This is so cool! You can see that at solar maximum (around 2002, 2013, and 2024 ish) HST drops more rapidly, because the increased solar activity puffs up the atmosphere, increasing drag on orbiting satellites 🧪🔭
Est où Françoise.
:(
This is agreed by me who’s babysitting my godfather’s 3000 sqft house this week. (who needs 5 bathrooms tho)
One of my favourite game to play in Arizona is Where’s Rafi?
Timezones are so weird. Australia is in 2026, Canada is in 2025, and the United States is in 1939.
Rumor has it that (me) discovering a super old, super massive and super active zombie planetary system made the list of the most exciting exoplanet (yes, exoplanet!!) discoveries of 2025! Yay white dwarfs! 🥹🔭
The search for planets around stellar remnants is a really interesting quest!! Glad to offer some tiny help to @mustaric.bsky.social and @johndebes.bsky.social on this project! 🔭🪐
Really important thread! Most importantly: stop comparing yourself to others and focus on yourself!
Capitalism induced depression
It’s Friday night.
I’ve done enough this week.
You’ve done enough this week.
Glad I wasn’t alone in this adventure.
One day the universe will contain only dark energy and JWST proposals.
Super interesting project I’ve been working on lately where we try do detect exoplanets orbiting white dwarf stars! My colleague John explains here one of our recent results! 🔭
I will cite this paper forever and ever, I promise! 🥳
But in how many of these papers are they amongst the first four authors is the real question? As someone who will apply to postdocs in 2-3 years, I’m terrified to know that some people have this many papers! 😫
There’s still 2:30 hrs left here, his prediction was local time.
Congrats to NASA Citizen Scientist @melina-iras07572.bsky.social! In 2019, Melina discovered the oldest white dwarf with a debris disk. Now this white dwarf is in the news again. @astroerika.bsky.social et al. suggest it may have recently engulfed a rocky planet. iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...
At image center is a small, white star against a gray background. It is surrounded by a large translucent disk with rings and gaps that extends from upper left to lower right. In the foreground, irregular chunky rocks are floating in space along the bottom of the frame. A stream of material extends from lower right toward the central star. The words, artist’s concept are at lower left.
A dead star has been spotted ripping a planet apart! “Something clearly disturbed this system long after the star’s death,” said co-investigator John Debes of the Space Telescope Science Institute. (1/4) 🔭 🧪 🧵
This is very cool - LSPM J0207+3331 was discovered by citizen scientist Melina Thévenot while searching ESA's GAIA catalog for brown dwarfs.
blog.backyardworlds.org/2019/02/19/t...
Here's the paper that STScI quotes:
iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...
Stellar spectrum showing pollution by heavy elements from a destroyed planet or asteroid.
"Saturn Devouring His Son" by Francisco Goya
Astronomers have determined that an elderly white dwarf star, 3 billion years into its final stage of life, is still busily crushing and devouring its planets.
Scientific data on the left. Artist's interpretation on the right. 🧪🔭
keckobservatory.org/white-dwarf/
Want to know more about my recent paper about this cool geriatric white dwarf eating its planets? 🤩
It’s all detailed in this news article by @stsci.edu ! 🔭
The code must have been al dente
As a stellar atmosphere person, this is what people doing atmosphere retrievals sound to me lol
My latest paper is finally out! 🎊 Turns out that that odd white dwarf discovered by @melina-iras07572.bsky.social is accreting a MASSIVE rocky planetary object, hinting that planetary systems can stay active billions of years after the death of their star! 🌟 🪨🪐
For more: arxiv.org/abs/2510.08676
I’m so glad you found me! 👋🏻 I am so excited that this star has so much more to tell beyond its redder colour! I think it will open doors for many other studies 🔭
To me, it’s like "why don’t YOU know at least one phone number of a close one in case of an emergency"? People can’t fathom the possibility of their phone not being with them or functioning when they are in distress :(
Thank god, one of the rare cool things in this world is not a carb.
Did you know that white dwarfs were the coolest stars?
I’m totally unbiased here 😌
