Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · Jul 20

Congratulations to Dr. Allison McCarthy, who successfully defended her PhD “The Physical Basis for L and T Dwarf Variability” on Friday! Allie is now off to Trinity College Dublin for a postdoc with the ExoAimsir group led by Prof. Johanna Vos! 🪐🔭 @alliemccarthy.bsky.social @johannavos.bsky.social

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Reposted by Philip Muirhead

Casey Dreier @caseydreier.bsky.social · May 31

Four charts showing the extent of cuts to NASA in the FY26 budget:

- Cuts to every science division
- Smallest science funding since 1984
- 19 active, inflight missions cancelled
- Smallest NASA budget since FY 1961

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · Apr 21

I've used the Allan Deviation once. I think I did it right (Eq 15)?? Though I didn't cite Allan... My bad. iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...

iopscience.iop.org

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · Apr 17

Congrats to my colleague Merav Opher on winning a 2025 Guggenheim Fellowship! And congrats to BU for tying with Princeton for the most Guggenheim fellows this year (6)!

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · Mar 28

Thank you to our Perkins-Telescope-partner North Carolina A&T @ncatsuaggies.bsky.social for hosting me for their Physics Colloquium this week! I had a wonderful time meeting with their undergrads, grad students, and faculty, and talking about small stars, brown dwarfs and exoplanets!

Students and faculty in a colloquium room.

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Reposted by Philip Muirhead

Johanna Vos @johannavos.bsky.social · Mar 3

Check out our newest results from JWST, led by @alliemccarthy.bsky.social and published today in ApJ Letters! 🔭🪐

Space Telescope Science Institute @stsci.edu · Mar 3

Astronomers using #NASAWebb have captured thousands of infrared spectra, revealing evidence for patchy clouds layers, high-altitude hot spots, and variations in chemistry around a swiftly spinning, free-floating object 20 light-years from Earth: webbtelescope.pub/4hVeLjt 🔭 🧪

Illustration of a large spherical object that looks like a gas giant planet or a brown dwarf. The object appears to be glowing, with wavy, horizontal bands of yellow, orange, and red forming patterns similar to those in the atmosphere of Jupiter. In the mid-latitudes of the northern hemisphere, just to the right of center, is a large, elliptical, dark red feature similar to Jupiter’s Great Red Spot. Hints of a blue-green auroral glow emanate from the south pole. Larger blue-green auroral arcs descend from the north pole down toward the middle northern latitudes. The background is filled with thousands of distant stars that form a Milky Way-like band running from left to light. The object is isolated, with no host star nearby. The words “Artist’s Concept” are in the lower left corner.

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Reposted by Philip Muirhead

Allie McCarthy @alliemccarthy.bsky.social · Mar 3

Check out the press release for our recent work using JWST observations of SIMP0136! Also published today on ApJL: iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · Mar 3

Excited to share this press release of our investigation into the atmosphere of a "rogue planet"!

Space Telescope Science Institute @stsci.edu · Mar 3

Astronomers using #NASAWebb have captured thousands of infrared spectra, revealing evidence for patchy clouds layers, high-altitude hot spots, and variations in chemistry around a swiftly spinning, free-floating object 20 light-years from Earth: webbtelescope.pub/4hVeLjt 🔭 🧪

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · Jan 30

Recently forwarded an article by @griffithobserv.bsky.social about the unknown telescope in Hugo Ballin's mural in their rotunda. Turns out it's BU's own Perkins Telescope! A "modern telescope" that we still think is pretty modern 😇 griffithobservatory.org/exhibits/w-m...

Hugo Ballin Murals - Griffith Observatory - Southern California’s gateway to the cosmos!

On the vaulted ceiling and upper walls of the W. M. Keck Foundation Central Rotunda are Griffith Observatory's greatest artistic treasure: the Hugo Ballin Murals. Workers have carefully and completely...

griffithobservatory.org

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · Jan 21

In Lewis Lapham’s last Notebook for Harper’s, he wrote that reading history “lessons our fears of what might happen tomorrow.” Wow, was he wrong about that.

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · Jan 14

It’s my birthday and my wife got me a label maker 😍 You can probably guess my age from how happy I am about this gift.

A label maker sitting in a kitchen counter.

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · Jan 12

My first thought: Must be intensity interferometry because there’s no way they are beam combining that many telescopes, unless each is heterodyned with an LFC and amp/phase written to disk. [Reads acronym, looks at poster]🤦‍♂️

Jeremy Bailin @astrobailin.bsky.social · Jan 12

25 years since the Super Huge Interferometric Telescope poster (as Mamajek noted on FB). ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1999AAS....

The Super Huge Interferometric Telescope: A New Paradigm In Optical Interferometry

Our proposed Super Huge Interferometric Telescope uses affordable off-the-shelf components and low-cost turnkey adaptive optics with laser pointers for guide stars. This array of 5800 Astroscan<SUP>TM...

ui.adsabs.harvard.edu

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · Dec 21

We went on Tuesday! That was such a cool experience. (Family in silhouette.)

Image of the "Eclipse" exhibit at the Reflections of Light event at Mt. Auburn Cemetery.

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · Dec 18

Really hoping the Social Security Fairness Act passes the Senate this week. My mom lives on a meager Texas teacher’s pension (below poverty earnings) but can’t collect her or my late father’s social security from their non-govt work because of the GPO provision. SSFA would fix that!

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · Nov 26

Congrats Kevin!

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · Nov 26

Check out BU PhD-student @alliemccarthy.bsky.social's paper just accepted to ApJL! JWST spectral light curves of SIMP 0136 show clear pressure-dependence, indicating three variability mechanisms: clouds, hot spots and C chemistry. @johannavos.bsky.social is the JWST PI! arxiv.org/abs/2411.16577

The JWST Weather Report from the Isolated Exoplanet Analog SIMP 0136+0933: Pressure-Dependent Variability Driven by Multiple Mechanisms

Isolated planetary-mass objects share their mass range with planets but do not orbit a star. They lack the necessary mass to support fusion in their cores and thermally radiate their heat from formati...

arxiv.org

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · Nov 16

Another paper from our BU-RIT-UToronto collaboration on benchmark post common envelope binaries (close white dwarf + main sequence stars). Graduating UToronto PhD student Steffani Grondin's catalog of PCEBs in open clusters is published! www.dunlap.utoronto.ca/astronomers-...

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · Nov 12

🔭🧪

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · Nov 12

Pro tip: If you are writing NSF proposals and can't upload it because research(dot)gov says you don't have a broader impacts section, when most definitely do have a broader impacts section, try moving your figures further from the broader impacts heading.

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · Nov 11

Not sure how many New England Falls we have left on this planet, but yesterday's Boston Half Marathon could not have been nicer.

Runner holding his daughter while she eats a sandwich after a race.

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · Oct 29

Several years ago I sent a random message to a generic NASA inquires email about WORF on the ISS for a possible experiment. Don Pettit replied and sent a photo…from space.

Eric Berger @sciguyspace.bsky.social · Oct 29

On his third space station tour, Don Pettit is once again making magic in space.

arstechnica.com/space/2024/1...

NASA’s oldest active astronaut is also one of the most curious humans

“We made the mistake of peeking out the Cupola windows.”…

arstechnica.com

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · Oct 26

Every department has one. Or several. Or all 😂

Prof Anna Watts @profannawatts.bsky.social · Oct 26

I, holder of many fancy grants and prizes, am too busy to help. No matter what the issue is.

Fancy lion is too busy and important to help.

Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · Jun 25

I keep forgetting to add to the feeds! Let's see if this works: 🔭🪐

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · Jun 25

Great talks at Cool Stars 22 by BU PhD students Caeley Pittman and Allie McCarthy!

Caeley Pittman giving her talk at Cool Stars 22.

Allie McCarthy giving her talk at Cool Stars 22.

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · Jun 21

If you missed BU-PhD-student Allie McCarthy's awesome weather-app-inspired poster at Exoplanets V, you can catch the TALK version at Cool Stars 22 on Monday!

Allison McCarthy standing in front of her poster at Exoplanets V.

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