This talk was awesome! Thank you to Dr. Ahrens for a great tour of ice in the Solar System (and which planets/moons/etc. will let you make snowballs. . .).

It's entirely possible that this is the result of an administrative error -- I like to give NSF program officers the benefit of the doubt -- but it's also exactly what I would do if I were a political appointee higher up the chain who wanted to reduce GRFP applicants and further marginalize people.

In mildly positive news, Democrats on the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology sent this letter to Acting NSF Director Stone on Friday, asking the NSF to reconsider its decision and make several other related changes. democrats-science.house.gov/imo/media/do... 🧪🔭

@giantmolecular.cloud, Bill Smith and I wrote about why the new modification to the eligibility rules for the premier NSF graduate fellowship is actually A Really, Really Big Deal -- and not in a good way.

new from me and a few others at astrobites 🧪 🔭

NEW: NRAO to Outfit the VLBA with New Ultra Wideband Receivers A major upgrade is coming to the NSF Very Long Baseline Array (NSF VLBA) – state-of-the-art ultra wideband receivers capable of operating across the frequency range of 8 - 40 gigahertz (GHz). #RadioAstronomy #Astronomy #NRAO #VLBA

The GRFP announcement from NSF cuts out an entire cohort of 2nd year students from consideration, without warning. This is so deeply unfair that it warrants a formal protest from the scientific community. If someone wants to work with me to craft an open letter and solicit signatures, LMK.

Ugh. The eligibility change would *completely* screw over anyone who entered grad school last year but decided to wait a year before applying (as well as many folks in the future who may have wanted to take that path). I know a *lot* of people who are gonna be hurt by this.

It took me most of an astronomy PhD, but I finally have my own telescope! It's a Tasco 66TE-5 Cosmic II 5-mm refractor, found at a thrift store for $18. It's 59 years old and needs a tripod and more eyepieces (and proper polishing!), but it should be functional enough.

Hello from Green Bank, West Virginia! We're halfway through the first day of the 2025 Pulsar Science Collaboratory camp. I'm super excited to teach the students about single pulse searching and the Crab. . .

For folks interested in interstellar objects: There's a new preprint out searching for similar bodies using the latest @nanograv.bsky.social data release, led by @gwacwvu.bsky.social researchers Lankeswar Dey, Ross Jennings, Jackson Taylor, Joe Glaser, and Maura McLaughlin! arxiv.org/abs/2507.19475

A companion star …. Inside Betelgeuse’s atmosphere…. You think you know some stuff about the Universe but there’s always more surprises! 🙃🔭✨

🧪 For those following indirect rates (not normally an issue with so much drama!): Senate bill, out today, seeks to block the admin from making abrupt changes to indirect rates at NSF, NASA, and NOAA: www.appropriations.senate.gov/imo/media/do...

On Avi and 3I/ATLAS: sites.psu.edu/astrowright/... ☄️ 🔭

The Senate CJS report is out, and the recommendations are positive! They suggest "full operational funding" for NRAO, and funding for GBO at FY2024 levels. They also -- pretty bluntly -- completely reject the idea of shutting down one LIGO detector. 🔭 www.appropriations.senate.gov/imo/media/do...

These are some of the most odious people alive.

I received a very scary scam call saying they are going to arrest me cause I didn’t fill out some immigration form. They were very scary, they acted on my fear of prison and deportation, and they do this to many international students. I didn’t send anything, but have to warn all other students.

This reiterates the point I’ve made a few times on here: the US’s loss will be other countries’ gain, but overall it will be an enormous loss. There is no other country that can replicate the US research investment or environment, and the primary brain drain will be out of research, not overseas.

It remains way past time to shut down all the automated plagiarism machines. And it is also way past time for Nature to stop taking money to run "AI" hype advertisements.

There's now also a short Nature Astronomy meeting report on the conference! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Professor in the flagship university of the whitest state (Maine) and this absolutely tracks. We’ve been facing the demographic cliff everyone has warned about for years. We also have a campus food bank. Most of our students are first-gen, blue-collar.

Also, what so many of these xenophobic, racist critics don’t realize is the full-pay international students are how we can afford generous aid packages to in-state, mostly white students. 🙃

I've had the privilege of working at JPL for the last two weeks, doing radio transient studies. Despite the current scientific climate -- or maybe *because* of it -- it's been an unforgettable experience. Dare mighty things -- and, importantly, fund those mighty things. Fund science, not fascism.

🧪 BREAKING (good news): Senate subcommittee says NO! to Trump's proposed slashes to NASA & NSF funding. Today, the subcommittee said to keep NASA + NSF funding at $33.9 billion, the same as in FY24. See 7:15 below. Full Senate appropriations committee meets tomorrow about it. 🧵 1/3

In a study of professors, women got 378 new work requests over 4 weeks vs 118 for men. Women spent more time on service, advising & teaching; men on research. Orgs should track who is taking extra duties & ensure they are rewarded and distributed fairly. www.forbes.com/sites/kimels...

US Friends! The Green Bank Observatory (GBO) is a vital instrument in the global #RadioAstronomy network (incl. pulsar science), and it is under threat with the proposed funding cuts. Please take action to keep it open: www.gogreenbankobservatory.org/take-action/ Pls share! 🔭📡🧪 📸 GBO/AUI/NSF

There are also free online fax options you can use if a phone line is busy and you want to keep yelling. I’ve used this one before: faxzero.com

Fellow NJ-07 folks: Kean's line is (202)-225-5361. I hit a busy signal for a while but got in after ~20 minutes; keep calling, and you'll get through! I get super anxious about making these calls. But a few minutes of anxiety for the chance to stop this bill? Easily worth it. Any day of the week.

The full ruling explaining why NIH grant cuts are illegal came out today. It's just as blistering as the judge's oral remarks. And it uncovers fresh details in DOGE's role orchestrating the cuts — and on the cuts at Columbia. Here are my top highlights from the 103-page ruling. 🧵

!!!!! Waking up to the news that we might have found an interstellar object passing through our Solar System - only the third ever seen. Looks convincing based on the orbit.

NASA is being told to cancel 19 *active* missions to save $6B, which looks to be less than the ICE *hiring/retention* budget going forward. I need people to let that sentence sink into their bones for a minute.

With this budget, ICE alone would have nearly as large a detention operation as all 50 states' prison systems combined. Bigger budget than the Marine Corps. Police-state levels of spending

ooh look at me it took me ten years to invent my own job and i only have headshots that make me look like a kindly potato also i really enjoyed this interview www.politico.com/newsletters/...

A few months ago, Nature published how-to guide for using ChatGPT to write your peer reviews in 30 minutes. This is, of course, a horrible idea. Here’s my response with @jbakcoleman.bsky.social .

Y'all, this past week for science funding lawsuits has been 🔥🔥🔥 ✅ Major recent wins regarding: 1. U of California researchers 2. NSF indirects 3. NIH terminations 4. EPA terminations Plus: 5. Brand new NSF lawsuit (about terminations & slowdown of new awards) 🧵 Let's break it down

NEW: NSF will be kicked out of their building. Announcement will be made tomorrow by HUD Sec. and Governor of VA. HUD will take over the NSF building over the next two years. NSF staffer: "There is no planning for NSF, no identified future location, appropriation for a new building or a move."

Day 1 of #IPTA25 is in the books. So many great talks and discussions on the cool things people are doing and the awesome places the field is headed!

From Kaz Gary: For Pride Month, Astrobites is interviewing one transgender astronomer every week. This week we interviewed Wichahpi King, a PhD student at the University of Texas at Austin! 🔭✨☄️ astrobites.org/2025/06/20/w...

Get ready to join us virtually for #RubinFirstLook — the grand reveal of images from Rubin, and the first preview of what's to come over the next ten years as Rubin begins to #CaptureTheCosmos ✨🔭🧪 🗓️: June 23, 2025 🕚: 11am US EDT 🔗: ls.st/rubin-first-look-livestream

New exoplanet classification just dropped 🔭🧪 xkcd.com/3103/

Interesting analysis and summary of the US civil space budget by my friend Lindsay DeMarchi arxiv.org/abs/2506.11138

I'm not the first person to point this out, but based on cost estimates of this past weekend's military parade (~$25-45 million), the money used on the parade could have been spent instead to fund GBO science and operations for 3 to 5 years. 3 to 5 *years*. A half decade of cutting-edge research.

🔭 APOD is 30 Years Old Today Image Credit: Pixelization of Van Gogh's The Starry Night by Dario Giannobile apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25061...

....meanwhile, in Chile....the 39-meter (128-feet) Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) project is humming along. Note the white pickup truck in the upper left, for scale. Amazing.

This is a really fun new paper on low-frequency observations of Crab giant pulses. It addresses some questions I've wanted to look into but which really need low-frequency data sets; hooray for SKA-Low prototypes! arxiv.org/abs/2506.07422

🚨 NIH director Jayanta Bhattacharya is testifying before the US Senate Appropriations Committee today. The hearing is bound to be spicy, after more than 300 agency staff wrote him a letter decrying his leadership and actions as director. 🔥 I'll be live-posting the hearing, so follow along here.

Slides from the talks at FRB Frontiers are now available on the conference website -- see the bottom of the main page! We'll soon have recordings up, too. indico.global/event/810/ov...

From Kaz Gary: For Pride Month, Astrobites is interviewing one transgender astronomer every week. This week we interviewed Dr. Eliot Halley Vrijmoet, a postdoctoral fellow at Smith College! 🔭✨☄️ astrobites.org/2025/06/06/e...