ewan douglas

Reporting live from Galaxy Slam. Marcia Rieke has already figured out and deployed the flashing light spirit towels we all got.

Year of Space Facts: Week 6/52 🔭🧪🛰️

The twinkling of stars isn't caused by anything happening at the star—it's actually an effect of atmospheric turbulence and refraction making small changes to the path of the light before it reaches our eyes.

📸 Sirius scintillating (Bautsch CC0)

Galaxy Slam! Meet Marcia Rieke, Regents Professor of Astronomy at the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory. As principal investigator for NIRCam on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, she helps reveal the universe’s earliest galaxies using infrared light. www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhxf...

Google’s Former C.E.O. Wants to Build a Cosmic Search Engine

why you need big telescopes for spectroscopy -- “You have to collect enough photons because you’re spreading them out,” said @chadfbender.bsky.social, an astronomer at the University of Arizona, which is in charge of LFAST. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/09/s...

@chadfbender.bsky.social ?

Ex–Google CEO funds private space telescope bigger than Hubble Schmidt Sciences announces investments in orbiting observatory and three ground-based instruments

Just spent the day doing a thing: www.science.org/content/arti...

Roger Angel and I are Co-PIing the LFAST telescope, which is being built at @stewardobservatory.bsky.social and provides the ground based spectroscopic component of this venture.

@schmidtsciences.bsky.social #AAS247 #Arizona #LFAST

There is a great summary of the session from @astronomymag.bsky.social www.astronomy.com/science/eric...

I can say i’ve been involved in actively planning Lazuli for about a year.

today! 🔭✨🧪☄️
#exoplanets
#extragalactic
#cosmology

NASA Selects Tech Proposals to Advance Search-for-Life Mission - NASA NASA announced Monday the selection of industry proposals to advance technologies for the agency’s Habitable Worlds Observatory concept – the first mission

“The Habitable Worlds Observatory is exactly the kind of bold, forward-leaning science that only NASA can undertake...” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman...
🔭✨🧪🧵☄️
#exoplanets
#extragalactic

The Lazuli Space Observatory: Architecture & Capabilities The Lazuli Space Observatory is a 3-meter aperture astronomical facility designed for rapid-response observations and precision astrophysics across visible to near-infrared wavelengths (400-1700 nm ba...

New paper day! arxiv.org/abs/2601.02556 🔭🧪

More Astrophysics for More People ✨

Join us for a virtual #AAS247 session and a first look at The Schmidt Observatory System—a new network of ground and space-based initiatives designed to break the traditional limits of discovery.

📆 Jan 7 | 3-5:30pm MT / 5-7:30pm ET
Register here: buff.ly/kbbNFuB

The Solirad (So) as a Convenient Unit for Quoting Astronomical Irradiances for Planetary Insolations and Exoplanetary Instellations Measurements of physical parameters for stars and (exo)planets are often quoted in units normalized to the Sun and/or Earth. The nominal total solar irradiance, ${S}^{\rm N}_{\odot}$, while based on a...

Christmas on the archive!

@ericmamajek.bsky.social leads a paper with his usual precision, asking us astronomers (especially exoplanet folks) to clean up their jargon.

Introducing the Solirad: the nominal average flux the Earth receives from the Sun = 1361 W/m^2

arxiv.org/abs/2512.20126

We are hiring at the University of Arizona libraries for a Data Science Specialist/Librarian. Expertise/experience in Python is a must. Not on the search committee, will be your colleague. arizona.csod.com/ux/ats/caree...

NDAs Are Out of Control. Here’s What Needs to Change New data shows that over one-third of the U.S. workforce is bound by an NDA. These contracts have grown not only in number but also in breadth. They not only appear in settlements after a victim of se...

Time to repost this, hbr.org/2018/01/ndas...

Thanks for the posts!

The Habitable Worlds Observatory is early in its development as a large infrared/optical/ultraviolet space telescope. Many designs are under consideration, including this artist's concept animation. More about the planned observatory: go.nasa.gov/HWO #HWO2025 #HWO25 🔭 🧪 ☄️

In a new paper this month from Carlos Vargas and the Aspera team, readers get updates and context for the Steward Observatory-based mission. Learn more about this bold mission that aims to study galaxy evolution through UV light: bit.ly/3INfG93

I'm at the #HWO25 meeting this week and this morning's talks have been quite inspiring that we can actually get this thing done.

Fig. 2: Flowchart illustrates the implementation of aEFC for this work. For each control iteration, the first step is to estimate the focal plane electric field. Here, we assume that pairwise-probing (PWP) is used for this estimation. The next step is to compute the nominal model-based electric field ENOM, which is passed into the optimizer. Within the optimizer is a smaller loop where the forward model is evaluated to compute the cost-function value, then the adjoint model is evaluated to compute the gradient with respect to DM actuators so the optimizer can step the actuators in the direction that minimizes the cost-function. Once the optimizer’s tolerance value or iterations limit is reached, the actuator solution δA is applied to the instrument and the control iteration repeats.

new 🔭 paper day! Kian Milani and coauthors show how to save computing power and memory with an adjoint model to create high-contrast dark holes with a vortex coronagraph in simulation and reaching <1e-8 contrasts in the lab www.spiedigitallibrary.org/journals/Jou...

The first photos from the Vera Rubin Observatory are stunning — thanks in part to the University of Arizona, which helped build its mirror. Proud to see Arizona leading the way in space science.

Pioneering far UV emission mapping of the circumgalactic medium with Aspera—motivation, mission status, and lessons learned Aspera is a far ultraviolet (FUV) SmallSat mission in the NASA Astrophysics Pioneers Program with the science objectives surrounding detection and mapping of the warm-hot circumgalactic medium in emission for the first time in nearby galaxies. Aspera comprises a pair of identical long-slit FUV spectrographs optimized to detect faint extended source emission at ∼103 nm. The operations phase of the mission will include a commissioning phase, a primary science phase, and a closeout phase. Placed in a Sun-synchronous 500 to 600 km orbit, Aspera will operate in detection, mapping, and calibration modes during the primary science phase to achieve the mission’s science objectives. We note that minor damage outside of the clear aperture of the off-axis parabola mirrors was discovered during the application of high reflectance FUV coatings. It was determined that this damage was likely due to a cold welding effect when the Al optic holder came in contact with the contact point regions of the optic during the enhanced lithium fluoride coating process. These features do not affect the performance of the optic, nor do they pose any structural risk, and they can be avoided for future projects through material selection. The payload critical design is complete, and assembly of the payload began as of summer 2024.

New paper day from Carlos Vargas and the Aspera team! @stewardobservatory.bsky.social :
www.spiedigitallibrary.org/journals/Jou...

3D image shows ancient fluvial channels and higher-standing terrain within Jezero Crater. The scene is less than 5 km, or 3 miles, across. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona)

HiRISE 3D: Jezero Crater

An updated batch of anaglyphs for our July PDS release starts with this wonder 3D image of a part of Jezero Crater.

www.uahirise.org/anaglyph/ESP...
NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
#Mars #NASA #science

This is extremely worrying. The work done at IPAC is critical to the field of astronomy in the US and worldwide.

Today I remembered the NASA Exoplanet Task Force charged in 2006 with developing a 15-year strategy to "detect and characterize exo-planets". Still waiting on that space based direct imaging. 15 years out would have been 2022-ish...

There is an economic multiplier to every science dollar spent. Just from the University of Arizona, the proposed cuts to NASA/NSF could pull hundreds of millions of dollars out of the southern Arizona economy. We are a place that has "Space is Wildcat country" banners on poles.

NASA Awards Launch Service Task Order for Aspera’s Galaxy Mission - NASA NASA has selected Rocket Lab USA Inc. of Long Beach, California, to launch the agency’s Aspera mission, a SmallSat to study galaxy formation and evolution,

@stewardobservatory.bsky.social's Aspera Pioneer mission has a ride! www.nasa.gov/news-release...

Introducing Our University’s New, Totally Reasonable Criteria for Promotion and Tenure Since the founding of our august institution, we have awarded promotion and tenure based on how many pages of your research we could read before fa...

"These guidelines were written by almost-retired professors who never could have met these standards back in the 1980s, when all you needed for tenure was 1.5 publications and a bottle of scotch in your desk."
buff.ly/TOh3MUc

xwcl.science/magao-x/maga...

@stewardobservatory.bsky.social : news.arizona.edu/news/sharper...