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Jonathan Fortney @jjfplanet.bsky.social · 1d

OMG! The bread! The butter! The fresh fruit and yogurt! With honey and jam!

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Jonathan Fortney @jjfplanet.bsky.social · 1d

Pleasant breakfast companion in Provence, France. Very opinionated on exoplanets topics.

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Jonathan Fortney @jjfplanet.bsky.social · 2d

Goodnight from Provence!

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Jonathan Fortney @jjfplanet.bsky.social · 3d

On my 9-hour flight from SFO to Munich (I'm on my way to the 30th Anniversary of 51 Pegasi b meeting in Provence this week) I watched all 9 episodes of Our Friends and Neighbors! My first-ever true "binge watch," I suppose. A solid show -- hard to go wrong with Jon Hamm!

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Jonathan Fortney @jjfplanet.bsky.social · 5d

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.
--John Steinbeck

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Jonathan Fortney @jjfplanet.bsky.social · 5d

For my scientific temperament I needed a field that was more controversial, more open-ended and new, where quick was useful and sloppy did not matter too much because it would all change soon anyway. --Ed Salpeter

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Jonathan Fortney @jjfplanet.bsky.social · 5d

Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.
-- Douglas Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach

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Reposted by Jonathan Fortney

Rocky Worlds Meetings @rockyworlds.bsky.social · 7d

📢 Don't forget to join us for this talk tomorrow (Thursday)!

13:00 UTC = 15:00 CEST = 09:00 EDT = 06:00 PDT = 22:00 JST

If you haven't signed up to our mailing list to access the Zoom-link, you can also watch it live on our YouTube channel 🔭☄️🧪 #exoplanet livestream: www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMr2...

Rocky Worlds Meetings @rockyworlds.bsky.social · 14d

Cloudy with a chance of... haze? Aerosol? Carbon dioxide?!🌦️

Next #RockyWorldsDiscussion on Thu 2 Oct @ 13:00 UTC will feature Kazumasa Ohno (NAOJ) and recent JWST results that lift the hazy veil on the composition of sub-Neptune #exoplanet GJ 1214 b 🪐🔭🧪

More: www.rockyworlds.org/event-detail...

An image of the speaker, Kazumasa Ohno. He is smiling and looking into the camera. He is wearing a navy blue cable-knit jumper with a checkered shirt, and glasses. He is against a background of what appears to be other people as the photo is seemingly cropped from a group photo.

$Artistic illustration of sub-Neptune TOI-421 b. A hypothetical exoplanet with similar banding to Jupiter, but in blue colours, is shown in the foreground. In the distant, the planet's host star is shown, which is a warm golden colour and shows diffraction spikes. Image credit: SciTechDaily.com$

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Jonathan Fortney @jjfplanet.bsky.social · 13d

I'm really excited about this one! It's fantastic working with Dr. Yayaati Chachan:
arxiv.org/abs/2509.20428
"Revising the Giant Planet Mass-Metallicity Relation: Deciphering the Formation Sequence of Giant Planets"
Lots of great nuggets her, including that even super-Jupiters are very metal-rich.

Revising the Giant Planet Mass-Metallicity Relation: Deciphering the Formation Sequence of Giant Planets

The rate at which giant planets accumulate solids and gas is a critical component of planet formation models, yet it is extremely challenging to predict from first principles. Characterizing the heavy...

arxiv.org

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Jonathan Fortney @jjfplanet.bsky.social · 13d

Congrats to Univ of Washington's Prof. Josh Krissansen-Totton (former UCSC postdoc!) on being selected for the AGU Ronald Greeley Early Career Award in Planetary Sciences
www.agu.org/user-profile...

AGU - American Geophysical Union

www.agu.org

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Jonathan Fortney @jjfplanet.bsky.social · 14d

Status: Legend! 😅

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Reposted by Jonathan Fortney

Laura Kreidberg @lkreidberg.bsky.social · 23d

We have job opportunities in the APEx department at MPIA - please spread the word!

Postdocs: aas.org/jobregister/...
Tenure-track staff: aas.org/jobregister/...
Max Planck Research Group Leaders: aas.org/jobregister/...

+ happy to host ERC, Humboldt, and other third-party funds.

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Jonathan Fortney @jjfplanet.bsky.social · 28d

Potential postdocs, please check out the revised Presidents Postdoctoral Fellowship Program (PPFP) in the UC system:
ppfp.ucop.edu/info/how-to-...
We have had several outstanding PPFP-program postdocs in Astro at UCSC over the past decade.

How to apply

ppfp.ucop.edu

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Jonathan Fortney @jjfplanet.bsky.social · 28d

Great article from the Simons Foundation about the open source MESA stellar evolution code, which has a had a huge impact on astrophysics over the past 15 years.
I had not heard that the code's architect, software guru Bill Paxton, had passed away in July.
www.simonsfoundation.org/2025/08/12/a...

A Stellar Revolution: How Open-Source Tool MESA Changed the Way We Study Stars

A Stellar Revolution: How Open-Source Tool MESA Changed the Way We Study Stars on Simons Foundation

www.simonsfoundation.org

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Jonathan Fortney @jjfplanet.bsky.social · 28d

Welcome to Santa Cruz, @capricephillips.bsky.social!

Laura Lopez @ohdearz.bsky.social · 28d

Great story about @capricephillips.bsky.social by @tatyanazaria.bsky.social in the OSU alumni magazine! 🔭 alumnimagazine.osu.edu/story/capric...

Caprice Phillips is busy solving cosmic mysteries

Ohio State prepared this two-time graduate to ask and answer big questions in a prestigious NASA fellowship.

alumnimagazine.osu.edu

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Reposted by Jonathan Fortney

Sarah E Moran @offallingstars.bsky.social · 29d

✨✨✨Another Virga advert✨✨✨

Introducing V2.0, with fractal aggregate clouds! Restricted to spheres no more! We handle the dynamics and the optics self consistently.

Led by me and PhD candidate extraordinaire Matt Lodge (who is looking for a postdoc 👀 and is amazing).

arxiv.org/abs/2509.06708

Fractal Aggregate Aerosols in the Virga Cloud Code I: Model Description and Application to a Benchmark Cloudy Exoplanet

We introduce new functionality to treat fractal aggregate aerosol particles within the Virga cloud modeling framework. Previously, the open source cloud modeling code Virga (Batalha et al. 2025), the ...

arxiv.org

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Jonathan Fortney @jjfplanet.bsky.social · 29d

Just had a long discussion with my 17-year-old about "big TVs" in the 80s and 90s. He thought rear projection TVs were pretty comical.
share.google/hAS2yunf5vND...

Rear-projection television - Wikipedia

share.google

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Reposted by Jonathan Fortney

Tim Onion @bencollins.bsky.social · Sep 6

Can’t express in words how big this rally in Chicago is. The president’s fascist goon squad is not welcome here.

A completely full Chicago on Michigan Avenue protesting Donald Trump.

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Jonathan Fortney @jjfplanet.bsky.social · Sep 5

Current status pic. I didn't see my shadow, so there are still 3 more weeks until the academic quarter starts.
The quarter system does have some benefits, I guess?

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Jonathan Fortney @jjfplanet.bsky.social · Aug 29

Pets

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Reposted by Jonathan Fortney

Senator Patty Murray @murray.senate.gov · Aug 28

I had serious doubts about CDC Director Monarez’s willingness to stand up against RFK Jr.’s personal mission to destroy public health in America—I’m glad that I was wrong.

If there are any adults left in the White House: we cannot let RFK Jr. burn what's left of CDC. FIRE HIM.

New C.D.C. Director Resists Ouster as Other Officials Resign

www.nytimes.com

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Reposted by Jonathan Fortney

David Grinspoon @drfunkyspoon.bsky.social · Aug 27

And as the New York Times editorialized in response to the scientific reports, this marked “the beginning of the end of Mankind’s grand romantic dreams.”

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Jonathan Fortney @jjfplanet.bsky.social · Aug 27

Ha ha, I was going to ask about that very same thing.

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Jonathan Fortney @jjfplanet.bsky.social · Aug 27

Whoa, that's amazing.

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Reposted by Jonathan Fortney

Rabih Alameddine @rabihalameddine.bsky.social · Aug 27

Amazing photo of Jasmine Paolini at the US Open by Ray Giubilo

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