Great article in @discovermag.bsky.social about our work on SIMP-0136!

I'm really excited about this one! It's fantastic working with Dr. Yayaati Chachan: arxiv.org/abs/2509.20428 "Revising the Giant Planet Mass-Metallicity Relation: Deciphering the Formation Sequence of Giant Planets" Lots of great nuggets her, including that even super-Jupiters are very metal-rich.

🔭 It's paper day! Today I'm sharing the latest in a series of papers looking at the weather on other worlds, in this case bringing you the weather report from a nearby T-dwarf, SIMP-0136. 🪐 🧵 to follow...

*So* excited about our pre-print on TSD: Transmission Spectroscopy Decomposition, a novel algorithm that basically delivers your nIR high res #exoplanet 's transmission spectrum without PCA/SYSREM. There might be a 🧵 later, so for now, I'll let this speak for itself... ⬇️ arxiv.org/abs/2509.12737 🧪🔭

We have job opportunities in the APEx department at MPIA - please spread the word! Postdocs: aas.org/jobregister/... Tenure-track staff: aas.org/jobregister/... Max Planck Research Group Leaders: aas.org/jobregister/... + happy to host ERC, Humboldt, and other third-party funds.

✨✨✨Another Virga advert✨✨✨ Introducing V2.0, with fractal aggregate clouds! Restricted to spheres no more! We handle the dynamics and the optics self consistently. Led by me and PhD candidate extraordinaire Matt Lodge (who is looking for a postdoc 👀 and is amazing). arxiv.org/abs/2509.06708

For the last two years, I've been paying for the Astronomy feeds hosting myself. It has been a privilege to grow our community here, but I also shouldn't keep doing it for free 😅 That's why I'm delighted to announce that we now have a donations page on Open Collective! 🔭☄️ #astrophotography

A very hungry planet! 🪐 What appears to be a ripple in space is actually a newborn planet, eating its way through its dusty cradle around a younger version of our Sun 🌞 Read more: https://www.eso.org/public/images/potw2534a/ 🔭 🧪 #exoplanets 📷 ESO/R. van Capelleveen et al.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Legendary quote by @whysharksmatter.bsky.social. No additional comment necessary. arstechnica.com/science/2025...

Proud supervisor moment: #LeidenObservatory graduate student Richelle van Capelleveen led one of two papers on our discovery of WISPIT 2b#LeidenObservatory a 5 Jupiter mass exoplanet clearing a path in a circumstellar disk. Laird Close and his team saw it in H-alpha, indicating gas accretion #astrodon 🔭 🧪

I think it's really worth noting that this concentration camp was opened one month and three days ago. This woman saw enough horror in that time to quit and tell the public what she saw. Which suggests that it's not as bad as we think, or as bad as we can envision from her description—it's worse.

I've had a few other former astronomers reach out to me lately about transitioning into data science/ML, and I decided to write about it. This is my personal journey from astro to ocean, and the most useful steps I took along the way.

Our paper on PSO J318 is finally out 💪 . I want to thank all of my coauthors who made this study possible 🙇 !! It could be that we see the first cloud seeding nuclei forming at the top of the atmosphere…? arxiv.org/abs/2507.18691

gorgeous new JWST spectrum of the rogue planet PSO J318 from @paulmolliere.bsky.social ! Strong absorption at 10 microns likely due to small SiO particles, acting as seeds for cloud formation arxiv.org/pdf/2507.18691

Happy to share the first paper from the SPACE Program, led by my student Angelique Kahle! she observed a hot little sub-Neptune, HD 86226c (Rp = 2.3 Re; equilibrium temp = 1300 K). arxiv.org/pdf/2507.13439 The spectrum is *really* flat ! here's the amplitude compared to other gaseous planets.

Congratulations to Dr. Allison McCarthy, who successfully defended her PhD “The Physical Basis for L and T Dwarf Variability” on Friday! Allie is now off to Trinity College Dublin for a postdoc with the ExoAimsir group led by Prof. Johanna Vos! 🪐🔭 @alliemccarthy.bsky.social @johannavos.bsky.social

Octofitter v7, now released! This release overhauls the modelling syntax and add some powerful new capabilities for advanced users. [1/4] (Octofitter is a package for Bayesian modelling of exoplanet orbits)

My paper with Tom Evans-Soma and Nathan Mayne on magnetic drag models is now accepted and up on the arXiv. For a quick summary, look at the PDF of my Exoclimes poster that I shared last week. www.arxiv.org/abs/2507.08511

I recommend giving this paper by @jiachenliu.bsky.social, @astroduncan.bsky.social, and Jun Yang a close read: arxiv.org/abs/2506.23891. Sub-Neptunes like K2-18b lie in an interesting regime where both the radiative feedback and mixing of chemical tracers is important, I’m looking forward to Part 2!

Super proud of Nora Bachmann for her first first-author paper, a deep dive into the classic hot Jupiter, HD 209458b! arxiv.org/abs/2506.16232

I successfully defended my thesis and am now Dr. Caprice Phillips (its got a nice ring to it!). So thankful for my advisors and mentors including Jackie Faherty and @ohdearz.bsky.social and friends who were here to support me. Im the 2nd Black women to get a PhD from my department. Full of joy.

I don't post super often here, but I just came by to share this news article with you (published alongside the paper in Nature yesterday). www.nature.com/articles/d41... There are a couple of sentences in the news article that stuck with me more than anything: 1/x

my team and i took an image of a cold, strange planet with JWST! press release out now: webbtelescope.org/contents/new...

NEWS: #NASAWebb has directly imaged a cold exoplanet in an extremely misaligned orbit for the first time. The observations have surprised researchers in more than one way: webbtelescope.pub/3ZSctun #AAS246 🔭 🧪

Be sure to sign the petition. We are facing elimination of high value planetary missions including OSIRIS-APEX, VenSAR (for EnVision), HelioSwarm, MAVEN, Mars Odyssey, Juno, and more.

Dr. Kielan Hoch has a #Nature paper on #JWST observations of the star YSES 1 with its two gas giant planets#Nature#JWSTShe and her team have discovered a circumplanetary disk around the larger 1b and silicate clouds in 1c. Wonderful results and more to come - watch this space! #exoplanet #astrodon

Super excited to be a part of this project!

🔭🪐 Check out our new paper on the YSES 1 exoplanets! 🔭🪐

Amidst all the horrific news for astronomy lately, I'm still excited to share a new work that I was a part of, led by Kielan Hoch at @stsci.edu ! Using @nasawebb.extwitter.link , we found a new circumplanetary disk and strong silicate absorption in the YSES 1 planets. www.tcd.ie/news_events/...

Our global petition to save NASA science closes this Thursday, and we’re just shy of 15,000 signatures! Every name counts, this petition will be hand-delivered to members of Congress. Add yours today, Save NASA Science. planet.ly/petition

Together with Sebastiaan Haffert our review on “High-Contrast Coronagraphy” is out - writing an ARA&A review has been on my academic bucket list, and I’m very proud of the result. It uses the showyourwork! framework, making it a completely reproducible paper. #FAIR #astrodon #exoplanets

Here's NASA astrophysics, if I read the president's proposed budget correctly. 🔭

It's petitRADTRANS update day! 🔭🪐 Version 3.2 is now out in the wild. This release focuses on bug fixes, so we strongly recommend updating as this will impact your results. There are also many new features and quality-of-life improvements, check out all the changes here: bit.ly/3FpjbkH!

🔭If you work in stats you've probably heard of nested sampling: MCMCs fancy cousin. Enough people have asked me how it works that I've written an article (including examples!) explaining: 1. What NS is 2. Why we need it over MCMC 3. How to know if it's working hughmcdougall.github.io/blog/03_stat...

NSF Physics was cut by 85%, basically wiping out most of its capacity for supporting research. NSF Astronomy was cut by 53% Undergrad education was cut by 71% and research on learning by 79% Graduate education was cut by 100% to ZERO. #GiftLink ⚛️🔭 www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Existing Harvard students are also impacted?! So a student that has spent the past 4-5 years earning a PhD needing one more year to finish will not be able to complete their program? At this point, I really just cannot find adequate words to describe my feelings. www.dhs.gov/news/2025/05...

Proud that my first student's first paper is now up on arXiv! Huseby, Moran, et al., coming soon to PSJ! Read on for how stellar flares might influence the spectra of photochemical hazes in water-rich sub-Neptunes :) arxiv.org/abs/2505.13692

Ready for the latest K2-18b drama? Madhusudhan is claiming *even stronger* evidence of DMS after analysing both near-infrared and mid-infrared JWST data. But another study finds no evidence at all. Read on for a quick update on everyone's f̶a̶v̶o̶u̶r̶i̶t̶e most newsworthy exoplanet. 🧵 #exoplanets 🔭

NEW: Those undulations aren’t clouds—they’re Jupiter’s aurora as seen by #NASAWebb. Webb observed light from a particular molecule, represented in orange, and found that the planet’s aurora fluctuates on timescales of minutes or seconds: webbtelescope.pub/4kbsB20 🔭 🧪

Graduating soon and still looking for an astronomy research project for Sep 2025? 🔭 I'm offering a Masters by Research (MSc) project on #exoplanet atmospheres 🪐 at the University of St Andrews 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Join us to work on modelling JWST spectra! 📜 Application details: www.st-andrews.ac.uk/physics-astr...

BREAKING: NSF has frozen all grant funding, as of yesterday. It's unclear when they will resume funding awards, or why the pause has been put in place. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

1/ Using ALMA, in which ESO is a partner, the exoALMA project has revealed exquisite images of young solar systems. By studying the motion of the gas astronomers may find signs of planets in the making. Read more in this @thenrao.bsky.social release: public.nrao.edu/news/exoalma/ 🔭 🧪 #exoplanets

Anyone who is attending #EAS2025 in Cork this June, you should look at booking your accommodation within the next week the student accommodation available through the EAS website is only on hold until then, after which it will be released to the public (and subject to price increases)!

I wrote a research note about the recent publication of the MIRI/LRS spectrum of K2-18b. The authors had claimed the detection of potential signs of life. I find the data to be consistent with a flat line 🔭🧪

Are there Spectral Features in the MIRI/LRS Transmission Spectrum of K2-18b? https://arxiv.org/pdf/2504.15916 Jake Taylor.

<The Biggest Planet We Know Is Doomed> I don't know if that's good enough clickbait but I am intensely proud of Gavin Wang (recent Goldwater winner!) whose paper "A Revised Density Estimate for the Largest Known Exoplanet, HAT-P-67 b" was accepted to AJ and is on arXiv: arxiv.org/abs/2504.13997

𝗡𝗼, 𝗮 𝗯𝗶𝗼𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗱𝗲𝘁𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻 𝗞𝟮-𝟭𝟴𝗯'𝘀 𝗮𝘁𝗺𝗼𝘀𝗽𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲. K2-18b is back in the news, now with a bold claim that biosignature molecules (DMS and/or DMDS) have been 'detected at 3σ'. Most exoplanet astronomers are extremely sceptical about these claims, let's see why (1/n). 🔭🧪🪐 #exoplanet

#ICYMI Using ESO’s VLT, astronomers have found a planet that orbits at an angle of 90 degrees around a rare pair of peculiar stars. It's the first time we have strong evidence for one of these ‘polar planets’ 😲 Check out this video recap 👇 Full story: www.eso.org/public/news/... 🔭 🧪 #exoplanets

Shared some (highly skeptical) thoughts on today’s “habitable planet” #K218b news. Thank you @npr.org for the responsible reporting on this topic!

Y'all. K2-18b is back. The planet that haunts me since Paula Sarkis came into my office because she wanted my habitable 3D climate models applied to a planet that she had discovered. I talked her out of it to call it habitable because it's a Mini-Neptune. No surface -> no habitability.