PhDone :)

TWO recently accepted papers on arxiv today from our group, led by PhD students @maddielam.bsky.social and @astrotoole.bsky.social. If you like brown dwarfs, variability, clouds, aurorae and/or magnetic spots there is something here for you! 👀 arxiv.org/abs/2603.24662 arxiv.org/abs/2603.24663

hey all, I am excited to share that I will have my defense on April 17th! Let me know if you’d like a zoom link for the open part! :)

i’m excited to share something that people already know: @philip-armitage.bsky.social ‘s 2011 and 2024 review papers are AWESOME.

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From Tori Bonidie and Magnus L’Argent: Giant mirrors in space to create sunlight at night and an AI data center made up of 1-million satellites are undergoing regulatory approval. How did we get here? ⚛️ 🔭 ☄️ 🧪 astrobites.org/2026/02/26/reflect-orbital-ai-data-center/

I know it's called the "Habitable Worlds Observatory", but what about uninhabitable worlds? Check out the below paper to learn what HWO can teach us about our sister planet and its analogs that are scattered among the stars! arxiv.org/abs/2602.02728

Let me recommend grabbing a cup of tea & reading this really thoughtful piece from the inimitable @hogg.bsky.social on moderating AI/LLM use in astrophysics. 🔭 "the real question we face is not ... how we do astrophysics. It is the question of why we do astrophysics." 📖: arxiv.org/pdf/2602.10181

Our NASA’s Pandora space telescope is on orbit!! Congrats to the team and NASA, LSP, SpaceX, and everyone who helped to get to this exciting point! What will Pandora do and why is it important for exoplanet science? Read my short article on this: theconversation.com/nasas-pandor...

Surveying exogenous species in Saturn with ALMA I. Detecting and Mapping CO. Deborah Bardet et. al. https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.05090

Nice discovery of a Saturn-mass microlens using the different perspectives of Earth and the GAIA telescope @gaiamission.bsky.social, and a nice animation to boot! arxiv.org/src/2601.000... www.science.org/doi/epdf/10....

We're trying to bring a really neat astro-themed art installation to UW from Mexico this spring, and we need your help! We can get the art here, but we're fundraising to bring the artists so they can present and collaborate with us here! Help us spread the word? together.uw.edu/i/uw/campaig...

I forgot about AAS completely cause been too stressed! So did I miss the only opportunity to give my dissertation talk? 🥲

🐣 Found: newborn stars and planets #ESAGaia & ALMA joined forces to study 31 baby star systems, finding hints of planets 👉 www.esa.int/ESA_Multimed... The collage also shows our own Solar System for reference on the bottom right, as it is predicted to have looked at an age of 1 million years. 🔭 🧪

Probing stellar rotation in the Pleiades with gravity-mode pulsators. D. J. Fritzewski et. al. https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.09395

The Archean Earth textbook is now available! www.sciencedirect.com/book/edited-... You can directly access the solar system review chapter written by myself and my co-authors here: www.sciencedirect.com/science/chap...

... and HIP 71618 B the first and (currently) only companion demonstrably suitable for the Roman Coronagraph Technology Demonstration arxiv.org/abs/2512.02126 [El Morsy et al. 2025, ApJ Letters in press]

(announcement 1 of 2) everyone, say hello to ... HIP 54515 b: the 3rd planet jointly discovered from direct imaging and astrometry arxiv.org/abs/2512.02159 [Currie & Li et al. 2025, AJ in press] Press releases to follow tomorrow

1/ 🌀 New paper alert! We introduce Dingo-T1, a flexible transformer-based deep learning model for gravitational-wave (GW) data analysis. It adapts to different detector & frequency settings, improving inference efficiency and flexibility 🚀 #AI #MachineLearning #Physics #Astronomy #AcademicSky

The EBLM Project XVIII. 3D Obliquities of Five Low-Mass Eclipsing Binaries. Becca Spejcher et. al. https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.23430

I received a comment to my paper that basically goes: “why did you call the parameters you introduced in your 2025 paper ‘traditional’?” and…yeah…you’re right 🤣

Very excited to share the NASA/ESA/STScI press release of our team's work on Apep! It's a terrific writeup, complete with a brand new beautiful visualisation of the nebula geometry. 1/? ⚛️🔭🧪 science.nasa.gov/missions/web...

i’m excited to announce that i am hiring (again)! i am looking for a postdoc in computational astrophysics that’s excited about models of stellar transients and multi-messenger astronomy to join my group (star stuff @ steward) at @uarizona.bsky.social! apply here ✨💥: aas.org/jobregister/...

I wrote a textbook! I hope you like it. store.ioppublishing.org/page/detail/...

Thrilled to have two years' of work out, in a pair of papers led by @gradientrider.bsky.social and @maxecharles.bsky.social. We've built a data-driven calibration of the James Webb Interferometer to near its fundamental limits for high-res imaging - explainer at @aunz.theconversation.com!

Amazing work solving a tricky calibration problem with JWST aperture masking data! Any hope to improve ground-based systematics with this general approach? @benjaminpope.bsky.social arxiv.org/abs/2510.09806

So excited that our paper is finally out! We analyzed archival TESS observations of RZ Psc and detected 24 transiting exocomets. And, Adalyn is an amazing undergrad applying for grad school this year!

Polka-dotted Stars II: Starspots and obliquities of Kepler-17 and Kepler-63. Sabina Sagynbayeva et. al. https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.07130

FYI: arxiv.org/abs/2510.07130

I love this little support group that we virtually created with @astroshashank.bsky.social and @benjaminpope.bsky.social 🫶🏻 haha

I like my plot of equipotentials a lot, but I can never shake the fact that @sabinastro.bsky.social calls it the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle plot... zingale.github.io/stars/notebo...

Wuick thread while I am on the train!

Okay people, welcome my new paper into the world!!! With Isabel Colman and @farrwill.bsky.social arxiv.org/abs/2510.02255

Rotation Periods for Stars in Open Cluster NGC 6819 From Kepler IRIS Light Curves https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.02255 Sabina Sagynbayeva, Isabel L. Colman, Will M. Farr.

Some proposals are so short, and my only hope is that all the exoplaneteers in Physics departments have emailed their colleagues a schematic of transits so now everyone is on the same page lmao

New paper by me and @benjaminpope.bsky.social! How well can we map a star using optical interferometry? This is just a submitted preprint at the moment--comments and questions welcome! (1/N) arxiv.org/abs/2509.25433

BREAKING: WE WON!!! 💥 💥 💥 Federal Judge William G. Young ruled today in our lawsuit against the Trump administration that the policy of arresting, detaining, & deporting noncitizen students & faculty members for their pro-Palestinian advocacy violates the 1st Amendment. Full ruling here:

Super excited about my new paper coming soon with Isabel Colman and @farrwill.bsky.social !! This project quickly became another statistics bootcamp for me. 😅

Hooray for amazing collaborators!!!

I learned a new word this weekend: Congratudolences! It’s what you say when someone wins a something that is arguably an honor… but will also lead to more work. Like the winner of the pie eating contest & the prize is more pie. Or being elected department chair. Hi! I’m the new CUNY Astro chair!

You know about Pavlov's bell. Pavlov grabbed some dogs, rang a bell before feeding them, and eventually the dogs started to salivate when the bell rang, regardless of whether they were given food or not. Now, let's say you studied the brain activity of those dogs. 🧵

Some tidbits about the most recent 1,000 exoplanets: - Nearly half (~490) were discovered with NASA's TESS mission - As a result, their host stars are nearly *10 times brighter on average* than previous stars! - We have found a lot more cool giant planets (Jupiter analogs), with RV and imaging

I have a fun new paper out that demonstrates the power of combining radial velocities (RVs), astrometry, and dynamical simulations in understanding planetary system demographics. You can access the paper here: arxiv.org/abs/2509.12334

One thing I am proud of in my PhD is creating collaborations with the nicest people. All my research meetings are just full of positive vibes*❤️. (You guys were kind of bad at saying no to me and I’m so glad you were 😂) *sometimes I complain about characters in TV shows but I assume people enjoy it😅

My paper with Loucas Pillaud-Vivien and Lawrence Saul, “Variational Inference for Uncertainty Quantification: An Analysis of Trade-offs”, has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Machine Learning Research. 📃 arxiv.org/abs/2403.13748 🧵 1/

The real statistics I’d like to see is how many times I used “therefore” in this job season. 😅

STScI's Dr. Néstor Espinoza will explore some of the most exciting findings #NASAWebb is unveiling about the atmospheres of distant exoplanets. 🔭 🧪 DATE: Wednesday, September 17, 7 p.m. ET: https://youtube.com/live/i466qvWBQ1o?feature=share

Super excited that these results are finally out! This is the highest resolution ALMA image of Fomalhaut ever, and we can learn new things about the structure of the disk and the planet that is likely shaping it. Press release here: public.nrao.edu/news/neighbo...

Immensely enjoying the headline of this NASA press release from 15 years ago. www.nasa.gov/news-release...

Update on the atmosphere vs no atmosphere debate for TRAPPIST-1 b and c -- here's a nice and (IMO) conclusive result from Gillon and Ducrot et al.: no thick atmosphere on either planet. arxiv.org/pdf/2509.02128