Blimey. 3 million volunteers. Thanks everyone. 🔭 🧪

"Duuuude!"

Before installing the detector it's essential to take some time out and see the gorgeous spectrum with your own eyes. It's impossible to capture what the eye sees but this photo gives you an idea ...

Finally some clarity on the #STFC budget: it's falling in real terms as UKRI spending rises. A conscious decision has been made to decrease UK funding for fundamental physics, despite all the evidence that our blue skies research is key for economic growth.

Thank you @resprofnews.bsky.social!

We are looking for two new PhD students to join our group at the University of Southern Queensland to work on exoplanet demographics and atmospheres. See AAS ad below.

aas.org/jobregister/...

Unexpected EHT intern alert!

This bird had gotten lost in the fog and appeared at the IRAM 30-m control room door- more than 1,500 meters above its usual habitat.

After a brief "internship," it was safely released back into nature the next morning.

#M87MOVIE

The crescent Earth, behind the much larger foreground horizon of the Moon

The moon eclipsing the Sun, as seen from Space. The moon is a shadowy sphere, with rays of sunlight and stars all around it

The new Artemis 2 pictures are stunning! 🧪🔭

Crescent view of Earth. NASA/Artemis II/Kevin M. Gill

Crescent Earth as viewed by the Artemis II crew yesterday (April 4th).

flic.kr/p/2s5Z9yc

Listening in to the live Artemis II feed. I love the way they talk about everything (jargon, acronyms, plaing English) . Like a bit ago, an astronaut was talking emotionally about how beautiful the views were of the approaching moon, and Houston's CapCom person responded plainly “Copy. Moon joy.”

Congratulations to second-year DPhil student Mitchell Yzer on his highlight talk at UKExom! He gave an amazing overview of how to detect technosignatures in exoplanet atmospheres using the ELT! Lots more exciting work to come out of his research!

I have a new book coming out next month -- my children's astronomy books have become a trilogy 😀

Want to know about time travel, black holes, wormholes, and whether we live in a multiverse? Mastering the Multiverse is out May 7th, and available to preorder now. 🔭🧪

dk.com/products/978...

Clouds with a silicate lining: Using JWST spectra to probe atmospheric diversity in young AB Dor L dwarfs We present the first full JWST NIRSpec Prism and MIRI LRS 0.6 - 14 $μ$m (R ~ 100) spectra and analysis of five ~ 133 Myr L dwarf members of the AB Doradus moving group and one probable $\sim 500$ Myr ...

@maddielam.bsky.social did a deep dive into silicate clouds with JWST observations of brown dwarfs to identify whether the clouds at the poles and equator look different: arxiv.org/abs/2603.24662

The left-hand and centre panels are examples of the final processed LBT/ALES + dgvAPP360 images produced when the data were median-combined in both time and wavelength. Left: the case where no artificial companions were injected to the data, so only the bright host star HD 1160 A and its bonafide companion HD 1160 B is visible. Centre: similar to the left-hand panel, but three artificial companions have been injected at 90° intervals in position angle from HD 1160 B. All three artificial companions were injected with contrasts of 2.88 x 10^(-3) (6.35 mag) relative to the host star. This image is a composite; for the purposes of the analysis, only one companion was injected at a time. Right: a single frame of data highlighting examples of the apertures (solid lines) and annuli (dashed lines) used to extract photometry and background measurements for the host star (in green) and artificial companions (in blue). The left-hand and centre panels use the same arbitrary logarithmic colour scale, while the right-hand panel uses a different one, and all three panels are aligned to north, where north is up and east is to the left.

Published in #MNRAS: "Chasing the storm: investigating the application of high-contrast imaging techniques in producing precise exoplanet light curves", Sutlieff et al. This is Fig. 1: for the caption & to read the paper please visit academic.oup.com/mnras/articl... @royalastrosoc.bsky.social

Chasing the storm: Investigating the application of high-contrast imaging techniques in producing precise exoplanet light curves Substellar companions such as exoplanets and brown dwarfs exhibit changes in brightness arising from top-of-atmosphere inhomogeneities, providing insights into their atmospheric structure and dynamics...

And while I'm at it, a belated promo for my latest first-author paper (out late last year). I've been using APP coronagraphs as a tool to look for changes in brightness in imaged companions (exoplanets & brown dwarfs) due to variations in their atmospheres such as clouds or radiative convection 🪐🔭

The VLT/ERIS grating vector Apodizing Phase Plate coronagraph We describe the design, laboratory manufacture, and on-sky testing of the grating vector apodizing phase plate (gvAPP) coronagraph for the Enhanced Resolution Imager and Spectrograph (ERIS) on the Ver...

For all the coronagraph fans out there: I'm pleased to share our paper (led by @mattkenworthy.bsky.social) on the design & performance of the Apodizing Phase Plate coronagraph for the ERIS instrument at the Very Large Telescope + our recommendations for using it to study exoplanets & brown dwarfs 🪐🔭

M.C. Escher's The Picture Gallery shows a highly distorted image of a continuously zoomed image, and the conformal mapping to a plane with infinitely tiled copied of this distorted image.

If you haven’t seen 3Blue1Brown videos yet, you are missing out! His latest one is on M.C. Escher’s picture frame distortion is absolutely breathtaking, using visuals to introduce complex analysis in what feels a very intuitive way. All his videos are excellent and well worth a browse.

Less than one week after this post, the theoretical particle physics grants have been ruthlessly cut.

PDRA positions are down by ~70% compared to the last funding cycle.

Some groups cannot even hire postdocs for the next 4 years.

This is on top of an effective 100% hiring cut for October 2026.

4-panel comic. (1) [Glowing black dot surrounded by clouds.] DOT: I think I did a good job with this universe. Pressure waves dance through gas clouds. They clump together and then pressure pushes them apart. (2) [Some of the clouds are clumping together.] DOT: Oh weird, that big clump of clouds is staying together. Their gravity is overcoming the pressure and more gas is falling in. (3) [More clouds are sucked in.] DOT: It’s not stopping! The heat is rising but the collapse is only accelerating! I messed up. I messed up *bad*. (4) [The clump has become a shining star.] DOT: NOOOOOOOO!!! My beautiful clouds! Ruined! It’s all ruined!

Star Formation

xkcd.com/3222/

A crescent moon in the shape of a smile, seen through the branches of a tree against a dusk sky

The Cheshire cat in this tree was watching me when I went out to set up my telescope 🔭

So I guess we at Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society support emojis now. ApJ would never! Please use this power carefully. iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3... 🔭

👀

Our final talk was by Frankie Dunn (Oxford University Museum of Natural History) who asked how did the Ediacaran world give way to the Cambrian explosion and evolutionary radiation i.e a rapid increase in taxonomic diversity where one species quickly diversifies into many new forms.

4-Year Elizabeth Gardner Fellowship in Physics/Astro @ Edinburgh!
- early career
- personal background currently under-represented in the School
- Pay Grade: Lecturer (~Assoc. Prof.)
- ***Deadline 20 April 2026***
🔭🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🧪

elxw.fa.em3.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

Now Carly Howett on how we explore the Solar System and beyond. She highlighted particularly the valuable impact of sample return missions as well as the many (now flying) robots we have sent. Is exploration an inherent part of our evolution?

Hal Drakesmith next tackled one of the bigger questions, what makes us live and what makes us die - exploring themes of the competition for iron for metabolism and the chances of horizontal rather than vertical (hereditary) gene transfer. Horizontal common in bacteria but not in complex life, why?

Tim Woolings (atmospheric physics, AOPP) showed us simulations of Earth’s atmosphere over time. A singular strong jet appears during the last glacial maximum then splits again. Fun question on what happens if we throw Earth into highly elliptical orbit - could it stabilise an atmosphere?

We’re kicking off with our invited keynote speaker Prof Nick Tosca (Cambridge) on the importance of hydrogen production on rocky planets and icy moons. Side note, TIL there is a mineral called lizardite and it looks exactly how you might expect 🦎

You can learn more about us at the Oxford Planets and Life (OPAL) Initiative here: opal.physics.ox.ac.uk

It’s Planets Day! We’ve gathered researchers from across Oxford to discuss questions on the possibility of complex life throughout the universe. A great mix of expertise here today bringing many exciting conversations! opal.physics.ox.ac.uk/planetsday2/...

Very excited for this!