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Peter Gao

@planetarygao.bsky.social

2.9K followers 810 following 430 posts

Staff Scientist @ Carnegie EPL. Planetary and exoplanet atmospheres. He/Him/His. Black Lives Matter. Trekkie. Opinions are my own.

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Peter Gao @planetarygao.bsky.social · Aug 3

The 51 Pegasi b Postdoctoral Fellowship is now accepting applications! Carnegie Science is one of the hosts and applicants can work at the Earth and Planets Laboratory in DC (where I am) and/or the Observatories in Pasadena. Applications are due on Oct 3rd!

www.hsfoundation.org/programs/sci...

51 Pegasi b Fellowship

The 51 Pegasi b Fellowship provides exceptional postdoctoral scientists with the opportunity to conduct theoretical, observational, and experimental research in planetary astronomy.

www.hsfoundation.org

Peter Gao @planetarygao.bsky.social · 1d

I don’t like how moist it looks

Kevin M. Gill @kevinmgill.bsky.social · 1d

Jasper: If melted crayons were a rock

Red and yellow jasper

Red and yellow jasper

Red and yellow jasper

Red and yellow jasper

Peter Gao @planetarygao.bsky.social · 2d

It is but only for those with government PIs and Co-PIs

Peter Gao @planetarygao.bsky.social · 2d

I’m not panicking you’re panicking

Screenshot of Google calendar event titled “JWST CYCLE 5 DEADLINE” with the description “AHHHHHHHH”

Peter Gao @planetarygao.bsky.social · 2d

a close up of a man in a batman costume looking out of a window .

ALT: a close up of a man in a batman costume looking out of a window .

media.tenor.com

Peter Gao @planetarygao.bsky.social · 3d

if you saw an earlier version of this post no you didn’t

Peter Gao @planetarygao.bsky.social · 3d

Costco knows How It’s Done

Shin Ramyun from Costco with Rumi on it

Peter Gao @planetarygao.bsky.social · 3d

are they though

squinting Thor meme

Peter Gao @planetarygao.bsky.social · 3d

it’s such a shame that our top minds are wasted working on AI slop instead of a much more worthy calling: eliminating all mosquitos

Peter Gao @planetarygao.bsky.social · 3d

they should redo super size me but with Costco hot dogs

Peter Gao @planetarygao.bsky.social · 3d

Netflix absolutely missed the boat by not investing in kpop demon hunters halloween costumes

Peter Gao @planetarygao.bsky.social · 3d

fun with phonics

Kids phonics toy spelling out dax

Jadzia Dax from DS9

Peter Gao @planetarygao.bsky.social · 7d

it’s crazy how we just accepted scam phone calls as a fact of life now like yeah please ruin one of our main modes communication we don’t mind

Reposted by Peter Gao

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 ...

Reposted by Peter Gao

Michael Wong @miquai.bsky.social · 28d

I have a line at the beginning of my Research Statement about how many exoplanets we've discovered so far.

Every year I write faculty applications, I have to update that number.

I swear, whatever that number is the year I finally get a job will become my new favorite number.

Reposted by Peter Gao

Emily Hunt @emily.space · Sep 8

Our galaxy is full of clouds of dust and gas. We can guess that they probably move, but it's hard to tell for sure. Until now!

A groundbreaking new paper by Martin Piecka et al. at @univie.ac.at presents the first *ever* direct measurement of the proper motion of the ISM! 🔭☄️🧪 #galactic

Their Figure 2, showing the densest part of the Corona Australis cloud between 2017 (dark red) to 2021 (dark yellow), with two epochs in between. The entire bottom-right of the cloud is consistently moving towards the bottom and left.

Reposted by Peter Gao

Alex Santerne @alexsanterne.bsky.social · Sep 8

This is the spectroscopic transit of a #planet with an orbital period of 1.5 YEARS !! #HIP41378 🪐

In case you missed the great paper led by Salomé Grouffal (#ProudAdvisor), arXived over the summer, here is a recap'.

#Thread [1/8]

Reposted by Peter Gao

BK. Titanji @boghuma.bsky.social · Sep 8

David Baltimore passed away this weekend. A pioneer of molecular virology who won the Nobel prize in medicine & physiology for his discovery of viral reverse transcriptase. This essay he wrote in 2018 reflecting of his 60yr career in science is a great read.
www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

Sixty Years of Discovery | Annual Reviews

Each of us is a story. Mine is a story of doing science for 60 years, and I am honored to be asked to tell it. Even though this autobiography was written for the Annual Review of Immunology, I have ch...

www.annualreviews.org

Reposted by Peter Gao

ClimateBook @climatebook.bsky.social · Sep 7

Congratulations to Tim Lichtenberg, an alumnus of the Oxford Planetary Climate Dynamics Group, on being awarded the Europlanet Early Career Medal! The trio of medals has gone to a great bunch, recognizing three career stages.

www.europlanet.org/tim-lichtenb...

Tim Lichtenberg, Benoit Carry and Jean Schneider Honoured by New Europlanet Career Medals – Europlanet

www.europlanet.org

Peter Gao @planetarygao.bsky.social · Sep 8

*phone rings*

Me: Hello?
Them: Hello sir, this is the Chase Fraud Department. Can you confirm that you opened a new checking account yesterday?
Me: Uhhh how do I know this is Chase
Them: *hangs up*

Peter Gao @planetarygao.bsky.social · Aug 26

citing an exoplanet paper from 2010

Old Luke shouting “The sacred texts!” meme from The Last Jedi

Peter Gao @planetarygao.bsky.social · Aug 26

NEW on the arXiv: “CO2 coma of 3I/ATLAS a tell-tale sign of aliens’ reliance on fossil fuels as main spacecraft power source“ by H. Astronomer

Peter Gao @planetarygao.bsky.social · Aug 26

the enshittification of The Learning, Discovery, and History Channels in the last 20 years is a rarely talked about but extremely blatant sign of the collapse of civilization

Reposted by Peter Gao

Meg Schwamb @megschwamb.bsky.social · Aug 25

JWST successfully observed interstellar object (ISO) 3I/ATLAS. Interesting results. The composition of the coma could be due to a few different scenarios. Additional JWST observations of the object closer to the sun are needed. science.nasa.gov/blogs/3iatla...

NASA’s Webb Space Telescope Observes Interstellar Comet - NASA Science

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope observed interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS Aug. 6, with its Near-Infrared Spectrograph instrument. The research team has been

science.nasa.gov

Reposted by Peter Gao

Dr Jake Taylor @astrojake.bsky.social · Aug 25

You know when people say you’ll sleep better if you stop using screens before bed, are they referring to the big screen, the medium screen, or the small screen?

Peter Gao @planetarygao.bsky.social · Aug 25

had a dream about resolving Overleaf comments