it me!

timeline cleanse (feat. local dahlias!! in june!! 🫨)

Take a bit of time today to explore this mind blowing JWST image 🤯 You’re looking at a cluster, 4.5 billion light years away, whose gravity is warping space and lensing the light of background galaxies. This is one of the deepest JWST images ever… (cont.) 📸: NASA, ESA, CSA, H Atek, M Zamani

timeline cleanse

We had snow last week at our site! Our telescopes 🔭 like being cold, our teams not so much. Here you are looking inside the sun-shield of one of the SO SATs, the actual lenses and the focal plane sit beneath that shiny cover, cooled to cryogenic temperatures. Image credit: Dr Elle Shaw, UT Austin

normalize WFP (work from porch)

😌

@evevavagiakis.bsky.social introduces Large™️ @simonsobservatory.org telescope to a standing room only crowd at @astronomyontap.bsky.social Durham!

timeline cleanse

nutmeg hopes you have a great weekend 🐐

Hold on to your butt because we got an incredible new image from JWST! 🤯 This is an Einstein ring, formed by the gravity of a massive elliptical galaxy (center) warping space and distorting the light coming from objects behind it…. 📸: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, G. Mahler

the horrors persist, but so do the tomatoes (and eggplant!)

@drjmo.bsky.social cross stitched this incredible sign for the lab, and today our amazing undergrad researcher Haley sent me this photo of a new plant next to it 🥲 I can’t handle how nice this is

timeline cleanse

employee perks!

The @simonsobservatory.org recently completed the installation of its Large Aperture Telescope, joining its three Small Aperture Telescopes. These telescopes will collect the most precise measurements yet of the universe’s oldest light. www.simonsfoundation.org/2025/03/17/s... #science #astronomy

despite the horrors, tomatoes.

We have first light on our Large Aperture Telescope! www.simonsfoundation.org/2025/03/17/s... After installing our mirrors over the last few weeks, we have started looking at the sky. We are still tuning the telescope, but we can already make maps of objects in the sky, like Mars. ☄️🔭🧪

Y’ALL. You know how we had a lunar eclipse last night? Well if you’re on the moon, what you see is a SOLAR eclipse where the Earth blocks out the sun. And the Blue Ghost lander SAW THAT LAST NIGHT. THIS IS A SOLAR ECLIPSE FROM THE MOON 🤯 📸: Firefly Aerospace

bye, SPHEREx! do great science! 🥹

go SPHEREx!! go PUNCH!! 🚀✨

We have two preprints out on the arXiv today 🔭☄️! The first one is about an #NSFFunded upgrade to our Large Aperture Telescope, roughly doubling the number of detectors in it: arxiv.org/abs/2503.00636 enabling us to probe the sky deeper than ever. The paper was led by Susan Clark and Colin Hill.

two weeks, two readout harnesses for advanced @simonsobs.bsky.social!

Chile is the world's second-largest lithium producer. It has been a welcome boon to the economy, but local community members consider it a disaster.

dreaming up excuses to come back to AZ every february from here on out 🌵☀️

it’s called fashion, look it up 💅🏼

Timelapse of the #ngVLA prototype antenna being lifted onto its pedestal! 📡🏗️ Our favorite part is when a #VeryLargeArray antenna makes an appearance in the background 👀👋 #RadioAstronomy #Astronomy #NRAO youtu.be/sOfBSh972Kc

just in: colleagues back in AZ have started leaving freshly picked grapefruit at my desk in anticipation of my arrival next week 🥹

Our dark Universe detective 🕵️ Euclid has discovered a stunning Einstein ring! 💍 It surrounds galaxy NGC 6505, which is acting as a gravitational lens, bending light from a distant galaxy behind it. Why is this rare phenomenon so useful for scientists? 👉 www.esa.int/Science_Expl... 🔭🧪 #cosmology

Big day! The primary mirror is in the LAT! Credit: Elle Shaw

The M1 mirror (primary) being lifted into the Simons Observatory LAT telescope. #cosmology

A new telescope could launch as early as late February. SPHEREx will look into deep space and also search for organic molecules.

timeline cleanse

First light? The LAT M1 mirror exposed to the sky for the first time in Chile after opening the shipping box. If the weather cooperates it could be installed in the telescope today. #cosmology @simonsobs.bsky.social

10 seconds of pulse tube sounds for studying/relaxation/sleeping

SATs and stars 📸 Elle Shaw, Felipe Carrero

Our DR is ON THE FRAME! #bluefors #coolforprogress

some of my finest cable spaghetti to date

@evevavagiakis.bsky.social and Jena showing me their new lab in the making (or should I call it a CMB heaven?) here at Duke Current Star of the show: a beautiful red forklift 😍 (not shown: super fancy cryostat, we’re saving that for later)👋🏻

TIL that sometimes you need a forklift to unpack your forklift, which seems a bit…impractical.

We did it folks! The DR is in the lab. Miles to go before we sleep, but this was a big hurdle. @drjmo.bsky.social #cosmology #coolforprogress

moving our shiny new dilution refrigerator into our lab required some out of the box thinking. #precisioncosmology #innovation @evevavagiakis.bsky.social

The mirrors for our Large Aperture Telescope are on their way to our site! 🔭

Hello everyone! As an introduction: we are a global collaboration dedicated to exploring the microwave sky with members based on every continent except Antarctica (although some of us go there on occasion). 1/8

Big day today!! Our new dilution refrigerator was delivered to Duke! Now we just have to get it in a finished lab in the correct building 😊