The STFC Funding Crisis – Guest Post by George Efstathiou The following guest post by George Efstathiou is a response to the current STFC funding crisis I blogged about here, and specifically to a letter by the Executive Chair of STFC, Professor Michele Dougherty. I include the letter here for…

Open letter from Early Career Researchers to the UKRI investment plan. We can't let young people pay the price of "outcome-driven strategies". #stfc #ukri ecr-openletter-stfc.github.io If you are a postdoc or PhD, read and sign! 🧬🔭🔬⚗️🧪📡🛰️

The Star Formation Newsletter is back! 🔭☄️ In this first issue after our hiatus, we rounded up 83 abstracts from the past three months on star & planet formation.

When people talk about the idea that some universities must go under, there’s a certain tendency to behave as if these smaller local campuses are negligible- regrettable casualties perhaps but not ‘real’ universities. This report does a great job of illustrating why that’s wrong.

There were some very specific measures put in place after 2008, to separate STFC’s budget into three partitions and protect any of them from being raided to address problems in another. At some point this measure was abandoned, in pursuit of greater flexibility. Predictably things went wrong.

A rather grim read from the head of UKRI. Basically, the facilities run by STFC that support research across the UKRI's remit have become too expensive. Rather than cut those costs or spread the pain across research areas, the astro and particle physics unlucky enough to be in STFC gets slashed

A few thoughts... I moved back to the UK in 2009/10, during the first STFC funding crisis. That was the result of a botched reorganisation of the research councils, which created a huge budget shortfall. The resulting chaos saw projects cancelled, facilities closed, and grants slashed. (1/3) 🔭 🧪

New Science Technology & Facilities Council (STFC) letters confirm major funding reductions to areas including particle, nuclear and astrophysics, with a similar process expected for national facilities and labs. While investment in quantum, AI and green tech is welcome, the IOP warns cutting (1/3)

Many thoughts about this, but the doublespeak of the phrase "building on last year’s 15% reduction" is mind-boggling. 🔭🧪

The Royal Astronomical Society is gravely concerned at the drastic cuts to support for UK astronomy outlined by the Science and Technology Facilities Council. Read our statement 👉 ras.ac.uk/news-and-pre...

Published in #MNRAS: "Turbulence and dust fragility in protoplanetary discs", Tong et al. This is Fig. 3: for the caption & to read the paper please visit academic.oup.com/mnras/articl... @royalastrosoc.bsky.social @academic.oup.com

Noticed this new addition to NASA ADS. Looks like the move to SciX as the only interface is going to happen later this year. 🔭

10/10 to the UK university sending out PhD admissions reference requests with a submission deadline of 27 December. That’s next Saturday, and said institution is closed from 23 Dec to 5 Jan. 🙄

I'm happy to report that "Scenario 2" won't be necessary, as NASA has just communicated to us that SciX funding will continue in 2026 (albeit at a reduced level). Therefore, we will not be forcing astronomers to leave ADS, but rather develop a plan that allows a longer transition.

Well this is worrying. NASA has maintained funding for ADS but not SciX (a broader database). In response, management is planning to *close* ADS in Feb 2026, forcing all users to switch to SciX. ☄️🔭 Funding info: ads.harvard.edu/adsug/2025/0... Transition plan: ads.harvard.edu/adsug/2025/0...

I'm very excited and honoured to announce my new position 🧪🔭 in the UK, starting in January! See here for more info: www.ast.cam.ac.uk/news/profess...

. @profsera.bsky.social (UvA) benoemd tot Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy in Cambridge www.astronomie.nl/nieuws/sera-...

First time I saw it was when I lived in the US. I was the only person in the entire cinema who laughed at the “fridge magnate” joke. 😂

Peak World Cup that they just kept on drawing for Brazil's group over and over again until it came up Scotland. 🙄

Interesting journal club with the Exoplanets group at @physicsuol.bsky.social, looking at the transition from giant planets to brown dwarfs (arxiv.org/abs/2511.11818). They don't mention it, but is the gap at 2-3 MJ & [Fe/H]~0.2 called anything? If not, I'm calling it the Leicester doughnut hole 🔭

Rugby World Cup draw keeps with tradition: Scotland play Ireland, as always, and get a brutal path through the knockouts. England get the easiest group (and very nearly the weakest group possible), and a knockout draw that avoids any of the big teams until the semi-finals. 🙄

Finding amusement in the quirks of university systems. Due to the way the various data fields are truncated, the classes for my 4th-year course all appear in the timetable as "Supermassive Lecture..." 😂 🔭

Thoughts this morning. Yes, you can seal qualification for the World Cup with a string of clinical performances, winning every game and not conceding a single goal. But isn't it more fun to do it with a goal from inside your own half in the 8th minute of injury time? 😀 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Waking up to dozens of spectacular pictures of the aurora taken by friends and colleagues in north America. Sadly it's pouring rain outside my window, and not going to stop until...<checks forecast>...some time next week, so I suspect no chance of anything similar here.😢 🔭

🔭🧪🎢 PhD Project focus: Understanding protoplanetary disc evolution We're advertising this project with Prof Richard Alexander, making simulations of accretion of planet-forming discs onto their star. For details of all our PhD projects look here: le.ac.uk/study/resear... 🔭🧪🎢

See below for details of our Physics & Astronomy PhD admissions process in Leicester this year. I am advertising to recruit a new student to work on protoplanetary discs and planet formation, and my colleagues are offering a range of fascinating projects as well. 🔭

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...

So happy to see this. Mills was the first place I got to see the night sky through a “real” telescope - it’s a fantastic facility. Best wishes for the big birthday celebrations. 🎉 🔭

With just under 12 hours to go, here's how JWST Cycle 5 proposal submissions are progressing according to our sampling of the star and planet formation people here in Leiden! We're well past the 1000 mark for the year (and 10,000 across all years!) now, but where will we end up?

Our annual PhD recruitment process @api.uva.nl is open!! Details of the process and projects are here, deadline November 3! 🔭 #astronomy #astrophysics werkenbij.uva.nl/en/vacancies...

Great to see our paper on methanol in TW Hya finally come out today (with Catherine Walsh and Jenny Calahan). A quick overview.... 🔭 ☄️ #radioastro arxiv.org/abs/2510.04106

Happy Father Dougal Day to those who celebrate. 🎉 (Admittedly that's basically just my third-year class, but we'll still have some fun with it.)

Marvelling at a request for a letter of reference that specifies both a font size and a page limit. I understand the need for guidelines, but who are the people who need to be told that letters of recommendation shouldn't run to more than 3 pages? 🔭

Reposting for the western time-zones... 👇🏻- thread about @simintong.bsky.social's excellent new paper on understanding turbulence and dust fragility in planet-forming discs. 🔭

New paper, led by @physicsuol.bsky.social PhD student @simintong.bsky.social. Simin looked at the rings we see in planet-forming discs, and combined new models with multi-wavelength ALMA observations to understand the underlying physical properties of the dust and gas. 🔭 arxiv.org/abs/2509.24818

Very sad news. Ming Campbell was my MP when I was a kid, and he was a lovely man. I remember going to his surgery as part of a school project, and he talked with us - a pair of 12-year-olds - for half an hour, with the same earnestness as when he spoke in parliament. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Academic family tree of descendants, beautifully calligraphed by a colleague, hung in a place of honour.

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/

From guest author Rajat Saxena: Today’s bite looks at how planets are formed in the “bumps” of protoplanetary disks.🔭✨☄️ astrobites.org/2025/08/26/b...

Advertising email about a camping equipment sale doesn't even come close to using the phrase "Now is the summer of our discount tents". I'm so disappointed.

Bonus holiday activity - an afternoon watching the Tour de France from the roadside. 🤩 🇫🇷

With Tom Lehrer's passing, I suppose this is a moment to share the story of the prank he played on the National Security Agency, and how it went undiscovered for nearly 60 years.

#HST Cycle 33 results are starting to post! I'm super pumped to announce that I'm leading a long term monitoring project of the TW Hya disk, tracking the evolution of its unique disk shadows 🔭🧪 #astrosci

Today, in "old man learns Python": having written a 1-D accretion disc code from scratch in a Jupyter notebook, I managed to vectorise it so it runs only moderately slowly. 🎉 Didn't even ask ChatGPT! Still lots to figure out, but I guess old dogs can sometimes teach themselves a new trick or two. 😂

Snow Patrol at Glastonbury on TV. Don't want to say I'm old, but the first time I saw them live wasn't in this century, and the last time was...<checks>...18 years ago. 🫣

As an old dog in need of new tricks, I've finally bitten the bullet and installed Python. Installation smooth; actual coding fine so far. But also some real "WTAF?" discoveries, which I plan to list here. First up - slicing lists. The start value is inclusive, but the end value is exclusive. 🤦🏻‍♂️

International or UK researcher looking for a #fellowship in #astrophysics, #planetaryscience, and/or space instrumentation? Leicester @physicsuol.bsky.social is inviting expressions of interest for this year's STFC 5-year Ernest Rutherford Fellowships (deadline June 26th): le.ac.uk/physics/rese...

Twelve ALMA/AGE-PRO papers just out! Exploring how gas and dust evolve in disks 🌟🌀 — Congrats to all authors! 🎉 NRAO press release: public.nrao.edu/news/alma-pl...

🔭🧪 Congratulations to Prof Nial Tanvir who has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society for his work studying gamma-ray bursts, the most violent explosions we've ever seen. le.ac.uk/news/2025/ma...