Yesterday, newly-discovered #asteroid 2025 SU4 🦒passed closer than our geostationary satellites.

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.

Daily bunny no.3081 just has to make it across

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/

NSF Astronomy & Astrophysics Postdoc Fellowship apps are OPEN! 🔭 However, app only appears on research.gov if your role "Proposed Postdoctoral Fellow"! Click "Proposals", "Prepare and Submit Proposals", then "Prepare New". If you do not see NSF 22-621, change role to "Proposed Postdoctoral Fellow"!

This is the spectroscopic transit of a #planet with an orbital period of 1.5 YEARS !! #HIP41378 🪐 In case you missed the great paper led by Salomé Grouffal (#ProudAdvisor), arXived over the summer, here is a recap'. #Thread [1/8]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH

If our elected leaders truly believe we're in a new space race with China, then we cannot afford to abandon space science. Read the NEW OP-ED by me and Maxwell Zhu today in Payload Space: payloadspace.com/op-ed-space-...

Tickets for @astrokatie.com's free public lecture on "How the Universe Ends" are now live! Join Mack at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) on Tuesday, September 16th at 7 PM. Get tickets: www.eventbrite.ca/e/how-the-un...

Take a look and see if you've been pirated! 🔭🧪📚📖 Remember when corporate America flipped out over some pimply teens sharing files over Napster? Now it's our turn - except in this case, they've actually been blatantly profiting off our work, effectively reselling it

<chef's kiss> and yet ...

Sigh. sites.psu.edu/astrowright/...

Amazing!!!! A NEW gap-carving planet! So far, we haven't been able to image many. WISPIT 2b, like PDS 70 b&c is imaged at many wavelengths from 656nm (H⍺, blue here) to 3.7µm (👏MagAO-X @xwcl.science.web.brid.gy). VLT/SPHERE polarized scattered light at 1.6µm+reddish planet at 2.2µm in the gap, wow!

I have mixed feelings about press releases, but our historian did a nice job of writing this up. What's missing from the KAFF condensation is that the work was done with @pennylr.bsky.social , @kneugent.bsky.social , and Nidia Morrell.

CN detected in 3I/ATLAS by Dave Schleicher at Lowell Observatory, using our 42" Hall telescope with its Kron photoelectric photometer www.astronomerstelegram.org?read=17352

Had a fantastic 4 days of SETI at the Third Penn State SETI Symposium!

I love messing with my kids

Well... the discussion around 3I/ATLAS continues to... evolve. This object is super exciting, fascinating, worthy of a LOT of study and press! ALSO so far as I have seen, & from every solar system expert I've talked to (and I know a lot of 'em!), it looks like a comet, not a spaceship. 🔭🧪☄️

Pics from our first day of #WorldCon! @dougvanbelle.bsky.social and I did some panel pinch-hitting with "Finding Exoplanets and Extreme Solar Systems", and then two interviews for our "Life in a Universe Full of Exoplanets" podcast with Larry Niven and Rebecca Demarest

Come visit #authorsagainstbookbans at #worldcon! Free a book from book jail, get schwag, learn how to help oppose book bans.

Worldcon 2025. This is the most magnificent convention space I have ever seen

Anyway, Loeb’s bad science flies out faster than any one of us should have to deal with it. For a nice explanation of what’s wrong with many of his claims I did not address, see @hectorsocas.bsky.social ’s work here: tinieblasyestrellas.blogspot.com/2025/08/3iat...

Thank you. I feel it is the duty of scientists to provide informed perspective and cogent analysis so we can make sense of this world. Loeb has abrogated that duty.

It’s not yet 7am, but the train is now so packed that we’re shoulder to shoulder. A padded bag is protectively being held between my feet, like a baby lion cub. Inside, is a 4.56 billion year asteroid fragment.

If you make up a bunch of numbers, how much Bayesian arithmetic do you need before they turn into science?

I have a complaint about Avi Loeb's latest work and I want to speak to management. medium.com/@steve.desch...

It's the weekend, baby

🔭 lowell.edu/the-silencin...

It gets worse and worse. If you're interested in the slow-motion train wreck that is Avi's sci-comm on this, here are some of the latest (it's very hard to keep up!) In which spacecraft can have comae, 3I/ATLAS has a 60% chance of being alien, and new papers validate and adopt his calculations.

If anyone is curious about the current list of search terms being used by right wing activist organizations to harass university professors, here's a public records request I received today from Mike Howell of the Heritage Foundation. Not intimidating or meant to curtail by my speech at all, right?

Hello, followers! Sorry, been a bit busy lately so haven't posted much. Here's a glimpse for you of my latest work in progress. Would much appreciate any reposts. Many thanks. #blender #sciart #scapeart

interesting development www.politico.com/news/2025/08...

The Silencing of Science: Why Publicly Funded Science Still Deserves Our Support 🧪🔭 by Dr. Gerard van Belle @fringedoctor.bsky.social lowell.edu/the-silencin...

A really good read if you're looking at making the leap from academia into industry, from someone who's done it

Studies estimate that for every $1 the U.S. government spends on #NASA, the #economy is boosted by $7-$14. NASA is a proven positive revenue stream & these cuts are fiscal malpractice. The loss to institutional knowledge will be devastating. @roguenasa.altgov.info #jim4ca www.npr.org/2025/07/26/n...

Happy Don't Be A Dick Day, to all who celebrate. dontbeadickday.com

Brookhaven National Laboratory: Scientists and Engineers Craft Radio Telescope Bound for the Moon www.bnl.gov/newsroom/new...

My last living musical hero is still my hero but unfortunately no longer living. RIP to the great, great Mr. Tom Lehrer.

Somewhere along my career in physics I missed the "blow stuff up with giant lasers for discoveries" job opening, and I would now like to speak with the manager gizmodo.com/physicists-b...

Makenzie Lystrup handed in her two weeks notice today

Lead author Colin Orion Chandler (with NAU!) for the quick turnaround win!

The truly sad thing is that this is the most press astronomy will get all year

50 years ago today, Soviet and US spacecraft made a historic docking in space. For the anniversary, we start a series of articles incorporating little-known info from recently declassified Soviet documents, including details on extraordinary security measures in the project: www.russianspaceweb.com

I'm trying to think about how I would have reacted if shown this headline five years ago

Wait, of all the countries we've been plastering with tariffs, Russia *hasn't* been one of them already? www.bbc.com/news/article...

If only he had national security advisors that provided him with such information www.foxnews.com/politics/tru...