I'm super excited to share a HUGE paper out from Young Worlds Lab team member Andy Boyle.
I present for you, ~900,000 rotation periods from TESS!
π€―ππ§ͺβ #exoplanets #stellarrotation
arxiv.org/abs/2603.05586
Cover of "Picture an Astronomer: Best Practices for Retaining Talent in Astrophysics", which features an illustration of a 19-year-old Vera Rubin looking through a telescope over a backdrop of a first light image of spiral galaxies from the Rubin Observatory.
Happy International Women's Day!
Perfect time for me to (re)share our white paper on increasing the retention of women in professional astrophysics (really full of suggestions that broaden participation in academic science in general).
arxiv.org/abs/2512.24465
π§ͺπβοΈπ©βπ¬
I hope everyone who checked out @hogg.bsky.socialβs white paper on the implications of LLMs in astronomy and shared it across slack channels similarly perused and amplified this white paper of best practices for broadening participation in astronomy!
Screenshot of the new, AladinLite-based and radio-focussed ATNF SkyViewer. The main inset showd the RACS-low 887 MHz image of the head-tail Corkscrew Galaxy and the neighbouring wide-angle tail (WAT) radio galaxy in the cluster Abell 3627.
Welcome to the ATNF SkyViewer: www.atnf.csiro.au/research/sky... * Enjoy π€© #radioastronomy #astronomy #AstroSci
We're financing war crimes at a rate of roughly 1 postdoc's annual salary every 7 seconds.
Screenshot of a nasa FB post that says 3:36 4 F17 < NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Ad... β’β’. NASA - National Aeronautics and Space NASI Administration e β’ Follow 3hγ» Explore with us! Learn more about NASA Force, a new initiative to recruit the nation's top engineers and technologists in support of America's space program. Applications are opening soon: https:// go.nasa.gov/4|ctjOz NASA 626 41 ~ 72
Itβs weird how this doesnβt say βoops we accidentally pushed out/incentivized to leave/firedβ a lot of engineers and it turns out engineering projects need those.
JOB OPENING! If you want to work as a reporter with Nature's US news team, this is a VERY RARE opportunity. The beat is physical sciences/energy & environment/technology. DC or NYC location. Deadline 3/27. Join our awesome team! #journojobs
springernature.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/es/SpringerN...
Women: We live in a constant state of vigilance because men pose a constant threat to us, here are literally millions of corroborating stories.
Men: What a scary time for men this is.
never, ever, ever, ever accept "how will you pay for it?" as an argument against social programs.
βAnd it is absolutely unacceptable that those leaders who are unable to fulfill that mission use the smoke of war to hide their failure and, in the process, fill the pockets of a few.β
2/2
The WVU LGBTQ Center is hosting a Red Cross blood drive today until 4 PM! Just finished my appointment; the music is great and the vibes are even better. Plus, there's swag! Appointments can be made at the Center's website.
lgbtq.wvu.edu
The 2026 Science Communication Awards are now open!
If youβre a science journalist, communicator, or researcher creating public-facing work communicating #STEM, I encourage you to apply.
Deadline: April 3, 2026
Apply: www.nationalacademies.org/awards/excel... #SciComm
New NICER neutron star results this morning, led by Yves Kini! For the first rotation-powered millisecond pulsar we ever reported on, PSR J0030+0451.
More data (6 years!), background constraints fully incorporated, and improved sampling. #highenergyastro ππ§ͺ
arxiv.org/abs/2602.23743
From Tori Bonidie and Magnus LβArgent: Giant mirrors in space to create sunlight at night and an AI data center made up of 1-million satellites are undergoing regulatory approval. How did we get here? βοΈ π βοΈ π§ͺ
astrobites.org/2026/02/26/reflect-orbital-ai-data-center/
The judges in WV have seen enough.
They say that if the ICE continues detaining people in ways they have unanimously deemed illegal they will start issuing civil fines and contempt findings β including against state officials who help them carry it out.
storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
If you're curious to learn more, check out the incredible @immdefenseproject.bsky.social resource on ICE ruses, which they've been updating for more than a decade. I remember being so grateful it existed when the situation above happened to my client, because it validated my "WTF" to the situation.
New: Despite Congress' rejection of the Trump administration's cuts, OMB has been throttling funding to agencies like NIH and NASA. These restrictions, on top of the 6-week government shutdown, have stopped projects and slowed new grants.
Story w/ @alexwitze.bsky.social and @maxkozlov.bsky.social
1. Yesterday, we broke the story that Kansas drivers licenses for transgender people were being immediately revoked by the state.
This morning, the ACLU filed suit in state court to block that process.
Thousands of trans Kansans watch with horror and hope.
Subscribe to support our journalism.
I continue to be fascinated by the phenomenon whereby an expert engages with any of the LLMs on their field of expertise and is instantly horrified by the wrong answers, and then goes on to use it for things they are not experts in as though it wonβt be just as bad for those.
Columbia President with NEW details:
5 DHS agents entered a residency with no warrant.
They said they were police looking for a missing kid.
Security camera even captures them showing pictures of the "kid."
A campus officer asked for a warrant & their boss.
They ignored him & took the student.
Jeff Mervis has a story on the meeting along similar lines.
misgendered by the machine π«π©βπ¬π«
It's actually quite depressing that LLMs will replace women scientists with the name of men - especially when these tools are being pushed *so* hard (even by universities!) as tools that should be the primary way to look things up...
#paperday! RR Lyrae stars are a common, dependable Population II distance indicator, and provide an independent tracer of early star formation. We test the feasability of RR Lyrae research with archival JWST data using nearby dwarf galaxy WLM! π
On the arXiv now: arxiv.org/abs/2602.21205
This is extremely cool and reminds me of how, for a couple winters, NRAO cleared snow off of the 300-foot telescope at Green Bank . . . using a jet engine.
For the first time since @projectsaltbox.bsky.social launched their DHS warehouse acquisition tracker, the number of canceled sales is higher than any of the other warehouse-related figures. We've reached a tipping point, folks.
lookerstudio.google.com/reporting/b0...
Observation of a Rapidly Pulsating Radio Source by A. HEWISH S. J. BELL J. D. H. PILKINGTON P. F. SCOTT R. A. COLLINS Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory, Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge Unusual signals from pulsating radio sources have been recorded at the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory. The radiation seems to come from local objects within the galaβΉy, and may be associated with oscillations of white dwarf or neutron stars. In July 1967, a large radio telescope operating at a frequency of 81-5 MHz was brought into use at the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory. This instrument was designed to investigate the angular structure of compact radio sources by observing the scintillation caused by the irregular structure of the interplanetary medium'. The initial survey includes the whole sky in the declination range - 08Β° < 8<44Β° and this area is scanned once a week. A large fraction of the sky is thus under regular surveillance. Soon after the instrument was brought into operation it was noticed that signals which appeared at first to be weak sporadic interference were repeatedly observed at a fixed declination and right ascension; this result showed that the source could not be terrestrial in origin.
Jocelyn Bell and Anthony Hewish announced their discovery of a βrapidly pulsating radio sourceβ β what we now refer to as a pulsar β with a paper in @nature.com #OTD in 1968. π§ͺ π βοΈ
www.nature.com/articles/217...
Astrobites is partnering with @blackinastro.bsky.social this year for Black Space Week! If youβd like to register to participate as a writer or interviewee you can fill out the Google Form below or in the QR code in the flyer! The deadline is Friday March 6th.
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
what even is the fucking point
Paper day! My latest first-author work is out!! TLDR: I built a suite of simulations based on SIMBA that varies the energetic efficiency of different modes of AGN feedback. We explored how these modes impacted different galaxy and gas properties and uncovered degeneracies in the parameter space π§ͺπ
With New Momentum, Republican States Push Broader Limits for Trans Americans In states that once focused mainly on health care and sports for transgender minors, debates now revolve around the validity of transgender identity.
The subheadline on this NYT piece is going to turn me into the Joker.
Like... this... is exactly what trans people have been saying was going to happen for years.
