute!!

10 minutes until launch! www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf_U...

All that can be said about the announcement can be summarized as follows...

Star Formation xkcd.com/3222/

Reminder! Just over one week left to apply to come to IPAC as a visiting graduate student! www.ipac.caltech.edu/page/graduat... We've got lots of great potential projects, including one option working with me and Aurora Kesseli on Pandora data! Click the link for more info and projects!

if you can afford it, you should start using @kagi.com, it’s 100% worth the cost to 1) not see ads, 2) not see unwanted AI summaries, and 3) not see what other batshit stuff Google keeps doing like this

Landscape Features xkcd.com/3221/

Apparently, arXiv has been looking into adding support for @typst.app! I had idle hands during a day off, so I wrote up a template for the Open Journal @ojastro.bsky.social that is fairly complete with features (see image). It can actually do a bit more than the LaTeX template, from Typst!

German is filled with wonderful compound words, like Handschuh (hand + shoe = glove) and Bahnhof, composed from Bahn + hoffen, to mean a place you go to hope your train arrives. And yes, me learning German means I can start to make bad jokes in both languages!

Reducing radio interferometer data for the first time. It makes my mind wander to cursed thoughts, such as convenient but cursed units. We use SI sometimes and abandon it other times, like km/s but also Msun/yr! But scaling Msun/Myr makes some things cleaner! Or how 1 pc/Myr ~ 0.98 km/s, hm neat! 🫪

I've been playing around exploring @typst.app quite a bit. It's been quite interesting to see how different it is from LaTeX, but I have definitely found it much easier to make what I want. I decided to remake a recent A&A paper I wrote, with a full template, and it came out pretty darn close!

In kosmischen Dunkelwolken bestimmt Strahlung die Chemie des Gases. Ein internationales Team konnte das erstmals direkt messen. Modelle kamen von @brandt-gaches.space. Veröffentlicht @natastron.nature.com. www.uni-due.de/2026-02-03-i... 📸 ESO, CC BY 4.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/...)

In cosmic dark clouds, radiation determines the chemistry of the gas. An internat. team was able to measure this directly for the first time. Models were provided by @brandt-gaches.space. www.uni-due.de/2026-02-03-f... @natastron.nature.com 📸 ESO, CC BY 4.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/...)

Deadline is at the end of the week! This will be a fantastic conference for those interested in star formation and the interstellar medium, at a beautiful venue in view of Mount Olympus!

Did you know that processing a #NASAWebb image from data to finish can take anywhere from four hours to two months depending on the complexity of the observation? Check out all the details about how the images are made at STScI: https://go.nasa.gov/4pi2Rny

One of the weirdest emails I received recently was from an AI company - cold emailing me to advertise a new AI paper reviewing system. They dumbly decided the best approach was to attach "AI referee comments" for my recent review article. But it was all just plain garbage.

For all my fellow #astronomers studying the ISM and star formation! Only a few more weeks until the talk abstract deadline for the Olympian Symposium 2026 (Jan 30). We have an amazing set of invited speakers and a great beachfront venue! Submit and register online: olympiansymposium.org

The #astrochemistry review I wrote with my colleague, Serena Viti, has now been accepted by ACS Space and Earth Chemistry! We review ISM high-energy astrochemistry (X-ray and cosmic ray) and present a unifying definition of "high-energy astrochemistry" #astronomy #astrosci arxiv.org/abs/2512.10060

It was recently international #coffee day! As everyone knows, coffee fuels science! For fun, I recently decided to add to my group page also what coffees I currently have! I found a really great whiskey-barrel aged coffee, but it makes it smell like I'm having routine morning irish coffees...

We have lift-off! Science Explorer, or #SciX to its friends, is excited to be your new home for open, connected, and trustworthy science. Explore. Share. Discover at scixplorer.org #OpenScience #ResearchInfrastructure #SpaceScience #EarthScience #PlanetaryScience

I decided to make a little graphic demonstrating with actual #data (the awesome Cas A supernova remnant observed by #JWST) to highlight how different data looks depending on the colormap. I chose a few that I have seen used a bit from matplotlib & cmasher. What colormaps do you often use and why?

Another bit of sharing about my experiences as a disabled astronomer, for Disability Pride Month. While I was studying for and taking my qualifying exams (oral), I was studying, finishing up research, and going to physical therapy and speech therapy (both once to twice a week).

For those who may not know, July is #disability pride month. Within #academia (& #astronomy), there are still many pitfalls and barriers that make things difficult for astronomers with disabilities. So, I figured throughout the month, I would share some of what I have experienced with my disability

Given the looming massive budget slashes back in the US, any US early career researchers who are looking for options - Germany has several really great funding schemes! The Humboldt fellowship and Walter Benjamin (DFG) program are excellent for 2 year fellowships!

The huge European Astronomical Society conference, #EAS2025, starts soon! Looking forward to seeing so many people! Hopefully this year it is a bit more disability friendly though...

@bot.astronomy.blue signup

A couple of weeks ago in Vienna, I took an expedited trip down some stairs and hurt my ankle. Back home, in one morning, I saw my GP, an orthopedic surgeon, and got an Aircast. Total cost: 13€ I truly wish my fellow Americans could have this back home! Great affordable healthcare IS possible!

I recently decided to try dipping my toe into the observational astronomer pool and proposed for my own observations for the first time (as PI), and jumped right into an interferometer (NOEMA). The proposal was accepted! Maybe time for more? (or will that lead down a dangerous, dark path...)

I highly recommend this program for early career researchers wanting to come to Germany and fund their own project! I hear that Duisburg would be a great place to host one 😉

He arrives with €1.5 million in his luggage: Dr @brandt-gaches.space, astrochemist and expert in star formation, has been invited by our Faculty of Physics to set up his #EmmyNoetherGroup at the #UDE. www.uni-due.de/2025-04-23-e...

Submitted my first radio interferometer observing proposal as a PI! Time to see what all my observer colleagues keep talking excitedly about....

"I'm bad at vacationing" Part 2. I decided to try to make an #astronomy #infographic on what determines the temperature of molecular clouds. Here's the result - let me know what you think! It shows the different physical mechanisms in the balance between heating and cooling in these clouds.

The deadline for my advertised #PhD position is in one week! If you know any excellent Master's students looking for a PhD in #astrochemical modeling, please feel free to share my job ad with them. Deadline is Feb 19th! Ad: www.uni-due.de/karriere/ste...

I'm bad at vacationing. I get bored, and make plots like this, which puts into context timescales #astronomers often call "rapid". This shows a chemical model for dense gas in an energetic environment, highlighting the "rapid" freeze-out of CO gas onto ices and converting to methanol ice "rapidly"

Cheesy advertisement: We're hosting a really cool special session at this year's #EAS2025 conference in Cork! The session is planned to include talks on #astrochemistry across scales - from galaxies to disks to stars to planetary bodies. Abstract deadline is March 3rd: eas.unige.ch/EAS2025/sess...

Also, people don't often realize how much #grant spending is overseen. I've filled a lot of forms for reimbursement for travel, spending, etc. Money usually can't be easily moved in grants between funded categories: the PI asks for funds for specific things, and approval is often needed to shift it.

Calling #astronomy and #astrochemistry colleagues colleagues! I am now #hiring a #PhD student for my new Emmy Noether Junior Group. The project aims to create 3D time-dependent full chemical models of star-forming regions. Here's the ad: www.uni-due.de/karriere/ste... Due date is Feb 19th!

As my time in Sweden is ending, and my home country, the USA, is about to enter a new and increasingly oligarchic era today, I wanted to highlight some of the wonderful benefits I've experienced as an American citizen, but living in Sweden. I truly wish all my fellow Americans could have these!

My amazing press colleagues in my department put together this fantastic news article about my recent simulation results on protostar accretion. It was a really fun process to see this article come together! www.chalmers.se/en/current/n...

The CASSUM program for summer astronomy research is now open for applications! Open for all nationalities, with the research happening at Chalmers in Sweden. There are amazing projects from planets to galaxies to black holes! Applications are due Feb 10th. cosmicorigins.space/cassum

The best representation I could find of the GOP House trying to govern