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Matthew Kenworthy

@mattkenworthy.bsky.social

4.2K followers 250 following 390 posts

Professor of astronomy working at Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands on the direct imaging of extrasolar planets and transits of giant ring systems || Opinions my own || Will tell Dad jokes for cash. https://kenworthy.space/

kenworthy.space

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Matthew Kenworthy @mattkenworthy.bsky.social · 6h

"Hold my beer, now watch this!"

Matthew Kenworthy @mattkenworthy.bsky.social · 7h

Getting mentally prepared to read all the #slack channels on #wispit2 #JWST proposals

A middle aged man wearing a metal helmet and what looks like welders glass in ski giggles. It is a photo from the 1950's showing army equipment.

Matthew Kenworthy @mattkenworthy.bsky.social · 2d

"Aaaah, go on Ted!"

Richard Alexander @richardalexander.bsky.social · 2d

Happy Father Dougal Day to those who celebrate. 🎉

(Admittedly that's basically just my third-year class, but we'll still have some fun with it.)

Richard Alexander @richardalexander.bsky.social · Oct 11

First time on this platform: it's "angular-diameter distances with Father Dougal" day. Looking at my notes, we're also doing luminosity distances with the muppets ("near", "far"...). 🔭

Matthew Kenworthy @mattkenworthy.bsky.social · 5d

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Matthew Kenworthy @mattkenworthy.bsky.social · 5d

I'm torn about this. Paying once for infinite updates is (imho) unreasonable but we've been conditioned to have everything free on the internet... how to set a (reasonable) refresh payment is tricky.

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Matthew Kenworthy @mattkenworthy.bsky.social · 8d

Wolff, @andrasgaspar.bsky.social et al. with a beautiful analysis of “JWST/MIRI Imaging of the Warm Dust Component of the Epsilon Eridani Debris Disk”, the last of the “Big Four” circumstellar disks with #JWST - a smooth disk at all but the longer wavelengths and hosting an RV #exoplanet ☄️

Four images showing a smooth round disk face on to our line of sight. The longest wavelength image a thin ring can be seen superimposed in the image.

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Reposted by Matthew Kenworthy

Richard Alexander @richardalexander.bsky.social · 8d

New paper, led by @physicsuol.bsky.social PhD student @simintong.bsky.social. Simin looked at the rings we see in planet-forming discs, and combined new models with multi-wavelength ALMA observations to understand the underlying physical properties of the dust and gas. 🔭

arxiv.org/abs/2509.24818

Fig.3 from Tong et al. (2025), showing ALMA observations of the GM Aur protoplanetary disc at 1.3mm (Band 6) and 2.1mm (Band 4). Left panels are the sky-plane images from Huang et al. (2020); right panels show the same observations de-projected.

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Matthew Kenworthy @mattkenworthy.bsky.social · 8d

Cugno and Grant @sierragrant.bsky.social with “A Carbon-rich Disk Surrounding a Planetary-mass Companion” detected using #JWST - an impressive detection of several different carbon molecules that are very promising for #exomoon formation around the directly imaged #exoplanet CT Cha b ☄

An image of the planetary companion CT Cha b shown as a red dot next to its parent star, with a spectrum from 12 to 16 microns from JWST showing several rotational and vibrational bands in emission for several carbon molecules.

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Matthew Kenworthy @mattkenworthy.bsky.social · 8d

Congratulations to you and the team, this is a very cool result!

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Reposted by Matthew Kenworthy

Marco Langbroek @marcolangbroek.bsky.social · 15d

Herfstequinox

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Matthew Kenworthy @mattkenworthy.bsky.social · 22d

A very cool result! Julo+ with a paper on “Stellar halo subtraction … with integral field spectroscopy… on the PDS70, HTLup, and YSES1 systems” showing that the YSES 1b #exoplanet has a lot of emission lines - H alpha , H beta, He I, Ca H and K triplets, Na in absorption… oh my! #astrodon ☄

Two spectra of the planet YSES 1b. The left hand spectrum shows a huge peak of Hydrogen alpha emission, and the right hand spectrum shows Calcium II triplet in emission, next to a fuzzy Sodium absorption feature.

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Matthew Kenworthy @mattkenworthy.bsky.social · 26d

Thanks! The scary bit is that if we didn't have GRAVITY astrometry, we would have kept calling it a planet for a few more years.... its velocity really is consistent with a bound Keplerian orbit around the star...

Matthew Kenworthy @mattkenworthy.bsky.social · 26d

Some sad #exoplanets news in a paper led by me: “YSES 2b is a background star”. A distant M dwarf star some 2 kiloparsecs behind the star just so happens to have a non-zero proper motion in EXACTLY the wrong direction: this required multiple GRAVITY observations to solve… #astrosci #astrodon

A coiled spiral representing proper motion plus parallax shows a fit to several astrometric points, showing that the object next to the star YSES 2 is probably a very distant M dwarf star far away in our Galaxy. Drat, damn and blast!

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Matthew Kenworthy @mattkenworthy.bsky.social · 26d

My periodic reminder for #astrosci #astrodon #exoplanets Early Career Researchers to please, please, please have a simple web site with your current email address on it - rationale here: kenworthy.space/advice/

A pen sketch of a web page for an astronomer, showing name, email, optional phone number, and professional contact details, with a one sentence summary of their research and an ADS link.

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Matthew Kenworthy @mattkenworthy.bsky.social · 26d

These maps are utterly amazing, the author wrote up detailed descriptions and design choices in the GitHub repos - really detailed and brilliant work! #astrosci

Luke Steuber @lukesteuber.com · 26d

This is also amazing and she open sourced the method

The Geology of the Moon

A map of basins, lava flows, valleys, and impact craters on the Earth's Moon.

tabletopwhale.com

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Matthew Kenworthy @mattkenworthy.bsky.social · 28d

Right, now I wonder where WISPIT 2 is in this box....?

Emily Hunt @emily.space · 28d

What happens when a star cluster disperses? Well, it forms a stream of stars - and those streams are all around us!

In a new paper by Sebastian Ratzenböck at the CfA / @univie.ac.at, we looked into streams near to the Sun, and found that the Milky Way's disk is *full* of streams! 🔭☄️🧪 #galactic

Figure from the paper showing detected streams in the Milky Way in Cartesian coordinates, where streams are shown as highlighted volumes. The Sun is at X=Y=Z 0 pc (the red cross): so these streams are all around us!

Matthew Kenworthy @mattkenworthy.bsky.social · 29d

The horse is lovely but I had an actual pang of longing to be back in Tucson seeing those mountains... 🏔️🏔️🏔️

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Matthew Kenworthy @mattkenworthy.bsky.social · 29d

Two papers announcing the discovery of a directly imaged 6 Jupiter mass planet around binary system HD 143811 AB Squicciarini+ and Jones+ in Sco-Cen - Keck, Gemini and VLT all imaging this companion and confirmed with several years of common proper motion. #astrodon #exoplanet #exosci

Figure from Squicciarini et al. showing three panels with a white dot on a black and blue stippled background, indicating the location of the planet in GPI and SPHERE IRDIS data.&10;

Three panel image from Jones et al. showing a white dot on a stippled background. The planet is in the 11 o'clock position in all three images.

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Matthew Kenworthy @mattkenworthy.bsky.social · Sep 7

Our doggo comes in with a happy smile, flops over onto the tiles and sleeps. Currently outside sleeping by the back gate in the shade.

Matthew Kenworthy @mattkenworthy.bsky.social · Sep 3

Absolutely YES GO FOR IT!

Matthew Kenworthy @mattkenworthy.bsky.social · Sep 3

Excellent photo!

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Reposted by Matthew Kenworthy

Michael Stipe @michaelstipe.bsky.social · Aug 30

I can

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Matthew Kenworthy @mattkenworthy.bsky.social · Sep 1

Rings are everywhere! A new ring around Quaoar. Very cool.

astrafoxen @astrafoxen.bsky.social · Aug 29

weyWHAT

An unexpected occultation discovery of a potential 2nd moon or 3rd ring arc around dwarf planet Quaoar!

The new moon/ring is 30±2 km wide and seems to be 5757 km from Quaoar—suspiciously close to 7:2 orbital resonance with Quaoar's big moon Weywot!

iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3... ☄️

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Matthew Kenworthy @mattkenworthy.bsky.social · Aug 28

FWIW I'll share the link with the rest of the WISPIT team so they get the tune stuck in their head too :)

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Matthew Kenworthy @mattkenworthy.bsky.social · Aug 27

You said it, not me! 😁