JWST Cycle 5 results are out. 2,855 proposals. 100,000+ hours requested. 8,000 hours available. 254 approved. That's a 11:1 oversubscription rate. Months of work. Hundreds of scientists. Rejected. When will we realize this is unsustainable?
In our investigations of the heart of the Milky Way, Elena and I make the first estimate of the CO-to-H₂ conversion factor in the central 1 pc (3 light years) of our galaxy, just next door to the supermassive black hole. The paper has been accepted and is available here:
arxiv.org/abs/2511.16720
I've been a long time fan of CBC Quirks and Quarks since my first postdoc in Canada, and I'm thrilled to have my work featured #CBCquirks! You can listen here to my colleague Elena talk about finding the wind at the center of our galaxy here:
www.cbc.ca/listen/live-...
Gaseous yellow-orange filaments look like a rose seen from the side and tilted slightly from upper left to lower right, slightly higher than the center of the frame. Extending from the rose to upper left and lower right are gaseous outflows that appear as red lobes that have an overall shape of tall, narrow triangles with rounded tips. Each red triangle is made up of wavy, irregular lines. Dozens of stars are scattered across the field. One particularly bright white star with eight diffraction spikes is located at the top of the yellow rose. Another bright blue star with even more prominent diffraction spikes is to its lower left. The background of space is black.
A star's birth announcement 👶🎉
A young star that is still forming toward the edge of our Milky Way galaxy is sending out a celebratory looking firework 🎆
The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope caught the message in infrared 👉 www.esa.int/ESA_Multimed... 🔭 🧪 1/2
👏👏👏 👏👏
According to my 2 year old, I get paid in puppies for going to work.
🧪 Senate appropriators say: NIH's budget gets a... boost!
Rather than 40% cut, NIH gets a $400M *increase* in the Senate committee bill for FY26 (about +1%).
"Congress has your back," said @murray.senate.gov.
ADVOCACY MATTERS! There's still a long road (esp in the House), so keep up pressure.
As an actual Astronomer… pretty please yes this?
The visualization of the asteroids in our solar system blew me away. It is one of the most impressive I've seen.
A cosmic tapestry of glowing tan and pink gas clouds with dark dust lanes. In the upper right, the Trifid Nebula resembles a small flower in space. Its soft, pinkish gas petals are surrounded by blue gas, and streaked with dark, finger-like veins of dust that divide it into three parts. It radiates a gentle, misty glow, diffuse and soft like the warmth of breath on a cold hand. To the lower left, the much larger Lagoon Nebula stretches wide like a churning sea of magenta gas, with bright blue, knotted clumps sprinkled throughout where new stars are born. Both nebulae are embedded in a soft tan backdrop of gas that is brighter on the left than on the right, etched with dark tendrils of dust and sprinkled with the pinpricks of millions of stars.
A new view of two old friends 🤩
Feast your eyes upon NSF–DOE Rubin's view of the Trifid & Lagoon Nebulae!
This image shows what makes Rubin unique: its wide field of view, & speed that allows it to take lots of big images quickly. 🔭🧪
rubinobservatory.org/news/rubin-first-look/trifid-lagoon
#ICYMI Astronomers have created a masterpiece: an ultra-detailed image revealing previously unseen features in the Sculptor Galaxy.
Taken with our VLT, it's a galaxy-wide snapshot of the lives of stars in Sculptor.
Check the video below 👇
Full story: https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso2510/
🔭 🧪
It's true what Georgia O'keeffe said about New Mexico. Once you've been there. It itches you for the rest of your life.
Trump Has Cut Science Funding to Its Lowest Level in Decades. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
The scientific career path was already precarious prior to recent budget reductions. These cuts now will end the careers of many early-career scientists like myself.
www.npr.org/2025/04/25/n...
3. UPDATED: What types of awards are being terminated? Awards that are not aligned with program goals or agency priorities have been terminated, including but not limited to those on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), environmental justice, and misinformation/disinformation.
🧪 National Science Foundation update alert ⚠️⚠️
NSF just made a **lot** of updates to its "priorities" page.
It's mixed news. Some good. Some bad.
❌ Not welcome: NSF is now also terminating "environmental justice" awards.
The highlighted text here is new: www.nsf.gov/updates-on-p...
1/8... 🧵
The Chicago Pope memes are sooooo good.
Exclusive: NSF faces radical shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti...
It's hard for me to believe that I live in a world where science is being undermined and devalued.
News of NSF cuts and freezes in an already struggling environment certainly feels like early career scientists are being driven to extinction. The impact on research and innovation is profound. This is extremely awful.
Trump team’s science cuts threaten tenure hopes for early-career academics
Image of the ngVLA prototype at the NRAO VLA site near Magdalena NM, in front of a mountain, on a sunny day
The ngVLA prototype. Got to see it fairly close up. I really hope this gets fully funded, for multiple reasons.
Fingers crossed! The presubmission inquiry was successful. Here goes a second attempt at publishing in Nature.
⏰ Have you set your alarm for 12:00 CET / 11:00 GMT today?
Be ready to be amazed at the latest treasures uncovered by #ESAEuclid, our #DarkUniverse detective 🕵️
Watch this space for details & this link for a video premiere: www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXCB...
🔭🧪 #astrosci
I'm super jealous! I still haven't seen a wild moose.
Looking across a frozen river, two individuals are in small silhouette against the sky with a bright nearly full moon seen through ice crystals, diffusing the light, and green aurora ripples above and below the moon, spanning the width of the image.
An individual (me) stands with her arms outstretched in full winter onesie, while the sky behind is full of green curvy bands of aurora.
The aurora in Kiruna, Sweden this evening has been phenomenal!
Hello, world! 🌍 I'm Mark Gorski, an astronomer exploring the secrets of galaxy evolution at the Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA) at Northwestern University.
