A number of space science organizations offered support for Isaacman's nomination because he is a proponent of space exploration and claimed he would support science. But now that science is on the chopping block -- and human spaceflight isn't -- he is volunteering to give NASA the DOGE treatment.
An astronomical image featuring the backdrop of the dark night sky with a faint grey-blue speckle at the centre. The nebulous cloud has the shape of a four-leaf flower. Four orange laser beams are pointing to it.
This isn't a scene from #StarWars.
What you're looking at is the Tarantula Nebula. While those beams come from the lasers installed on the telescopes that comprise our VLTI.
But why are we sending lasers into the sky? Find out: https://www.eso.org/public/images/potw2616a/
🔭 🧪
📷 A. Berdeu/ESO
"A large constellation such as SpaceX’s Orbital Data Center... would place thousands of satellites above naked-eye visibility threshold, comparable to the number of natural stars typically visible in a dark sky."
On a black background of space, a blue and white Earth just before 'setting' behind the Moon, in foreground, seen from Artemis II, 6 April 2026
Totality seen from lunar orbit, the Moon eclipses the Sun, revealing a view few humans have ever witnessed, a dark disc surrounded by a pale solar corona.
✅ #Artemis II update: 'Earthset', 6 April 2026, and 'totality', 7 April, seen from lunar orbit, the Moon eclipses the Sun, a view few humans have ever witnessed (pics: NASA)
🔗 www.nasa.gov/gallery/jour...
@exploration.esa.int l
Spectacular high-resolution image of our home planet viewed through the Orion Crew Module window by the Artemis II astronauts as they continue their journey to the Moon on Flight Day 2, 3 April 2026 (pic: NASA)
A full disc image of Earth, as seen from the Orion Crew Module. The planet is a pale blue, swirling with white clouds and glowing slightly lighter blue in place from reflected light. At lower left, a large brown landmass is Africa, with Spain and Portugal with twinkling lights where the planet curves. At top right, auroras glow in a thin green glow, just barely separated from the planet's surface. Earth is set against the black of space (pic: NASA/R.Wiseman)
😮 Awesome views from Day 2 of #Artemis II this morning.
@exploration.esa.int @esaearth.esa.int
Oh no!! I’ve definitely seen April Fool’s papers shared as PDFs from people’s websites in the past for this exact reason :/
AAS actually released some preliminary figures in the fall (it went out in a newsletter at the start of the year): aas.org/posts/news/2...
Trends are very much consistent with what you found, of course, which is very much complementary to how/where the official stats are extrapolated.
I hope everyone who checked out @hogg.bsky.social’s white paper on the implications of LLMs in astronomy and shared it across slack channels similarly perused and amplified this white paper of best practices for broadening participation in astronomy!
Readily shareable "cheatsheets" that summarize both context and recommendations (not a substitute for reading the white paper itself, of course!) are available here: pictureanastronomer.github.io/whitepaper
Cover of "Picture an Astronomer: Best Practices for Retaining Talent in Astrophysics", which features an illustration of a 19-year-old Vera Rubin looking through a telescope over a backdrop of a first light image of spiral galaxies from the Rubin Observatory.
Happy International Women's Day!
Perfect time for me to (re)share our white paper on increasing the retention of women in professional astrophysics (really full of suggestions that broaden participation in academic science in general).
arxiv.org/abs/2512.24465
🧪🔭☄️👩🔬
This is your reminder that Hungarian-Jewish scientist George de Hevesy dissolved two Nobel Prizes in aqua regia to keep them out of the hands of the Nazis.
He then left the dissolved solution on his shelf and fled to Sweden.
(After the war he un-dissolved the gold and the prizes were re-cast.)
Finally, Payel gave a quick shout out to what seems like an incredible piece of work recommending best practises for improving the situation for minorities in Astronomy. 🔭 ☄️
arxiv.org/abs/2512.24465
“The U.S. has led an unprecedented age of cosmic discovery. Now Trump is trying to bring that age to an end, and right at the moment when answers to our most profound existential questions finally seem to be within reach,” @rossandersen.bsky.social reports. theatln.tc/LThKw0kY
A huge thanks to everyone who participated in the symposium and in the eventual write-up of the white paper, with a special thanks to Kate Whitaker for helping me edit this behemoth, Meg Urry for her very affecting foreword, and Julie Malewicz for once again providing beautiful illustrations!
Cover of "Picture an Astronomer: Best Practices for Retaining Talent in Astrophysics", which features an illustration of a 19-year-old Vera Rubin looking through a telescope over a backdrop of a first light image of spiral galaxies from the Rubin Observatory.
Happy New Year! + happy (white) paper day!
arxiv.org/abs/2512.24465
Whether you're waiting for the ball to drop or looking to start 2026 off right, you can read about evidence-backed best practices for retaining talent in astrophysics, which came out of discussions at our March symposium :)
🧪🔭☄️👩🔬
"A 25-person startup" should not be allowed to "disrupt" fundamental inputs to the Earth's ecosystem, hydrosphere, and atmosphere.
Like, what are we even thinking here?
An example, here asking to recreate in LaTeX the definition of a pseudorandom number generator
In case you aren't already aware of one of the nerdiest, nich-est online games: TeXnique, where the goal is to type LaTeX formulae as quickly as possible. texnique.xyz
It is "fun."
Dick Durbin’s Rock Island office is taking voicemails if you are, like me, a betrayed constituent: 309.786.5173
(I called hours ago, but understand it’s still taking messages with no problem, and none of his other numbers allow you to leave a voicemail.)
#nasa is shuttering the Goddard #space #flight center in a move that may not be entirely legal, according to critics. For months, our #staff #writer @joshdinner.bsky.social interviewed NASA #employees, read #senate reports and more to give you the deepest dive yet.
www.space.com/space-explor...
Ozempic, MRI machines and flat screen televisions all emerged out of fundamental research decades earlier — the very types of study being slashed by the US government
go.nature.com/47hn0n5
It's becoming increasingly clear to me that Reflect Orbital's fucking stupid giant mirror satellite, with absolutely NOTHING useful to offer, which will cause countless safety issues, ecological disasters, and destroy the night sky, is going to launch.
A bunch of astronomers and I have sent out […]
Today my @nytimes.com colleagues and I are launching a new series called Lost Science. We interview US scientists who can no longer discover something new about our world, thanks to this year‘s cuts. Here is my first interview with a scientist who studied bees and fires. Gift link: nyti.ms/3IWXbiE
This is why we fund scientists to study things like oyster slobber even if you don’t think it sounds important
A leading Democrat in the Senate just released an important report documenting how NASA has been working to implement the president's proposed budget, not Congressionally approved funds, in slashing missions. Read more ⬇️
Huge thanks to @highzclouds.bsky.social for showing me Las Campanas!!
The Milky Way over the open dome of the Baade Telescope at Las Campanas Observatory
The center of the Milky Way over the open dome of the Baade Telescope
The Milky Way over the Clay Telescope
Silhouette of a person (me) standing in front of three visible galaxies — the SMC and LMC (left) and the Milky Way (right)
Big fan of observing in person 🔭
Article on BBC news. Title: AI designs antibiotics for gonorrhoea and MRSA superbugs Description: Two new potential drugs have been designed by AI to kill drug-resistant bacteria, in a major Massachusetts Institute of Technology study.
I really dislike how science has started calling almost any fancy computational technique AI. 🧪
The framing of this entire article makes it sound like a benevolent AI independently made these drugs.
That is *pure fantasy*.
Instead: a team of scientists made a machine learning model for a study.
For the morning crowd, here are all the observations stored in the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes. A visual created by Julie Imig, one of our amazing astronomical data scientists. Follow the link below for more colors and even a movie.
Now formally published!
It really is perfect that this code, named both for the PSF spikes and as a nod to a favorite Buffy character -- hence the logo, should find its home in JOSS...
github.com/avapolzin/sp...
🔭🧪☄️