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...

A split bar chart of YouGov polling data with the headline: "Americans are most likely to say T. Rex is their favorite dinosaur, but many don't have a favorite." The chart has the sub-headline: "Which of the following is your favorite dinosaur? (%)." The chart has the note: "Note: "Other" includes responses of archaeopteryx, spinosaurus, plesiosaur, ankylosaurus, allosaurus, parasaurolophus, dilophosaurus, diplodocus, iguanadon, and pachycephalosaurus, as well as responses of "other." We know pterodactyls and plesiosaurs aren't dinosaurs. Opinion about dinosaurs comes from the question, "How much do you like or dislike dinosaurs?""

A shocking new poll result: Many Americans somehow don't have a favorite dinosaur.

And only 6% give the correct answer (triceratops).

Check out YouGov's new polling on Americans and dinosaurs: yougovamerica.substack.com/p/whats-your...

Like that statistic is deciding who is rich by their AGI as reported on their FICA taxes. It's only counting people who pay the most taxes by definition...
It's like saying most taxes are paid by people who pay the most taxes. Which is not the same as "the rich" necessarily.

It's also not true.
The top 10% of EARNERS pay something like 70% of FICA. Not 80%, but even then:
a) many of the richest have low AGI (live off loans on stock)
b) this number drops below 60% when considering all federal taxes
c) State and local taxes are generally regressive - drops further.

limb-darkening effect for the star HIP 67522 at various wavelengths. Stars are not smooth on their surfaces.

Stars are uniform spheres. 🧪🔭

I should note that the description REQUIRES having both microsoft word and Adobe Acrobat (I think the paid version).

We've reached that point in pointless bureaucracy where I'm sent a 3-page document explaining how I sign my biosketch. 🧪🔭

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

While they originally contained almond pieces, they have been made with natural almond flavor since roughly 2006, which is derived from peach and apricot pits rather than real almonds.

As a parent of someone with nut allergies, it is interesting to learn just how many things don't actually have nuts.
My favorite of these is Honey Nut Cheerios - which would be more accurately named Honey Cheerios.
That hazelnut creamer you add to your coffee also probably has no hazelnuts. 🥜🧪

Have you ever seen something like this from NASA? I’ve been curious.

Ouch…

A Table showing the number of positions posted at AAS job-registed for various categories.

Looking at the AAS jobregister lately, it seemed to me that there are less positions available in all categories than in previous years. Wanting to quantify, I used the wayback machine to check on the number of postings in the January-March window and it is quite depressing.

1/9; I'm happy. #JWSTcycle5 🔭🧪

The LCs won't be available until paper acceptance. If you wanted them earlier we might be able to find a way to do that. I think MAST won't want multiple versions.

The amplitude does impact detection but has a negligible impact on uncertainty. SNR might be a more useful proxy but wasn't tested.

TARS: Traffic-Aware Radar Scene Flow Estimation Scene flow provides crucial motion information for autonomous driving. Recent LiDAR scene flow models utilize the rigid-motion assumption at the instance level, assuming objects are rigid bodies. Howe...

fair, but
arxiv.org/abs/2503.10210
arxiv.org/abs/2412.10257
arxiv.org/abs/2303.16633

It's based on differences between K2 and TESS which includes some astrophysical effects (e.g., spots evolve during that time so it captures spot evolution), but might miss others (e.g., if all the spots are at the same latitude it doesn't fully capture differential rotation)

Yep, although there's a step afterwards where we combine measurements from multiple sectors (I'd have to double check on that).
I personally consider the errors more like "statistical" uncertainties.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Yep; when the paper is accepted

The TESS All-Sky Rotation Survey: Periods for 944,056 Stars Within 500 pc Stellar rotation is a fundamental tracer of stellar magnetic evolution, age, and activity, with broad implications for Galactic archaeology and exoplanet characterization. The Transiting Exoplanet Sur...

I'm super excited to share a HUGE paper out from Young Worlds Lab team member Andy Boyle.

I present for you, ~900,000 rotation periods from TESS!

🤯🔭🧪⭐ #exoplanets #stellarrotation

arxiv.org/abs/2603.05586

I forgot to mention this. The paper is still under review, so we welcome comments/questions. The goal was for this catalog to be a community resource and helps if people flag issues and let us know.

Luke Bouma has also setup some online visuals and a tool to help with vetting here:
lgbouma.com/tars_viz/

🤌
🤯🔭🧪⭐ #exoplanets

Not only is the catalog public, but actually you can remake it yourself based on your own needs. For example, how clean vs complete you want the sample, how much you worry about binaries, etc etc.

Check the Zenodo for instructions how to do that:
zenodo.org/records/1834...

There's ALL KINDS of cool astrophysics going on in here, like different kinds of variables (our interest is rotation, but we detect anything periodic). Stalling and rapid spin down, variability variations. Space cats. 🤯🔭🧪⭐ #exoplanets

😱🤯😮
#shockedpikachuface
#omgIseemyfavoritecluster
#woahhhhhhhh
🤯🔭🧪⭐ #exoplanets

Clusters just POP out of this catalog. 🤯🔭🧪⭐ #exoplanets

Another RF classifier checks for signatures of aliasing/harmonics (also a common problem for TESS' 27-day sectors). 🤯🔭🧪⭐ #exoplanets
You can see how powerful this is: the yellow dots are half or double the 'true' period, left is before the classifier and right is after. A HUGE improvement.

We trained a RF systematics classifier to remove these. 🤯🔭🧪⭐ #exoplanets