4/ so until this table is cleaned up, I'm not seeing anything useful yet. Curious to hear other opinions. AI?

3/
the author lists:
TOI 7949.87 = TIC 709442137, says "Near-Earth radius; Sun-like host (Teff 5080 K)"

but TIC 709442137 does not appear in any TOI lists.
The TOIs are only numbered to 7719.
(exofop.ipac.caltech.edu/tess/)
And TIC 551790679 does not appear to exist...

2/
the author lists:
TOI 5741.44 = TIC 551790679, says "HZ; sub-Earth; M-dwarf host"
but TOI 5741 = TIC 159851831
tev.mit.edu/items/250457
simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-b...
which is an early K dwarf, not M dwarf (and not even close)

ExoNet: Multimodal Deep Learning for TESS Exoplanet Candidate Identification via Phase-Folded Light Curves, Stellar Parameters, and Multi-Head Attention Fusion NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has identified thousands of exoplanet candidates, yet many remain unconfirmed due to the limitations of manual vetting processes. This paper present...

1/ New paper reports new TESS exoplanet candidates
arxiv.org/abs/2604.15560
"oh look, new hab zone planets... I gotta check this out."
But after about 30 sec it is clear something is really wrong.

The TOIs don't correctly cross-match the TIC IDs...

The VAST Extragalactic Survey footprint, showing the number of observations of each field. The sky map is plotted with J2000 equatorial coordinates in the Mollweide projection. The VAST Galactic survey is plotted in grey for reference. Typically, each field has been observed 10–11 times to date. Image from de Ruiter et al. (2026)

Excited to announce the first data release from our ASKAP Variables and Slow Transients survey is now available!

doi.org/10.1017/pasa...

This is a database of 6.4 million measurements of 0.5 million radio sources in our survey footprint.

(By @ozgrav.bsky.social Iris de Ruiter)

#RadioAstronomy

NASA Shuts Off Instrument on Voyager 1 to Keep Spacecraft Operating - NASA Science On April 17, engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California sent commands to shut down an instrument aboard Voyager 1 called the

🥺 NASA Shuts Off Instrument on Voyager 1 to Keep Spacecraft Operating

House SS&T Dems just issued a report re NASA and the FY2026 budget: "Mission Aborted: How NASA Illegally Implemented the President's Budget Request Without Congressional Approval." Calls on Isaacman to "defend" NASA and not do the same w/FY2027 request.
democrats-science.house.gov/imo/media/do...

Our REU renewal was funded!

We found out today so we are accepting applications now! Like right now!

Application review is going to happen swiftly as we know we’re are late in the typical cycle.

pa.msu.edu/undergraduat...

#reu #physics #astronomy #research

Acknowledging the problem is the first step to recovery #nerdsniping

The HiRISE team notes the passing of two esteemed friends and colleagues: Deputy Principal Investigator emerita Candice Hansen-Koharcheck and Co-Investigator Paul Geissler.

More about Candice: www.psi.edu/staff/profil...

More about Paul: www.legacy.com/us/obituarie...

Wouldn't it be cool to invest trillions of dollars into a technology that would actually make society better?

Maybe we can call it “HI” — Human Intelligence.

Instead of “data centers”, we could fund “schools”.

Instead of *stealing* art, literature, and science, we help people *create* it.

Crazy!

I will waste no time reminding everyone that the President has again proposed an extinction-level budget for NASA.

47% cut to science.

And even though Congress sets budgets, NASA will---like last year---start planning as though this were the real budget.

Stupid. Pointless. Destructive. Insulting.

Paper day!!! 🎉 arxiv.org/abs/2604.07447 ⬇️ #exoplanets #astronomy

It all starts with planets around really small stars (M dwarfs). There's some evidence that planets around these stars form fundamentally differently than around stars like our Sun. We think that planets around these stars may 1/

The FY 2027 NASA budget request hides its science cuts by omitting mission names instead of explicitly zeroing them out.

We did the work and found 54 missions cancelled in this proposal.

This is another extinction-level event for NASA science.

Full list: planetary.org/save-nasa-science

The image has text that has a statement from the AAS followed by a quote from the President's 2027 Budget Request: The budget request also adopts a policy prohibiting the use of federal funds to pay for journal subscriptions and the publication of research results unless required or pre-approved: “In accordance with administration policy announced in the budget, NASA will follow new governmentwide grants guidance prohibiting the use of federal funds to pay for subscriptions to academic journals, as well as for the publication of research results that are not specifically required by federal statute or approved in advance by a federal agency. This policy preserves funds to support actual research by ensuring that the American taxpayer does not pay for the research, publication, and access to that research, essentially triple charging the public for the same product.”

I missed that the President's 2027 Budget Request includes a statement about not paying for the publication of science results. 🤦‍♂️

That's some serious Orwellian pretzel logic. Somehow publication costs are double-dipping and an extra expense to taxpayers? 🤦‍♂️

Screenshot from: aas.org/posts/news/2...

The President of the United States is threatening to commit war crimes and wipe out a "whole civilization" — all because he started a disastrous war of his own making and had no plan and no strategy for how to end it.

This is abhorrent, and the American people do not support this.

The 1st PLATO Announcement of Opportunity for Guest Observers is out! #exoplanets 🔭

www.cosmos.esa.int/web/plato/ao-1

Deep space network comm lock

A thing of beauty—Voyager 1 is calling home right now and the Madrid station is also connected to Artemis 2. You can watch the deep space network live anytime you want. eyes.nasa.gov/apps/dsn-now...

Prominent Climate Scientist Resigns From NASA, Citing Trump’s Attack on Science

Not so marvelous news.

~95,000 scientists have left the federal government since the Trump regime took over.

Composite showing two red dots, representing the exoplanets WISPIT 2b and 2c, embedded in the white ellipses of scattered light.

Delighted to see our WISPIT team announce the second directly imaged exoplanet from the WISPIT 2 system! Led by Chloe Lawlor (Galway) with Richelle van Capelleveen (Leiden), we also have a spectrum of the inner, more massive planet, showing carbon monoxide features. ☄ #exoplanet #astrodon

“Dawn of the Kessler Cascade Era”

Caltech Mourns the Passing of Planetary Scientist Yuk Yung Yuk Yung, professor of planetary science and JPL senior research scientist, passed away on March 16.

My PhD advisor, Professor Yuk Yung, has passed away.

The suddenness of this - I had only become aware of his illness a week ago - is shocking and it’s surreal that he’s gone.

www.caltech.edu/about/news/c...

See Bergsten et al 2022 as a starting point iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...
But there are plenty of papers (see also papers by e.g. Mulders, Fulton, etc)

(1) The accused declared, ordered, or otherwise indicated that there shall be no survivors or surrender accepted; (2) The accused thereby intended to threaten an adversary or to conduct hostilities such that there would be no survivors or surrender accepted; (3) It was foreseeable that circumstances would be such that a practicable and reasonable ability to accept surrender would exist; (4) The accused was in a position of effective command or control over the subordinate forces to which the declaration or order was directed; and (5) The conduct took place in the context of and was associated with hostilities.

✋ Former USG war crimes lawyer here.

Apropos of SecDef's remarks this morning:

Denial of quarter—even the declaration of no quarter—is a war crime.

And recognized as such by the US Government.

From DoD's Manual for Military Commissions.

Cold giant discoveries from a joint radial-velocity and astrometry framework The population of long-period giant planets shapes planetary system architectures and formation pathways, but these cold Jupiters remain relatively unexplored. Radial velocity (RV) surveys lose sensit...

Here come the cold giants! A combination of RV and astrometry reveals several "Jupiter analogues", among them one planet (around HIP 39330, a G5V star, ca. 100 ly away) that matches Jupiter quite nicely: a=5.05 au, e=0.078, M=1.67 M_jup. If only we could quickly check for terrestrial planets inside!

500 mb height forecast from the European ensemble model for midday next Thursday

Climatological record of 500 mb heights at Tuscon from SPC, with an orange dot showing the forecast from the model.

The latest run of the European ensemble model has 500 mb heights a week from now around 5960 m over southern AZ. To give some perspective on how insane that is, that would be the orange dot on the SPC graph of Tucson historical 500 mb heights (red line is all-time highest)

One recognizes the historical feat that an astronomer was able to detect the brightest M dwarf in the northern skies over 200 yrs ago. The other acknowledges the feat of a dude three quarters of a century ago adding it to his index card compilation of nearby stars.Ignores what makes the star special

For all the but how can we afford space exploration folks…this means we’ve already spent more on this war that started last week than Cassini cost in the 26 years it took to build, launch, and operate it.

That appears to be MIRES G206.3715-02.1290 (CWISE J063149.88+045123.2, SSTSL2 J063149.85+045122.4), previously known extended infrared source in NGC 2244. Povich+2013 classified it spectral energy distribution as consistent with a Class II or III young object, but that appearance screams edge-on II

A recipe for training a military that can win battles but lose long blood wars, and train and promote tacticians overseeing other tacticians, with a lack of strategic-minded leadership to draw upon at the top.
Has nothing been learned from WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Gulf War I,II, Iraq,Afghanistan? #DOD