Duncan Christie

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

🧪🔭☄️👩‍🔬

Do you already have a Masters? Do you want to do a PhD in exoplanet radial velocity surveys with me at Macquarie University in Sydney?

Then have I got an ad for you!

People switching from ChatGPT to Anthropic are telling on themselves. Will they now cancel their Claude subscriptions because it was used to help plan the attack on Iran? They won’t and we all know it.

"We want the murder software to murder accurately" isn't the absolution everyone seems to think it is. Anthropic is enacting a huge PR campaign and too many people are helping them

When a company in an industry built on hype tells you that a use case is a bad idea—and actually dangerous—that means it’s a *catastrophically* bad idea.

Head in the Silicate Clouds - Sarah Moran and Elijah Mullens YouTube video by BOWIE+ Seminars

There are lots of aspects of silicate clouds in substellar objects that we don't often think about. Luckily, Sarah Moran (@offallingstars.bsky.social) and Elijah Mullens are here to fill us in on the interesting details. #exoplanets #astronomy

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYWZ...

Elsie is a rockstar! I’m so excited to see what she will do in the retrieval game! I’ve been doing offline comparisons between my code and Elsie’s code and it it SO GOOD!

and that, my fellow academics, is one reason not to hire war criminals: so they can't show up years post (their) war arguing in favor of the scaffolding behind their own atrocities with the imprimatur and status of your university

If Congress maintains high levels of science funding, but ruling party apparatchiks control the granting process, then what happens is corruption.

Science is effectively defunded, and a bunch of rich Republicans are suddenly buying more houses and jets.

Weird ‘Little Red Dots’ in space are something we’ve never seen Astronomers are racing to understand mysterious ancient objects that pepper James Webb Space Telescope images

What are JWST’s Little Red Dots? Astronomers may finally have an answer www.scientificamerican.com/article/what...

Starting this Friday, four separate #JWST programmes will be exploring physical processes in Jupiter's atmosphere and ionosphere. We're asking amateur astronomers to help provide context imaging over the next few weeks to understand how the atmosphere is changing with time. #planetaryscience

Using AI makes science communication worse. Period.

AI use necessarily reduces accuracy, transparency and authenticity.

But sci comm *needs* to be accurate, transparent, and authentic. Otherwise you’re just goofing around, which will destroy your audience‘s trust in you and in other sci comm.

Last year, based on the previous funding cuts, professors in our field told us to start planning for a backup career. Now we are facing more funding cuts, they should probably just train us explicitly for the backup career.

Gladys Mae West obituary: mathematician who pioneered GPS technology She made key contributions to US cold-war science despite facing huge barriers as a Black woman.

No joke: I got angry hate mail today for writing an obituary of a Black woman scientist—because the person felt she did didn’t deserve the recognition.

Which just makes me want to share it again: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Early-career researchers are rightly worried about the road ahead, and have drafted an open letter to UKRI & #STFC, calling for a "strategic correction" to avoid irreversible loss of curiosity-driven UK research - an essential part of future discoveries, tech, & growth. bsky.app/profile/si-w...

I've posted this before, but what is the point of "Letters" anymore? I don't remember the last time I saw a paper where a quick turnaround was warranted. Our journals usually only use a single referee, so adding the additional time pressure is only further hurting quality. #exoplanets

Stand With Minnesota Donation Directory Stand With Minnesota is a hub for supporting, learning, and taking action to support Minnesotans impacted by ICE and federal enforcement.

tomorrow, StandWithMinnesota.com will hit a million site visits and over 650,000 unique visitors.

i made it 10 days ago with $600 from you guys for hosting and cloudflare.

thank you. thank you.

Sulfur: A New Tracer in Exoplanet Atmospheres YouTube video by BOWIE+ Seminars

Sulphur? In my exoplanet atmosphere? It's more likely than you think, explains Ian Crossfield in the latest BOWIE+ Seminar.
#exoplanets #astronomy

youtu.be/v6tvTUIeshY

BOWIE-ALIGN: Sub-solar C/O ratio and metallicity atmosphere of the misaligned hot Jupiter HAT-P-30b We present the JWST NIRSpec/G395H transmission spectrum of the misaligned hot Jupiter HAT-P-30b from 2.8--5.2 $μ$m as part of the BOWIE-ALIGN survey, a comparative survey designed to probe the link be...

A great paper examining the hot Jupiter HAT-P-30b, lead by final-year PhD student Alastair Claringbold (@exoarcturus.bsky.social), as a part of the BOWIE ALIGN program. The program aims to understand how migration history impacts atmosphere composition. #exoplanets

www.arxiv.org/abs/2601.13104

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence: Theory and practice The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence: Theory and practice, Wright, Jason T

My textbook on SETI is published!

I hope you like it!

Please see if your libraries offer a free download—mine does!

iopscience.iop.org/book/mono/97...

🧪🔭

How a billionaire with interests in Greenland encouraged Trump to acquire the territory US president’s friend Ronald Lauder – who first proposed Arctic expansion – is now making deals in the island

It's about minerals.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

You and 24 of your friends (and/or enemies, as you like) can have AAS journal editors come run a workshop on how to be a good referee!

A High-Resolution NUV Transmission Spectrum of KELT-9b: Mg II and Fe II Escaping from the Hottest Known Giant Planet We present high-resolution NUV observations from Hubble Space Telescope's (HST) Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) data for the hottest known gas planet, KELT-9b. Observations were collected ...

ICYMI: Over the winter holidays, my student's paper on KELT-9b was accepted: arxiv.org/abs/2512.19662!

With the Hubble Space Telescope's STIS instrument, we find enormous escape of metal ions from the hottest hot Jupiter, KELT-9b! 🪐🔭💫

Headshot of Prof Ian Crossfield on a poster advertising the seminar.

The BOWIE+ Seminar restarts on January 22nd at 4PM UK time with a talk by Ian Crossfield on sulphur in exoplanetary atmospheres. Sign up to the seminar mailing list (link in bio) to receive the Zoom link.

NASA Discovers Distant Planet With Conditions That Could Sustain Rocks

NASA Discovers Distant Planet With Conditions That Could Sustain Rocks https://theonion.com/nasa-discovers-distant-planet-with-conditions-that-could-sustain-rocks/

i trust zeta’s words on the situation in venezuela more than most of the voices on this website so i suggest you also read what they said

If your position is that regime change should be forced on countries where the president does not respect democratic norms and regularly kidnaps opponents using an officially sanctioned paramiliatary, have I got news for you about your position on the United States

just so it's clear: this is the exact core function of genAI

Fascist government and climate deniers love it because it can produce the aesthetics of knowledge without any actual tendency towards truth. It is automated denialism.

Shame on every climate scientist promoting its use (there are lots)

The final Calvin and Hobbes, which appeared in papers 30 years ago today.