Come on Tigers! 🐅 ⚾️

Sabbatical... so I am submitting 8 telescope proposals this season. 1 JWST 1 CHARA 5 Gemini (2 poor-weather, 1 Fast turnaround, and 2 regular) 1 Subaru exchange. When I was teaching, my time was more limited so I didn't do this to myself.

Arxiv is doing what’s its done for years: April Fools joke papers ✅ Conference papers ✅ Short papers accepted by RNAAS ❌ This bothers me as it literally keeps students from better showcasing their skills - and in this case, it’s a student from a historically underrepresented demographic.

Americans Astronomers watching watching US politics Betelgeuse 🤝 “It could happen at any time”

Yesterday, we had a good monsoon storm, with a complete double rainbow stretching from horizon to horizon following.

Exciting news! My second first-author paper is out on the arXiv today!! arxiv.org/abs/2507.14610 We present a brand new JWST image of the Apep colliding wind binary in the mid-infrared, and we study what this nebula can tell us about the THREE stars in it's centre. Read on for more... 1/?🔭🧪

WR 48A from JWST. You know you need some weird in your day. From GO 4093: Fingerprinting the history of episodic dust creation in Wolf-Rayet binaries, Principal Investigator Noel Richardson flic.kr/p/2riubcR

Apep. JWST. It's weird. Just look at it. From GO 5842: What lies beyond the inner spiral of Apep? Principal Investigator: Yinuo Han flic.kr/p/2riELBn

If you're a trans or non-binary scientist, consider appearing on the podcast Assigned Scientist at Bachelor's, the only podcast dedicating to interviewing, and highlighting the research of, trans and non-binary scientists, cohosted by your truly!

Not the most important part of this post by a long shot, BUT... YAY for massive binary stars and dusty spirals in space! 💫🌀 So excited to be on this paper with @astro-noel.bsky.social and my awesome grad student Emma Lieb. (And do please sign to #SaveNASA, which funds this super cool research!)

Between family visiting us and a short vacation to Southern California, I think I’ve driven too much lately. So as I decided how to get to Tucson for the Cottrell conference, I booked a shuttle to Tucson, stopping in PHX. As I see monsoon clouds towards Tucson, I am very happy with this decision.

Embry‑Riddle Aeronautical University: Astronomers Unlock Secrets of Cosmic Dust With JWST news.erau.edu/headlines/em...

Nobel Prize Laureate Kip Thorne speaking yesterday at the Albert Einstein Institute in Postdam, Germany: "Donald Trump is destroying America's capacity for [leading science]. We are counting on Europe to take over here and elsewhere." ⚛️ 🧪

The failure of the National Academy of Sciences USA to make a clear and unequivocal statement about the disastrous Trump administration science policies — it lets all of us down and dooms them to eventual irrelevance.

I am delighted to announce that my paper was accepted to the Astrophysical Journal this morning. Here's the submitted version to arXiv: arxiv.org/abs/2505.11616

This was a fun paper to write. Thanks for putting it up on bsky @astroryan.bsky.social

Perhaps one of the more irritating parts of being a faculty member is having to request new software for a computing course. The uni seems to always want these for the upcoming academic year by May, which doesn't allow for much dynamic teaching.

Why do the kids never think 1/(2million) radians is small enough to use a small angle approximation? At that point it isn’t even an approximation 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

been a bit since I posted a good thing of the day, because I've been busy and ignoring social media is not a bad thing... so this week my highlight was attending the Flagstaff Astronomy Symposium at Lowell at seeing my students (past and present) give great talks

This list is so long and taking up so much real estate in his speech it’s almost like they want to distract from their massive cuts to Medicaid

It's absolutely wild to praise Elon Musk and DOGE who broke the law and didn't have the required security clearance to access the personal information of millions of Americans through at least 15 federal agencies – including the Treasury Department and the IRS.

Apparently I won an award. However, I think winning Textbook Affordability means I don’t get any cash prizes because I didn’t make the bookstore money.

Good afternoon. Elon Musk is... still a nazi.

Every scientist, long before they were a scientist, was a little kid who stood in front of a fish tank or stared up at the stars or turned over a rock to look at the bugs underneath and said “wow”. On the best days, working in science still feels like that.

there's a fantastic topical meeting in Mexico I want to go to in the fall. The getting there and back from where I live is honestly terrifying right now (driving) with *all this* going on... I have ten days to figure out if I am *mentally* able to go. Any thoughts from astro friends here?

Today, I am celebrating people standing up for democracy and two former students being admitted to grad programs this last week.

Today, my good news is that there is a new class of Cottrell Scholars! Welcome to the family! rescorp.org/news/2025/02...

these guys are touching every stove with every hand at the same time cyberintel.substack.com/p/doge-expos...

DO NOT MEMORY HOLE THE NAZI SALUTE! Elon Musk did it not once but twice, and with vigor! It’s been 3 weeks, and there’s been no accountability. Institutionalized Judaism has let him off the hook. It is up to us to remember, to never forget the ancestors who deserve better, and to make it stick.

Trainees who applied for an NIH diversity fellowship whose applications were withdrawn/not being reviewed, there's a NYTimes reporter who wants to talk, especially interested in applicants with disabilities. DM me & I'll put you in touch, will keep all contact confidential. Please amplify

Today’s good thing was my homemade potato skins that we happily ate during sportsball. Then I finished half of the tedious document I need to get taxes done

Crappy politics all around, but we went to see a local production of Wonka on stage. That’s a good thing.

Today’s good thing is that a student-led paper is now officially published in ApJ! doi.org/10.3847/1538...

Good thing for today: helping a grad student get an idea rolling for a telescope proposal and zooming with a friend and colleague. Oh, and finishing a new lab for my observation class.

Some students had some trouble with code for research and I wrote some example code for them tonight. They reacted in slack with heart emojis and that made me feel good. That’s tonight’s good news. Little things are keeping me going

Today, I spent the day with a colleague and students working on JWST data. Incredible images and I am excited to have a plan on how to publish first results around the time the data start to go public. That’s today’s good news.

Good thing of today: collaborator on a project is in town to help figure out analysis and publication plans 😀

Haven't posted about the good things in life for a few days... just busy, so this weekend. The good thing is that my daughter is a Girl Scout. She's selling (a lot) of cookies, and the program is teaching her how to be a strong female leader despite... everything.

A bit late but today’s happiness was seeing my 13yo daughter place third in the regional algebra competition 😀😍

Our dads read so much World War II history…for years…that’s all they read, and then here they are. Didn’t learn a damn thing. Go back to school, Jim. Straight to remedial history for you.

Today's good news: Research I was involved in was today's Astronomy Picture of the Day: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25012...

Great advice

I remind myself several times a day that the people who are out to destroy me *want* me to be in perpetual reactive mode. As urgent as everything is, it is incumbent on me not to live reactively. I will not let them run me, even if they are currently in charge of my planet.

I’m going to try to post one positive thing from my day every day I remember to do so, just to keep my chin up. Today, my wife who runs the blog @onmykidsplate.bsky.social was testing a new meatloaf recipe and it was delicious 😋

Ok, can @greendayofficial.bsky.social release a new album to give me something to enjoy amongst all this s*** going on? It got me through W, maybe it can help now.

CARTOON OF THE DAY

Another thing in the history books brought to you by climate change while elected officials deny it over and over again.

I love how within a few hours of that guy taking office, all the people on Medicare that voted for him to improve prices and the economy got higher prices on needed drugs like insulin. I'm actively trying not to get too upset, so forgive me if I am semi-absent from social media for four years. Ug.

I’d just like to take a moment to acknowledge the best tik tok video of all time youtu.be/7ZWaWrvJ7nA?...