Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

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Sarah Kendrew @sarahkendrew.bsky.social · 25d

The petition link is in the article - if you’re in the local DMV community you can sign for support!

Karl Galle @karlgalle.bsky.social · 25d

The linked article notes that the union for Goddard Space Flight Center employees has asked for signatures on a petition requesting that this decision be reconsidered and the visitor center kept open: hyattsvillewire.com/2025/09/12/g...

Goddard Visitor Center in Greenbelt to Close in October Hyattsville Wire

NASA has announced it intends to close the Goddard Visitor Center, long a favorite spot for families on the Route 1 corridor.

hyattsvillewire.com

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Matthew Buckley @physicsmatt.bsky.social · Sep 10

Right now, academic freedom is under attack in the United States. Actually, "under attack" undersells it. "Existentially threatened" is better, along with "already lost in many places."

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saurabh w jha @sublunar.bsky.social · Sep 6

Come for the fascinating historical poetry about exploding stars, stay for the excellent technical footnote about what different communities are referring to when they talk about “type Iax” supernovae.

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · Sep 6

Thanks to @slavkobogdanov.bsky.social for pointing me to this really cool 🔭 history paper! arxiv.org/abs/2509.04127

New Arabic records from Cairo on supernovae 1181 and 1006

The remnant of the historical supernova SN 1181 is under discussion: While the previously suggested G130.7+3.1 (3C58) appears too old (3000-5000 yr), the unusual star IRAS 00500+6713 with a surroundin...

arxiv.org

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👻SAAAAAAAAHHHHHHvik Ford 🎃 @saavikford.bsky.social · Sep 5

A nice write-up of the new @cunygc-astro.bsky.social CUNY-Rutgers-Columbia partnership around Rubin LSST!!

🔭

CUNY Graduate Center @thegraduatecenter.bsky.social · Sep 5

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory has opened a new window to the universe — and Graduate Center scientists @saavikford.bsky.social and @emilylrice.me are among the first to peer through it www.gc.cuny.edu/news/2000-as... @cunygcastro.bsky.social @joshuatan.bsky.social

2,000 Asteroids and Counting: CUNY Joins a Cosmic Treasure Hunt

Scientists at the Graduate Center and CUNY are among the first to explore massive snapshots of space from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.

www.gc.cuny.edu

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OzGrav @ozgrav.bsky.social · Sep 1

Congratulations to OzGrav's Deputy Director, Professor Tamara Davis AM, recipient of the 2025 Moyal Medal awarded by Macquarie University for her outstanding contributions to astrophysics and cosmology.

Read more here: lighthouse.mq.edu.au/media-releas...

Milestone Moyal Medal awarded to astrophysicist Tamara Davis

Professor Davis, an astrophysicist at UQ’s School of Mathematics, will receive the medal and deliver the 2025 Moyal Lecture on Thursday 9 October. Her lecture, titled ‘New light on dark energy: the…

lighthouse.mq.edu.au

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AstroArxiv @astroarxiv.bsky.social · Aug 28

Tip of the Red Giant Branch Distances to NGC 1316, NGC 1380, NGC 1404, & NGC 4457: A Pilot Study of a Parallel Distance Ladder Using Type Ia Supernovae in Early-Type Host Galaxies. Max J. B. Newman et. al. https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.20023

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · Aug 25

An image I made quite a while ago finally got published in a multi-image press release at the Chandra website today. HST, Chandra, VLA, and JWST data all in one.
flic.kr/p/2qb3dUX
chandra.si.edu/photo/2025/c...

An extravagantly colored spiral galaxy. Red, orange, dusty arms of infrared light blend together in one splotchy, swirling mess. Bright patches of speckled star formation dot the arms all over, some tiny and some large and complex. Soft, blue x-ray light is seen along a diagonal axis from the upper left to lower right, along with some small fuzzy dots speckling the image in seemingly unrelated ways. The center is bright white with relatively smaller magenta colored jets along the same diagonal axis.

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Huei, PhD 🌟 @starlights.bsky.social · Aug 24

very cool new result led by Steve Schulze focused on SN2021yfj - the first of a new supernova subclass, Type Ien (“one - e - n”). This star lost its H, He, & C layers, and shows strong emission from the inner S + Si layers !! Check out his Science Friday interview about this science!

🧪🔭☄️

Science Friday @scifri.bsky.social · Aug 22

A supernova some 2.2 billion light-years from Earth lost its outer layers of hydrogen and helium, allowing scientists to get a glimpse of its inner shell. 🔭

What Lies Beneath The Outer Layers Of A Star?

Astronomers found a supernova whose lighter outer layers had been stripped away, revealing an inner shell rich in silicon and sulfur.

buff.ly

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saurabh w jha @sublunar.bsky.social · Aug 25

My favorite galaxy. Spot the difference between this image and my profile pic. #SN1998bu #M96

European Space Agency @esa.int · Aug 25

📸 This NASA/ESA #Hubble Space Telescope image shows spiral galaxy Messier 96, whose asymmetric appearance may be the result of a galactic tug of war... 🧪🔭

esahubble.org/images/potw2... @science.esa.int @stsci.edu #astronomy

Spiral galaxy Messier 96 tilted nearly face-on to us, with a slightly unusual shape. Its spiral arms form an oval-shaped ring around the galaxy’s disc, filled with blue light from stars, as well as pink glowing gas bubbles where new stars are forming. Threads of dark red dust swirl around the brightly glowing core, blocking some of its light. The dust lanes extend into and follow the spiral arms.

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Space Telescope Science Institute @stsci.edu · Aug 12

#NASARoman’s High-Latitude Time-Domain Survey will find exploding stars that act as signposts to measure the universe’s expansion and the influence of dark energy. (1/6) 🧵 🔭 🧪

$Two side-by-side images of a zoomed in portion of a galaxy, showing the same field of view. The left panel contains a very bright star with four diffraction spikes just left of center. In the right panel, the star is still visible but much fainter.$

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European Space Agency @esa.int · Jul 28

📷 This NASA/ESA #Hubble image shows spiral galaxy NGC 1309, with its bluish stars, brown gas clouds and white centre, as well as hundreds of distant background galaxies (nearly every smudge, streak and blob is an individual galaxy!)🧪🔭 @stsci.edu @science.esa.int

🔗 esahubble.org/images/potw2...

A top-down view of a spiral galaxy, showing its brightly shining centre, its broad spiral arms and the faint halo around its disc, as well as distant galaxies and stars on a dark background. Large blue clouds of gas speckled with small stars and strands of dark dust swirl around the galaxy’s disc. A couple of the background galaxies are large enough that their own swirling spiral arms can be seen.

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Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · Jul 28

📣📣 BOOK NEWS 📣📣

I'm excited to share the cover and release date of Book #2, #EdgeOfSpaceTime, which is now available for PREORDER!!

You can order from ANY bookstore, including your local indie!

More details on preordering here:
www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/746817...

What's the book about? 🧵

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Christian Christensen @chrchristensen.bsky.social · Jul 18

Talk about The Wire, Sopranos, Game of Thrones all you want, but the greatest US television program ever made is Sesame Street. It's not even close. 50+ years of treating kids across class, ethnicity, religion not as mini-consumers...but as citizens with a stake in this world.

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Sherrilyn Ifill @sifill.bsky.social · Jul 9

An absolutely monumental piece from @polgreen.bsky.social this morning. Appreciate the research, array of sources, and nuanced thinking on the complicated issue of migration.
Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2025/01/31/o...

Opinion | Something Extraordinary Is Happening All Over the World

www.nytimes.com

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Ele Willoughby @minouette.bsky.social · Jul 4

Happy birthday to #astronomer Henrietta Swan Leavitt (1868-1921) who set the scale of our Universe. 🧪🐡👩🏼‍🔬🎢🔭#histsci Behind her in my portrait is a line showing stellar luminosity (capital L with subscript sun-symbol, a circle with a dot) as a function of time (t). She is printed over constellations 🧵

My linocut portrait of Henrietta Swan Leavitt is printed in silvery lavender ink on Japanese kozo (or mulberry paper). Behind her is a line showing stellar luminosity (capital L with subscript sun-symbol, a circle with a dot) as a function of time (t). She is printed over constellations in gold (Cepheus, Cassiopeia, Draco, Ursa Minor and Andromeda). ⁠ ⁠

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NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory @vrubinobs.bsky.social · Jun 23

Introducing...your sneak peek at the cosmos captured by NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory!

Can you guess these regions of sky?

This is just a small peek...join us at 11am US EDT for your full First Look at how Rubin will #CaptureTheCosmos! 🔭🧪

#RubinFirstLook
ls.st/rubin-first-look-livestream

A sprawling, textured field of galaxies scattered across the deep black of space. It is filled with the delicate smudges and glowing cores of galaxies of many shapes, sizes and colors, as well as the bright multi-colored points of stars. The image focuses on a collection of interacting galaxies connected by delicate streams of stars. At top center lies a large elliptical galaxy that is dense and smooth, like a polished stone glowing with golden light. Like delicate spider silk or stretched taffy, these stellar bridges link the large elliptical to the few larger galaxies beneath, evidence of past collisions.

All throughout the image, thousands of galaxies gather in clusters or are spread throughout, like glittering gems strewn on a table. Some are sharp-edged and spiral, like coiled ribbons; others round and diffuse, like polished pebbles. Still others are just smudges of various colors against the black of space. The background is peppered with pinpoint stars in reds, yellows, and blues, crisp against the velvet black.

A cosmic tapestry of glowing tan and pink gas clouds with dark dust lanes. In the upper right, the Trifid Nebula resembles a small flower in space. Its soft, pinkish gas petals are surrounded by blue gas, and streaked with dark, finger-like veins of dust that divide it into three parts. It radiates a gentle, misty glow, diffuse and soft like the warmth of breath on a cold hand. To the lower left, the much larger Lagoon Nebula stretches wide like a churning sea of magenta gas, with bright blue, knotted clumps sprinkled throughout where new stars are born. Both nebulae are embedded in a soft tan backdrop of gas that is brighter on the left than on the right, etched with dark tendrils of dust and sprinkled with the pinpricks of millions of stars.

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NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory @vrubinobs.bsky.social · Jun 22

Welcome to a new era in astronomy and astrophysics ✨🔭🧪

Get ready to join us virtually for the reveal of Rubin's first images! #RubinFirstLook
🗓️ June 23, 2025
⌚️ 11am US EDT
🔗 ls.st/rubin-first-look-livestream

ls.st

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Dr. Lucky Tran @luckytran.com · Jun 12

Better save a copy of this now

CDC Table: Recommended Child and Adolescent Immunization Schedule for Ages 18 Years or Younger, United States, 2025

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Grace Telford @ogtelford.bsky.social · Jun 11

Delighted that the first paper from our Cy2 JWST program was published today, reporting the discovery of molecular hydrogen in the 3% Solar metallicity galaxy Leo P. This was a very fun project with @karinsandstrom.bsky.social strom.bsky.social and fabulous co-authors! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Molecular hydrogen in the extremely metal- and dust-poor galaxy Leo P - Nature

Observations from the JWST MIRI-MRS instrument reveal the detection of rotational emission from molecular hydrogen near the only O-type star in the 3% solar metallicity galaxy Leo P, providing confirm...

www.nature.com

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Alejandro Soto @soto.space · Jun 10

If you are interested in supporting NASA science and exploration, and saving it from capricious budget cuts, here's one thing you can do: sign this petition being sent to Senate and House members of their respective appropriations committees. Two days left to sign!

www.planetary.org/advocacy-act...

Advocacy Action Center

The Planetary Society is organizing a new space constituency that is educated, empowered, and loud.

www.planetary.org

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Roman for Scientists @nancyromansci.bsky.social · Jun 10

The STScI Town Hall at #AAS246 was the ultimate prep guide for Roman launch 🚀

We got the scoop 🍨on data products, community analysis tools, the Roman Science Collaboration, core community survey designs, and more.

Roman’s coming— are you ready?! 🔭☄️

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NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory @vrubinobs.bsky.social · May 21

The @nsf-@doescience Rubin Observatory will take so many pictures of supernovae, they'll feel like POP stars 💥🤩

Rubin will observe millions of Type Ia supernovae, allowing scientists to calculate the distances to their galaxies and map our Universe🌌

🔭🧪

youtu.be/Gw7CBUjsHV8

Boom! Using Supernovae to Map our Expanding Universe

Where are we in the Universe, and how do we know? How do the violent deaths of stars, called supernovae, help us learn about the history and evolution of the...

youtu.be

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saurabh w jha @sublunar.bsky.social · May 10

Bihar se.

The Serfs (youtube.com/theserfstv) @theserfstv.bsky.social · May 9

This kid runs circles around the reporter

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Stan Oklobdzija @stano.bsky.social · May 9

"Masked security forces captured an opposition leader in the coastal province of New Jersey as regime officials continue their months-long crack-down against pro-democracy elements in the embattled United States. The arrest comes as the regime issued calls for summary detentions without trial."

Marco Foster @marcofoster.bsky.social · May 9

HAPPENING NOW: Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was just taken into custody while protesting outside the Delaney Hall ICE detention center

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