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Reposted by Hannah Wakeford

JWST Observer @jwstobserver.bsky.social · 1d

For #JWST Cycle 5, proposals should be submitted even if observations appear non-schedulable in APT due to guide star availability in bright crowded fields. Get the details: ow.ly/qlTG50X8LK8

Illustration of magnified Webb mirror hexagons showing different images of Webb's science capabilities with an image of the telescope in the middle hexagon

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Hannah Wakeford @stellarplanet.bsky.social · 3d

It is that time of year when these damn pandas plague us all!
#JWSTC5 #exoplanets

a panda bear is hanging from a tree branch .

Alt: a panda bear is hanging from a tree branch then falling out of sight as it breaks

media.tenor.com

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Reposted by Hannah Wakeford

Chris Lintott @chrislintott.bsky.social · 4d

London! Next Friday! The Universe WILL end in the company of @astrokatie.com, Steve Pretty, many musicians and myself. Do please come join us wegottickets.com/event/676292

The End of the Universe

After a magnificent* 13.8 billion years** astronomer Chris Lintott (Sky at Night) and Steve Pretty (Hackney Colliery Band) lead a funeral and wake for the universe, as it sadly heads into heat death. ...

wegottickets.com

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Reposted by Hannah Wakeford

Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 6d

As a theoretical cosmologist, I'm frequently asked "what is the benefit of the work you're doing for people's lives?" Nothing I work on makes money or cures disease.

There are a few different answers one can give, at various levels of "convincing" / "actually relevant to why the work is done."

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Reposted by Hannah Wakeford

Alexandra Witze @alexwitze.bsky.social · 7d

Thirty years ago Monday, astronomers announced the first planet around a Sunlike star. Since then they have cataloged more than 6,000 alien worlds.

I asked a bunch of astronomers what their favorite exoplanet is, and wrote about it for @nature.com. What's yours?

🧪 #astronomy

These alien planets are astronomers’ favourites: here’s why

Space scientists look back on 30 years of exoplanet discoveries — from rows of massive ‘super-Earths‘ to worlds with perfectly synchronized orbits.

www.nature.com

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Reposted by Hannah Wakeford

Caroline Morley @astrocaroline.bsky.social · 8d

UT Austin Astro is hiring! It's an open call, but definitely interested in getting another exoplanet person! Feel free to reach out with any questions about the department or living in Austin! aas.org/jobregister/...

Tenure-Track Assistant Professor Position in Astronomy | American Astronomical Society

The Department of Astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin invites applications for a tenure-track faculty position at the Assistant Professor level to begin in August 2026. We welcome applicati...

aas.org

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Reposted by Hannah Wakeford

The Cosmic Shambles Network @cosmicshambles.com · 10d

Today feels like a good time to announce ten new special guests for this year's Nine Lessons shows including @particleclara.bsky.social, @mariaviolaris.bsky.social, @mrsamsee.bsky.social, @stellarplanet.bsky.social, @akshatrathi.bsky.social, John Hegly and more! Tix cosmicshambles.com/ninelessons

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Reposted by Hannah Wakeford

Simon Clark @simonoxfphys.com · 15d

This year we've been really swinging for the fences.

Our latest video is our biggest one yet, nearly an hour long and involving half a dozen experts.

Asking "Should lying about climate change be illegal?" and, if so, how do we make it so?

youtu.be/FKtCuwfUCJg

Should lying about climate change be illegal?

YouTube video by Simon Clark

youtu.be

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Hannah Wakeford @stellarplanet.bsky.social · 14d

A proud part of the ~12% even though schools not that long ago tried to force it out of me. Data always requires careful and measured interpretation.

Channon Visscher @cvisscher.bsky.social · 15d

I think about this plot all the time, and especially with respect to things like autism. If you’d lived in 1940 and had access to this data, would it feel like an “epidemic” of left-handedness?

Classic plot of the occurrence of left handedness by birth year. The plot starts at 5% in 1890, dips to near 3-4% around 1910 then rises until leveling off at 12% in 1960 onward

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Reposted by Hannah Wakeford

Space Telescope Science Institute @stsci.edu · 17d

Did you miss last week's Deep Space Dialogues with STScI's Nestor Espinoza, as he chatted about atmospheres of distant exoplanets? Watch it now and learn about how #NASAWebb is dramatically changing our understanding of planetary systems in the cosmos. 🔭 🧪

Alien Skies: Exploring Distant Exoplanet Atmospheres with Webb

YouTube video by Space Telescope Science Institute

www.youtube.com

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Reposted by Hannah Wakeford

Simon Clark @simonoxfphys.com · 23d

I'm looking for a part-time research assistant to help research and fact-check long form YouTube videos, with an emphasis on climate misinformation campaigns.

If you or someone you know would be a good fit, please check out this form! Applications close on 26/9.

forms.gle/mpyzcdjwv63C...

forms.gle

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Reposted by Hannah Wakeford

Sarah E Moran @offallingstars.bsky.social · Sep 9

✨✨✨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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Reposted by Hannah Wakeford

Dr Anjana Khatwa @anjanakhatwa.bsky.social · Sep 4

Happy Publication Day to The Whispers of Rock! A journey that started with the Nan Shepherd Prize to this epic work that reframes our relationship with rock.
Link to buy: anjanakhatwa.com/writing
#rockwhisperer #WhispersOfRock #naturwriting

Book called The Whispers of Rock on a background of orange sandstone

Hand holding a laminated siltstone. Words say what does it feel like to hold silence in your hands

Hand holding limestone with a sea urchin fossils. Text says what can you teach me about cycles of love and loss

Hands holding a piece of coal. Test says will you ever learn to let me go?

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Reposted by Hannah Wakeford

Met Office - weather and climate @metoffice.gov.uk · Sep 1

There's a decent chance of seeing the aurora tonight - it may be visible as far south as the Midlands (perhaps even further south) 🌃

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Hannah Wakeford @stellarplanet.bsky.social · Aug 26

A beautiful depiction of planet formation

Mark Marley @markmarley.bsky.social · Aug 26

The standard cartoon was pretty on point.

Artist conception of a giant planet forming in a stellar disk, clearing a gap.

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Hannah Wakeford @stellarplanet.bsky.social · Aug 16

It has been ten years since my PhD now officially marked with a new passport 🛂 taking it for a test drive to the US of A. See you in a week.

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Reposted by Hannah Wakeford

Josh Lothringer @jlothringer.bsky.social · Aug 15

I'm very excited to be able to share Yayaati Chachan's Hubble/WFC3 transit spectrum of ultra-hot Jupiter KELT-20b.

Using *all* of WFC3's grisms, we get a 0.2-1.7 micron spectrum showing absorption by metals at in the UV and only weak absorption by water in the IR. 🔭🪐

A plot of a spectrum of transit depth versus wavelength showing large NUV absorption and weak H2O absorption at NIR wavelengths.

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Reposted by Hannah Wakeford

RAS Journals @rasjournals.bsky.social · Jul 31

Published in #MNRAS: "Lightning activity on a tidally locked terrestrial exoplanet in storm-resolving simulations for a range of surface pressures", Sergeev et al. This is Fig. 4: to read the paper please visit academic.oup.com/mnras/articl... @oxfordacademic.bsky.social @royalastrosoc.bsky.social

Dayside average (a) air temperature, (b) cloud ice, (c) cloud liquid water, and (d) graupel as a function of height in our M09 simulations for the surface pressure of 0.25, 0.5, 1, 2, 4, 10 bar. The figure shows that with increasing surface pressure, the lapse rate becomes larger, the cloud water content diminishes, while the graupel content does not show a clear trend. Note that because the dry atmospheric mass differs between our simulations, the increase in the mass mixing ratios with pressure in this figure appears much greater than the increase in the vertically integrated cloud content shown in Figs 1(c) and 3.

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Hannah Wakeford @stellarplanet.bsky.social · Jul 31

I do my best writing early in the morning before getting out of my pajamas. I don’t know why I try to force it any other way to much stress and inefficiency.

a cartoon drawing of a person using a laptop with the words write written around them

ALT: a cartoon drawing of a person using a laptop with the words write written around them

media.tenor.com

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Reposted by Hannah Wakeford

Jayne Birkby @jaynebirkby.bsky.social · Jul 29

Yes, high spectral resolution in space is surely the future for exoplanets. It doesn't even need to be that "high" res, JWST's R=2,700 is delivering great science, just think what could be done with a R=3,000-5,000 integral field spectrograph behind a coronagraph on HWO 🤯

Dr Joanna Barstow @drjovian.bsky.social · Jul 29

Next up is Jean-Baptiste Ruffio urging everyone to consider the potential of moderate-to-high resolution spectroscopy for HWO. We need to consider what is the optimal resolution for detecting biosignatures - trade off between spreading light over more pixels and increased information content. #HWO25

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Hannah Wakeford @stellarplanet.bsky.social · Jul 28

If you want know all things #HabitableWorldsObservatory then follow @drjovian.bsky.social for the next two days as she posts from the #HWO25 meeting in Washington DC.
Thanks Jo for keeping us posted ☺️

Dr Joanna Barstow @drjovian.bsky.social · Jul 28

This week I'm lucky enough to be at the #HWO25 meeting, hearing and talking about the Habitable Worlds Observatory, its design and the (many) science cases feeding into it. We're being treated to a fantastic opening talk about the search for biosignatures from interim project scientist Giada Arney.

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Reposted by Hannah Wakeford

The Royal Society @royalsociety.org · Jul 17

Our new Faraday Discovery Fellowships Accelerated International Route provides a fast-track option for international mid-career researchers looking to relocate to the UK, providing up to £4m over a five-year period. Find out more: #RSGrants royalsociety.org/grants/farad...

Faraday Discovery Fellowships Accelerated International Route | Royal Society

The Faraday Discovery Fellowships Accelerated International Route provides a fast-track option for attracting mid-career researchers looking to relocate to the UK from overseas, providing up to £4m ov...

royalsociety.org

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Hannah Wakeford @stellarplanet.bsky.social · Jul 17

I love telling this story in the Tyndall lecture theater at Bristol and getting the students to help with repeating the same experiment she did. #EnvironmentalPhysics

The Royal Society @royalsociety.org · Jul 17

Born #OnThisDay in 1819 was Eunice Newton Foote. Her experiments with solar radiation and carbon dioxide may have lead her to be the first to hypothesise the greenhouse effect, three years before John Tyndall FRS published his work. #WomenInSTEM

llustration: Carlyn Iverson, NOAA Climate.gov.

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Reposted by Hannah Wakeford

Chris Lintott @chrislintott.bsky.social · Jul 13

Sunday plug for tomorrow’s excellent #SkyAtNight on the diversity of exoplanets, including a visit to @esa.int to see PLATO. Also happens to mark 25 years since my first appearance… www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

BBC Four - The Sky at Night, Exoplanets - Strange New Worlds

The team explore one of the newest areas of modern astronomy, the search for exoplanets.

www.bbc.co.uk

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Hannah Wakeford @stellarplanet.bsky.social · Jul 7

We also did not foresee the shit show that the world is throwing right now which meant many attendees could no longer attend at all and places were given to the reserve list as liberally as we could. Does not solve it but we tried I guess is what I am trying to say. We will try better

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