Oh god oh god oh god oh god they found me
Oh god oh god oh god oh god they found me
Reading through some code this morning and this made me laugh out…
Sorry, fans of “Forbidden Planet”, no Altair IV yet: Meshkat+ on “Searching for Planets around Altair with JWST/NIRcam” getting sub-Saturn mass limits close in to this nearby A star. All candidate point sources are background stars… a shame! #exoplanets #astrodon
“How are you feeling, Darling?" Still one of the most striking memorials for Remembrance Day, from the last scene in “Blackadder Goes Forth”.
A lovely week talking with other astronomers and giving the Königstuhl Colloquium on " #exomoons and #exorings" at the MPIA in Heidelberg. It was fantastic to have many great conversations and I did take a bit of time to get a weißbier and schnitzel with potatoes…
Well, that didn’t take long…. the trans-Neptunian object announced on October 27 was precovered in TESS data in this paper posted two days later!!! Han+ in “Seven Years of TESS Precovery Observations of the Dwarf-planet Candidate 2026 ED138” #astrodon #exoplanet
narrows eyes, cracks fingers, refills the coffee mug Let’s do this #arXiv #AcademicChatter
Weird micro #lifehack I’ve stumbled on: I set Firefox so that a new web page opens on a blank page, not their starter page with lots of links. This is far more relaxing that I thought it would be!
AI slop has been encroaching on several aspects of my academic life, so it’s good to take our dog for a walk at night and take a breather. Looking up at the stars, I counted ten satellites passing overhead in just five minutes… sometimes I wonder if we are in #TheBadPlace
Before the flood: Destriez+ on “Searching for substellar companion candidates with Gaia V. M dwarfs within 15 parsec…" incorporates RV and direct imaging constraints to pick out 32 new substellar candidates… and Gaia Data Release 4 is just around the corner too… #exoplanets #astrodon
I say upsilon Andromedae d, you say epsilon Eridani b: two papers on direct imaging exoring detection with the Roman space telescope by Lane et al. and Hasler et al. - rings can boost the reflected light signal by a factor > 3, and light curve senses the ring geometry! #astrodon #exoplanets
Poetry Corner
So. Farewell Then Leap second.
Cause of joy And agony For all timekeepers everywhere.
Now we will have Leap hours instead.
Which will not cause Any problems whatsoever. Obviously.
E.J. Thribb (17.5 != TAI-UTC)
#astrodon #astronomy #NoLeapSecond #exoplanets
Walking past Sint Jacobskerk in Den Haag the other day I double-taked at the three big seashells on the ground, I’m assuming the artist really liked “Demolition Man” :) #ThreeSeashells
I’m old enough that I don’t like leaving the media players on my computer desktop on “pause” because that will stretch and ultimately break the tape in the cassette deck. #OldSkool #Dinosaur
I had an absolutely fantastic time talking about colliding exoplanets as part of Pints of Knowledge at Big Penny Social in Walthamstow, and spent over half an hour answering many excellent questions from the audience! #exoplanets #astrodon #outreach
Good luck to everyone submitting their #JWST proposals today. My first version is in the bag, now to read it and find the O(dozens) of mistakes I made…. Scientific method FTW! #exoplanet #astrodon
“I WILL NOT GO TO CHAT WITH YOU BABS I CAST YOU OUT UNCLEAN SPIRIT IN THE NAME OF-”
I now have to pause when replying to a slightly weird/clueless comment on social media, because it may be a bot and this is simply a training gambit for some #ChatGPT word salad farm somewhere.
Every time the chair of a meeting says “I’m sure we don’t need to take the full 90 minutes” at the start of the meeting, my left eyelid starts twitching uncontrollably until the end of the meeting some two hours later.
Leiden Observatory Masters graduate Valerie Bakker leads a paper on “The Hill sphere transits of Beta Pictoris c and the search for another 1981-like event” where we (sadly) did not find circumplanetary dust… but maybe it’s already condensed into #exomoons ..? #astrodon #exoplanets
Whilst updating my optics course to explain electromagnetism more clearly to the students, I came across this very relatable comment in the Wikipedia entry for Michael Faraday… #research #optics #teaching
I watched “Back to the Future” for the n’th time last night. It’s a brilliant piece of storytelling, as tight as a drum. With each rewatch I appreciate more just how much physical humour Fox, Lloyd, Thompson, Glover and Wilson put into their roles. Go watch it! #scifi #HelloMcFly
From stepping off the plane at #AMS, through passport control, onto a train to #Leiden, bike from the train station to home - 43 minutes total. At #LGW the same amount of time left me waiting for a delayed train at the airport railway station….. good #infrastructure really makes a difference.
“Honestly Jens they’re more persistent than those rats in the kitchen… tomorrow morning you promise me you’ll put down more of that powder around the bedposts.” Seen at #MuseumBredius in #DenHaag
🎶 “….and after aaaaaaall, you’re my wonderwaaaaall….” 🎶 Seen at #MuseumBredius in #DenHaag
