Cover of report "Mission Aborted: how NASA illegally implemented the president's budget request without congressional approval. Minority staff report, prepared by members of the committee on science, space, and technology, us house of representatives, April 2026

This report came out today by minority staff of the House science committee on how three NASA missions were aborted due to NASA illegally following the FY26 president's budget request instead of congressionally approved budget. Very important reading. 🔭🧪 democrats-science.house.gov/staff-report...

Note to self: don’t wear all black next time.
Update: back is screaming at me

Ngl, getting in some back stretches before my lecture on solving the Schrödinger equation for the hydrogen atom bc every inch of the chalkboard is about to get used. #GettingOld 😭

It always feels like there are multiple proposals demanding my attention and never enough time left for actual science 😭

Proposal writing can be fun ... but I’m really missing analyzing my data 💔

It’s very good advice — I wish I had bought mine sooner!

👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

I pulled the trig and bought my doctoral regalia this week!!

I'm tired of showing up to my students’ graduations in a rental
cap and gown that makes me look like I’m graduating with them.

Not waiting for tenure (when regalia is discounted) to fix a 3-hour-per-year identity crisis.

#treatyoself 🎓

Hey, I wrote a thing about AI in astrophysics
ergosphere.blog/posts/the-ma...

My poor feet! Not even my Crocs -- the world’s most forgiving shoes -- fit me for weeks after giving birth. Also, congratulations :)

It’s been on my to-do list since the beginning of the semester 🫣

There are 1 million light settings in my classroom.

Tried turning off just the front lights. ~5 attempts. Once the room went completely dark.

“Haha, won’t happen again.”

It happened 4 more times.

The loudest silence I’ve ever heard.

“Don’t make a statistics joke. Don’t make a statistics joke.”

I completely agree. I really hope we can come together and make a strong, unified case for how essential (and exciting!) X-ray astronomy is.

It’s been a heartbreaking few weeks 💔, but I’m glad the broader community can now understand what happened with AXIS.

I learned so much being part of the team, and I truly hope the X-ray community gets a new high-resolution imager one day.

#XraysAreTheBestRays

If you are not a (professional or amateur) astronomer and you ask me what some bright point in the sky is, I’ll probably answer “Jupiter”. Neither of us will know if I’m right, but we’ll both be satisfied

I know, I know! I can't find a worth calzone place by my house 😭

I'll have to fly to MI and celebrate with Keren 💃

Day started in a magical way lecturing on Bohr’s model and how it leads to the empirical relations measured by Rydberg.

Then I found out my first-ever JWST proposal as a Co-I was accepted... written with one of my favorite people, Keren Sharon ❤️

Riding this momentum… back to the Chandra proposal 😵‍💫

The students don’t own staplers,
I’ve come to understand.
They bring me loose stacks
Of paper in their hands.

Perhaps the stapler’s obsolete,
A relic, long since gone.
Except the one upon my desk,
That everyone relies on.

Once again I find myself living in a new neighborhood in March, and the late-night search for calzones begins…. #XraysAreTheBestRays
🔭 🔥 🕳️ 🔥

Sometimes it feels like my baby is in a quantum superposition of awake and asleep … & the wavefunction collapses when I open the Nanit app.

Pure joy: a brand new piece of chalk for my morning lecture #ItsTheLittleThings

wish me luck today in my 9 am lecture 🤪

“ciao” is challenging to spell when you’ve slept in 2 hour chunks the night before 😵‍💫

#iykyk #xraysarethebestrays #somanyvowelssomanycombos

I’m hiring a postdoc to work with me at UMBC on AGN and galaxy mergers 💫

Details: apply.interfolio.com/180085

Please share & feel free to message me with any questions!

I spent so many hours in this library when I was a student, wandering through its cool collection, reading and learning.

“…the federal government will store some of the collection in warehouses and trash the rest.”

Absolutely heartbreaking 💔

I love this 😂, I’m keeping this in mind

Writing an NSF AAG with my 4 m/o permanently attached to me and averaging <2 hours of consecutive sleep… my dear collaborators, please triple-check all my text.

(I’m so grateful for this little human, and for the ability to keep doing what I love, even if a bit more slowly these days.)

Joseph Barranco posted on social media: Go Bears! Nobel Prize in Physics goes to 3 physicists studying mesoscopic quantum phenomena... Work was done in the 1980s in UC Berkeley Professor John Clarke's lab with his graduate student John Martinis and postdoctoral fellow Michel Devoret... all 3 share the Nobel Prize. Must also point out that both Clarke and Devoret are immigrants from the UK and France, respectively. All 3 are pioneers in the race to build the most powerful quantum supercomputers. California *public* education made this happen. Immigration made this happen.

Valuable info about the Physics Nobel Prize today from Prof. Joseph Barranco at SFSU on Martinis and Devoret being a grad student and postdoc in Clarke's lab at UC Berkeley & Clark and Devoret being immigrants. "California *public* education made this happen. Immigration made this happen." ⚛️

Find yourself a friend like @astronomay.bsky.social who drops off Taylor Swift–themed desserts while you’re on maternity leave 😍🔥

(I’ve only managed to snap a photo ... demanding, but cute, baby won’t let me actually eat them yet)

🤩