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Reposted by Sierra Grant

AAS Nova @aasnova.org · 5d

AAS Nova turned 10 this year! For our 2,000th post, we’re looking back on the past decade of astronomy research. aasnova.org/2025/10/03/a... @aas.org 🔭🧪

AAS Nova Celebrates 10 Years of Astronomy Research News

AAS Nova turned 10 this year! For our 2,000th post, we're looking back on the past decade of astronomy research.

aasnova.org

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Reposted by Sierra Grant

ESA Space Science @science.esa.int · 9d

Moon formation drama, a bit more understood 🌚

The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has found evidence of a ‘construction yard’ for moons around a large exoplanet, CT Cha b, which lies 625 light-years from Earth.

Read more 👉 www.esa.int/Science_Expl... 🔭 🧪 ☄️

This is an illustration of a young planet with a surrounding disc of dust and gas, potentially forming moons. The planet, which appears red, is shown at lower right, enveloped by a cloudy disc. The host star appears at upper left, and glows yellow, with its own reddish disc of debris. The black background of space is speckled with stars. At the bottom of the illustration, graphics of molecules are listed in the following order: Acetylene, Carbon Dioxide, Ethane, Benzene, Hydrogen cyanide.

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Reposted by Sierra Grant

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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Sierra Grant @sierragrant.bsky.social · 8d

Thank you! It was a fun journey to get here. Soon we'll be able to see if this carbon richness is the norm for these objects or not!

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Reposted by Sierra Grant

AAS Press Office @press.aas.org · 9d

Space Telescope Science Institute: NASA’s JWST Studies Moon-Forming Disk Around Massive Planet science.nasa.gov/science-rese...

NASA’s Webb Telescope Studies Moon-Forming Disk Around Massive Planet - NASA Science

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has provided the first direct measurements of the chemical and physical properties of a potential moon-forming disk

science.nasa.gov

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Reposted by Sierra Grant

Patrick Tamburo @tamburo.bsky.social · 9d

SO PROUD OF MY (FUTURE*) WIFE @sierragrant.bsky.social

*FUTURE MEANING SUNDAY

Space Telescope Science Institute @stsci.edu · 9d

#NASAWebb has found the first direct evidence of potential moon formation around a giant exoplanet. The discovery is shedding light on how such systems evolve and why moons could be potentially habitable worlds: https://bit.ly/46xGodN 🔭 🧪

An illustration of a young planet with a surrounding disk of dust and gas potentially forming moons. The planet, which appears dark red, is shown at lower right, circled by a cloudy, clumpy reddish orange-colored disk. The host star appears at upper left, and glows yellow, with its own reddish disk of debris. The disk that surrounds the planet takes up about half the illustration. The black background of space is speckled with stars. At the bottom of the illustration, graphics of molecules are listed in the following order: Acetylene, Carbon Dioxide, Ethane, Benzene, Hydrogen cyanide. The words Artist’s Concept appear at upper right.

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Sierra Grant @sierragrant.bsky.social · 9d

PRESS RELEASE DAY! Could not be prouder of this result and so happy that it's now out!!! 🤩✨

Thanks to the team at @stsci.edu for the wonderful write-up and image!

Space Telescope Science Institute @stsci.edu · 9d

#NASAWebb has found the first direct evidence of potential moon formation around a giant exoplanet. The discovery is shedding light on how such systems evolve and why moons could be potentially habitable worlds: https://bit.ly/46xGodN 🔭 🧪

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Reposted by Sierra Grant

Carnegie Science @carnegiescience.bsky.social · 14d

TOMORROW: Two talks, one big night of discovery!

Join Earth & Planets Laboratory postdocs Sierra Grant & Shubham Kanodia as they reveal how planets are born—and the giants that defy the rules. #NeighborhoodLecture

📅 Sept 25 | 6:30 PM ET | DC & Online
🔗 RSVP: carnegiescience.edu/birth-worlds...

Birth of Worlds, Rise of Giants

Join Carnegie postdocs Shubham Kanodia and Sierra Grant as they explore the secrets of distant worlds—from the birth of new planets to giant rule-breakers that defy expectations—in a special double…

carnegiescience.edu

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Reposted by Sierra Grant

Michael Wong @miquai.bsky.social · 18d

The best part of my job is the people I get to work with 🪐💙

Three planeteers look through a mockup of a Curiosity rover wheel

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Sierra Grant @sierragrant.bsky.social · 19d

Yes! Came out this morning -- the first chemistry study of a disk around a planetary-mass companion! Truly only possible with the power of MIRI MRS: angular resolution 🤝 spectral resolution

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Sierra Grant @sierragrant.bsky.social · 19d

What an incredible thing to do every week! And yay for hitting such a high number!

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Sierra Grant @sierragrant.bsky.social · 19d

We detect benzene (C6H6), which comes in the form of this fun ring!

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Sierra Grant @sierragrant.bsky.social · 19d

Thanks, Linn!! It still blows my mind too...!

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Reposted by Sierra Grant

Linn Boldt-Christmas @nplinnspace.bsky.social · 19d

🤯🤯🤯 circumstellar disk chemistry? No, circumPLANETARY disk chemistry!

What an INCREDIBLE result! Check it out below ⬇️🧪🔭🪐

Sierra Grant @sierragrant.bsky.social · 19d

Today is a special paper day for me: for the first time we can do chemistry in a circumplanetary disk around a planetary-mass companion! Gabriele Cugno and I used JWST to tease out the signal of CT Cha b, finding a rich carbon chemistry (7 molecules + 1 isotopolog detected)! arxiv.org/abs/2509.15209

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Reposted by Sierra Grant

Patrick Tamburo @tamburo.bsky.social · 19d

🪐🔭 JWST is letting us learn about disks around PLANETARY-MASS OBJECTS!!!

Sierra Grant @sierragrant.bsky.social · 19d

Today is a special paper day for me: for the first time we can do chemistry in a circumplanetary disk around a planetary-mass companion! Gabriele Cugno and I used JWST to tease out the signal of CT Cha b, finding a rich carbon chemistry (7 molecules + 1 isotopolog detected)! arxiv.org/abs/2509.15209

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Sierra Grant @sierragrant.bsky.social · 19d

This started as preparation for Cycle 4 -- and made it possible for those proposals to succeed! Then it was just two people who were so excited to dig into the data and see where it led. I'm immensely proud of this work, grateful to have done this with Gabriele, and so excited for the data to come!✨

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Sierra Grant @sierragrant.bsky.social · 19d

This C-rich chemistry is in stark contrast with the disk around the host star, CT Cha A, where we only find O-bearing molecules. CT Cha A fits in well with other Sun-like objects, while CT Cha b extends disk chemistry trends down to the planetary-mass regime.

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Sierra Grant @sierragrant.bsky.social · 19d

Today is a special paper day for me: for the first time we can do chemistry in a circumplanetary disk around a planetary-mass companion! Gabriele Cugno and I used JWST to tease out the signal of CT Cha b, finding a rich carbon chemistry (7 molecules + 1 isotopolog detected)! arxiv.org/abs/2509.15209

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Sierra Grant @sierragrant.bsky.social · Sep 4

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions about Carnegie! It's an amazing place to be a postdoc!

Johanna Teske @johannateske.bsky.social · Sep 4

The advertisement for Carnegie EPL's 2026 postdoctoral fellowship is out! aas.org/jobregister/... We are also happy to host external fellowships like NHFP, NSF, and 51 Peg b (the latter is due Oct 3rd, one month away!). Please feel free to reach out if you have questions. (1/2)

aas.org

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Sierra Grant @sierragrant.bsky.social · Aug 7

Another MINDS JWST paper! We explore the stark transition from H2O-dominated spectra in Sun-like systems to the carbon-rich chemistry seen for low-mass objects. We don't know exactly what is driving this trend, but we explore the possibilities that may be acting in concert.
arxiv.org/pdf/2508.04692

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Sierra Grant @sierragrant.bsky.social · Aug 5

New MINDS paper from Nicolas Kurtovic, focused on binary systems. Spectra, extended emission, variability, multi-observatory analysis -- there's something for everyone!
arxiv.org/pdf/2508.02576

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Sierra Grant @sierragrant.bsky.social · Jul 9

Or permanent jobs 😬

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Sierra Grant @sierragrant.bsky.social · Jun 17

Our cat, but now in spherical form 😍

Patrick Tamburo @tamburo.bsky.social · Jun 17

And here's the 40-degree spherical harmonic expansion of my cat 😭😭😭

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Sierra Grant @sierragrant.bsky.social · Jun 16

A spotted star, a (very!) misaligned planet, and awesome gifs, what more could you want?! 🤩

Patrick Tamburo @tamburo.bsky.social · Jun 16

TOI-3884 b is a planet around an M dwarf whose transits show persistent spot crossings. We show that the star's rotational and spot-crossing variations can be modeled with a misaligned planet transiting a large polar spot (confirming last week's results from Mori et al.)
arxiv.org/abs/2506.11998

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Reposted by Sierra Grant

Patrick Tamburo @tamburo.bsky.social · Jun 13

Now published in AJ! We used Tierras to measure the 23-day rotation period of a K dwarf and found that the orbit of its transiting planet is aligned with the star's spin axis. Stay tuned as we measure true obliquities for a larger sample!

iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...

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