When I was younger I knew who Jesse Jackson was but didn’t quite understand his impact in the years before that until I heard his eulogy of Jackie Robinson in Ken Burns’ “Baseball.” Then I got it. Steal away home and Rest in Power

A four percent illuminated waning crescent moon rises behind the Statue of Liberty as the sun rises in New York City, Sunday morning #newyorkcity #nyc #newyork #sunrise #moon

I’m grateful for the opportunity to join @rescorp.org's #CottrellScholar community. This recognition means a lot to me. I’m excited to advance our understanding of the cosmos by uncovering hidden low-mass galaxies, and to (re-)humanize our computing education in physics and astronomy for the AI era.

Suleiman Baraka in Gaza says this about his work: “I decided to fight the killing of the children by educating the children.... astronomy “is also a window for breathing freedom that we were denied for our whole life". I think this is the reason the world needs it. All of us need his example.

Carbon Dating xkcd.com/3205/

Ian McKellen performs “The Strangers’ Case” speech from “Sir Thomas More” on Colbert.

Good read on targets and metrics, by @timharford.ft.com >> giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

Another @sarahjeong.bsky.social banger on how ICE is tear-gassing children and families turning out to protest, which is only serving to radicalize people even more. 'When Broeker had first been tear gassed, she had been terrified. But the fear has since faded, leaving only rage.'

Liam Conejo Ramos is not alone. (gift link) www.nytimes.com/2026/02/01/o...

Yesterday, five-year-old Liam and his dad Adrian were released from Dilley detention center. I picked them up last night and escorted them back to Minnesota this morning. Liam is now home. With his hat and his backpack.

The arrests of journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort are a test for every MSM member with a platform. If you are not voicing your outrage at this blatant violation of the First Amendment, you are utterly discredited as a journalist.

Here's a fun piece of code I wrote to visualize the astrometric orbital elements. To run the visualization for yourself, check it out here: github.com/sblunt/show-... Black dashed is the line of nodes, and lighter purple indicates the part of the orbit that is behind the plane of the sky. Enjoy!

such a joy to have given a talk at the Liberty Science Center last week on the CMB + Adele : ) lsc.org/news-and-soc...

Michelle started us off with a response to last years claim that Supernova Ia aren't as reliable as we thought as cosmic probes. This work by Phil Wiseman et al. steps through the claims and shows that these ARE the dark energy tracers we are looking for. ☄️ 🔭 arxiv.org/abs/2601.13785

It moves! We can watch as the Kepler supernova remnant changes over a quarter of century in X-rays from Chandra. #aas247 chandra.si.edu/photo/2026/k...

Happy New Year! 🥳 Our New Year's resolution? To #CaptureTheCosmos💥 2026 will see the start of the 10-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time! Over the next decade, NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory will build the most complete map & detailed time-lapse movie of the Southern sky ever made. 🔭

A really important piece. The times when we have opened our country to talented people from around the world are among the moments when America has been truly great. Trump is destroying that legacy and fomenting unconscionable racism. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/29/o...

In not-very-good news, extreme winds (114 mph gusts) on the early morning of the 25th caused significant damage to the 36" Great Refractor at Lick Observatory. Half of the main shutter broke off and landed on the main building.

This year's gingerbread is the Vera Rubin Observatory! @vrubinobs.bsky.social

57 years ago today, Apollo 8 crew member Bill Anders took his iconic photo of the Earth rising over the Moon. It is still a fantastic image. Here's a little video of how it was done: www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHbF...

Not only did this galaxy host the normal type Ia supernova 2002fk, but it is also the host of the weirdo type Iax supernova 2012Z, to date the only known thermonuclear supernova with a pre-explosion detection! www.nature.com/articles/nat...

Today is the December solstice at 15:03 GMT/16:03 CET. This @eumetsat.int MTG‑I1 image from 19 December 2025, 06:00 GMT, shows Earth’s day–night terminator tilted near its annual maximum of about 23.5°.

Very excited to be speaking at the Liberty Science Center in the 'Space Talk' series on Jan. 22 on the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) and Adele! Get tickets at the link below. lnkd.in/eJVEW-aP

wow, what a title !!! Rutgers University feature on me + GRB 250702B! It was so nice to work with Kitta on this. Hope you enjoy the read ! 🧪🔭👩🏼‍🔬☄️🦖 www.rutgers.edu/news/astroph...

I am so elated to share with you the NASA press release on the mysterious GRB 250702B! It features comments from me about our JWST/NIRCam imaging, which Alyssa Pagan at @stsci.edu made a beautiful compilation of for you to see. Please read to learn more !!! 🧪🔭☄️👩‍🔬🦖 science.nasa.gov/science-rese...

My dad abhors any negative comments about immigrants. Asked him recently why he’s so strong on it: ‘Because we’re always happy to take the rich and clever ones. Which means it’s not about disliking immigrants. It’s about disliking the poor and vulnerable. And that’s a bad human instinct.’

Nancy Grace Roman telescope is out of the thermal vacuum chamber and getting ready to launch in 2026

Detour Road, North Wangaratta. #AuroraAustralis #Aurora

Celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Southern African Large Telescope 🔭

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!

The petition link is in the article - if you’re in the local DMV community you can sign for support!

Come for the fascinating historical poetry about exploding stars, stay for the excellent technical footnote about what different communities are referring to when they talk about “type Iax” supernovae.

A nice write-up of the new @cunygc-astro.bsky.social CUNY-Rutgers-Columbia partnership around Rubin LSST!! 🔭

Congratulations to OzGrav's Deputy Director, Professor Tamara Davis AM, recipient of the 2025 Moyal Medal awarded by Macquarie University for her outstanding contributions to astrophysics and cosmology. Read more here: lighthouse.mq.edu.au/media-releas...

Tip of the Red Giant Branch Distances to NGC 1316, NGC 1380, NGC 1404, & NGC 4457: A Pilot Study of a Parallel Distance Ladder Using Type Ia Supernovae in Early-Type Host Galaxies. Max J. B. Newman et. al. https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.20023

An image I made quite a while ago finally got published in a multi-image press release at the Chandra website today. HST, Chandra, VLA, and JWST data all in one. flic.kr/p/2qb3dUX chandra.si.edu/photo/2025/c...

very cool new result led by Steve Schulze focused on SN2021yfj - the first of a new supernova subclass, Type Ien (“one - e - n”). This star lost its H, He, & C layers, and shows strong emission from the inner S + Si layers !! Check out his Science Friday interview about this science! 🧪🔭☄️

My favorite galaxy. Spot the difference between this image and my profile pic. #SN1998bu #M96

#NASARoman’s High-Latitude Time-Domain Survey will find exploding stars that act as signposts to measure the universe’s expansion and the influence of dark energy. (1/6) 🧵 🔭 🧪

📷 This NASA/ESA #Hubble image shows spiral galaxy NGC 1309, with its bluish stars, brown gas clouds and white centre, as well as hundreds of distant background galaxies (nearly every smudge, streak and blob is an individual galaxy!)🧪🔭 @stsci.edu @science.esa.int 🔗 esahubble.org/images/potw2...

📣📣 BOOK NEWS 📣📣 I'm excited to share the cover and release date of Book #2, #EdgeOfSpaceTime, which is now available for PREORDER!! You can order from ANY bookstore, including your local indie! More details on preordering here: www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/746817... What's the book about? 🧵

Talk about The Wire, Sopranos, Game of Thrones all you want, but the greatest US television program ever made is Sesame Street. It's not even close. 50+ years of treating kids across class, ethnicity, religion not as mini-consumers...but as citizens with a stake in this world.

An absolutely monumental piece from @polgreen.bsky.social this morning. Appreciate the research, array of sources, and nuanced thinking on the complicated issue of migration. Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2025/01/31/o...

Happy birthday to #astronomer Henrietta Swan Leavitt (1868-1921) who set the scale of our Universe. 🧪🐡👩🏼‍🔬🎢🔭#histsci Behind her in my portrait is a line showing stellar luminosity (capital L with subscript sun-symbol, a circle with a dot) as a function of time (t). She is printed over constellations 🧵

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

Welcome to a new era in astronomy and astrophysics ✨🔭🧪 Get ready to join us virtually for the reveal of Rubin's first images! #RubinFirstLook 🗓️ June 23, 2025 ⌚️ 11am US EDT 🔗 ls.st/rubin-first-look-livestream

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