I hope everyone who checked out @hogg.bsky.social’s 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!
Readily shareable "cheatsheets" that summarize both context and recommendations (not a substitute for reading the white paper itself, of course!) are available here: pictureanastronomer.github.io/whitepaper
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
🧪🔭☄️👩🔬
This is your reminder that Hungarian-Jewish scientist George de Hevesy dissolved two Nobel Prizes in aqua regia to keep them out of the hands of the Nazis.
He then left the dissolved solution on his shelf and fled to Sweden.
(After the war he un-dissolved the gold and the prizes were re-cast.)
Finally, Payel gave a quick shout out to what seems like an incredible piece of work recommending best practises for improving the situation for minorities in Astronomy. 🔭 ☄️
arxiv.org/abs/2512.24465
“The U.S. has led an unprecedented age of cosmic discovery. Now Trump is trying to bring that age to an end, and right at the moment when answers to our most profound existential questions finally seem to be within reach,” @rossandersen.bsky.social reports. theatln.tc/LThKw0kY
A huge thanks to everyone who participated in the symposium and in the eventual write-up of the white paper, with a special thanks to Kate Whitaker for helping me edit this behemoth, Meg Urry for her very affecting foreword, and Julie Malewicz for once again providing beautiful illustrations!
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 New Year! + happy (white) paper day!
arxiv.org/abs/2512.24465
Whether you're waiting for the ball to drop or looking to start 2026 off right, you can read about evidence-backed best practices for retaining talent in astrophysics, which came out of discussions at our March symposium :)
🧪🔭☄️👩🔬
"A 25-person startup" should not be allowed to "disrupt" fundamental inputs to the Earth's ecosystem, hydrosphere, and atmosphere.
Like, what are we even thinking here?
An example, here asking to recreate in LaTeX the definition of a pseudorandom number generator
In case you aren't already aware of one of the nerdiest, nich-est online games: TeXnique, where the goal is to type LaTeX formulae as quickly as possible. texnique.xyz
It is "fun."
Dick Durbin’s Rock Island office is taking voicemails if you are, like me, a betrayed constituent: 309.786.5173
(I called hours ago, but understand it’s still taking messages with no problem, and none of his other numbers allow you to leave a voicemail.)
#nasa is shuttering the Goddard #space #flight center in a move that may not be entirely legal, according to critics. For months, our #staff #writer @joshdinner.bsky.social interviewed NASA #employees, read #senate reports and more to give you the deepest dive yet.
www.space.com/space-explor...
Ozempic, MRI machines and flat screen televisions all emerged out of fundamental research decades earlier — the very types of study being slashed by the US government
go.nature.com/47hn0n5
It's becoming increasingly clear to me that Reflect Orbital's fucking stupid giant mirror satellite, with absolutely NOTHING useful to offer, which will cause countless safety issues, ecological disasters, and destroy the night sky, is going to launch.
A bunch of astronomers and I have sent out […]
Today my @nytimes.com colleagues and I are launching a new series called Lost Science. We interview US scientists who can no longer discover something new about our world, thanks to this year‘s cuts. Here is my first interview with a scientist who studied bees and fires. Gift link: nyti.ms/3IWXbiE
This is why we fund scientists to study things like oyster slobber even if you don’t think it sounds important
A leading Democrat in the Senate just released an important report documenting how NASA has been working to implement the president's proposed budget, not Congressionally approved funds, in slashing missions. Read more ⬇️
Huge thanks to @highzclouds.bsky.social for showing me Las Campanas!!
The Milky Way over the open dome of the Baade Telescope at Las Campanas Observatory
The center of the Milky Way over the open dome of the Baade Telescope
The Milky Way over the Clay Telescope
Silhouette of a person (me) standing in front of three visible galaxies — the SMC and LMC (left) and the Milky Way (right)
Big fan of observing in person 🔭
Article on BBC news. Title: AI designs antibiotics for gonorrhoea and MRSA superbugs Description: Two new potential drugs have been designed by AI to kill drug-resistant bacteria, in a major Massachusetts Institute of Technology study.
I really dislike how science has started calling almost any fancy computational technique AI. 🧪
The framing of this entire article makes it sound like a benevolent AI independently made these drugs.
That is *pure fantasy*.
Instead: a team of scientists made a machine learning model for a study.
For the morning crowd, here are all the observations stored in the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes. A visual created by Julie Imig, one of our amazing astronomical data scientists. Follow the link below for more colors and even a movie.
Now formally published!
It really is perfect that this code, named both for the PSF spikes and as a nod to a favorite Buffy character -- hence the logo, should find its home in JOSS...
github.com/avapolzin/sp...
🔭🧪☄️
A map of the US with the states the republican senators are from marked in red and states the democratic senators are from marked in blue: Senator Susan Collins (Republican - Maine) Senator Mitch McConnell(Republican - Kentucky) Senator Lisa Murkowski(Republican - Alaska) Senator Lindsey Graham(Republican - South Carolina) Senator Jerry Moran(Republican - Kansas) Senator John Hoeven(Republican - North Dakota) Senator John Boozman(Republican - Arkansas) Senator Shelley Moore Capito(Republican - West Virginia) Senator John Kennedy(Republican - Louisiana) Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith(Republican - Mississippi) Senator Bill Hagerty(Republican - Tennessee) Senator Katie Britt(Republican - Alabama) Senator Markwayne Mullin(Republican - Oklahoma) Senator Deb Fischer(Republican - Nebraska) Senator Mike Rounds(Republican - South Dakota) Patty Murray(Democrat - Washington) Richard Durbin(Democrat - Illinois) Jack Reed(Democrat - Rhode Island) Jeanne Shaheen(Democrat - New Hampshire) Jeff Merkley(Democrat - Oregon) Christopher Coons(Democrat - Delaware) Brian Schatz(Democrat - Hawaii) Tammy Baldwin(Democrat - Wisconsin) Chris Murphy(Democrat - Connecticut) Chris Van Hollen(Democrat - Maryland) Martin Heinrich(Democrat - New Mexico) Gary Peters(Democrat - Michigan) Kirsten Gillibrand(Democrat - New York) Jon Ossoff(Democrat - Georgia)
Are you from one of these states? Then we need your help to save American science!
The Senate Appropriations Committee will be marking up the President's Budget Request for science on Wednesday. People have been saying the proposed cuts "decimated" US science, but that's wrong: they are apocalyptic
NASA just won an Emmy for our live broadcast of the total solar eclipse last year. We produced a documentary film about the James Webb Space Telescope that's out in theaters and on Netflix. We have podcasts, we write feature stories. People wear the agency logo on t-shirts. We're still getting cut.
Congratulations, Sanjana!
NASA is being told to cancel 19 *active* missions to save $6B, which looks to be less than the ICE *hiring/retention* budget going forward.
I need people to let that sentence sink into their bones for a minute.
Alex Ji, speaking at Galactic Frontiers II, using the cat “chonk chart” to classify dwarf galaxies, where his favorite ultrafaints are “fine bois”.
Definitely using the novel Ji (@alexji.bsky.social) mass-based dwarf galaxy classification scheme moving forward 🔭
A sprawling, textured field of galaxies scattered across the deep black of space. It is filled with the delicate smudges and glowing cores of galaxies of many shapes, sizes and colors, as well as the bright multi-colored points of stars. The image focuses on a collection of interacting galaxies connected by delicate streams of stars. At top center lies a large elliptical galaxy that is dense and smooth, like a polished stone glowing with golden light. Like delicate spider silk or stretched taffy, these stellar bridges link the large elliptical to the few larger galaxies beneath, evidence of past collisions. All throughout the image, thousands of galaxies gather in clusters or are spread throughout, like glittering gems strewn on a table. Some are sharp-edged and spiral, like coiled ribbons; others round and diffuse, like polished pebbles. Still others are just smudges of various colors against the black of space. The background is peppered with pinpoint stars in reds, yellows, and blues, crisp against the velvet black.
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 sprawling, textured field of galaxies scattered across the deep black of space. It is filled with the delicate smudges and glowing cores of galaxies of many shapes, sizes and colors, as well as the bright multi-colored points of stars. To the lower left is a region filled with the hundreds of golden glittering gems of a distant galaxy cluster. In the foreground, below and right of center, two blue spiral galaxies look like eyes beneath the entangled mass of a triple galaxy merger in the upper right. A few bright blue points of foreground stars pierce the glittering tapestry. All throughout the image, thousands of galaxies gather in clusters or are spread throughout, like glittering gems strewn on a table. Some are sharp-edged and spiral, like coiled ribbons; others round and diffuse, like polished pebbles. Still others are just smudges of various colors against the black of space. The background is peppered with pinpoint stars in reds, yellows, and blues, crisp against the velvet black.
Introducing...your sneak peek at the cosmos captured by NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory!
Can you guess these regions of sky?
This is just a small peek...join us at 11am US EDT for your full First Look at how Rubin will #CaptureTheCosmos! 🔭🧪
#RubinFirstLook
ls.st/rubin-first-look-livestream
"You’re punching a generation-size hole, maybe a multigenerational hole, in the scientific and technical workforce. You don’t just Cryovac these people and pull them out when the money comes back. People are going to move on.”
www.scientificamerican.com/article/prop...
