← Home About Archive Photos Replies Also on Micro.blog

  • SI units for #ExoELT instruments are mass and height in Chilean Elephants (ChEl) and German Giraffes (GeGi), respectively.

    I will not be taking questions at this time.

    MICADO ELT instrument with mass and height compared to 4 Chilean Elephants and one German Giraffe in a slide from Eline Tolstoy.
    → 10:24 AM, Nov 18

  • M. Nowak discussing synergies with VLT Interferometer (VLTI) and #ELT at #ExoELT - ELT has the >30m aperture for sensitivity, but VLTI combines all 4 VLT telescopes over a 200m baseline for better angular resolution, complementing sensitivity of ELT #astrodon #astrosci

    Plot of angular separation versus achievable contrast for several astronomical instruments, including VLTI and its upgrades.
    → 10:11 AM, Nov 18

  • At #ExoELT on Monday we had summaries of the #ELT instruments: METIS (Mid-IR imager and specrograph), MICADO (wide field imager), HARMONI (Near-IR IFU) and 2nd gen ANDES (R~100k spectrograph) - the hardware is suitably enormous - cryogenic dewars typically bigger than a hotel room! #astrodon

    A summary of the ELT instruments showing imaging and spectroscopy modes. Figure from the ANDES talk.
    → 7:48 AM, Nov 18

  • Many #exoplanet astronomers are at #ESO headquarters near Munich to talk about #exoplanets with the Extremely Large Telescope #ELT this week - first light in 2029/2030 - you can put one of the 8.4m VLT telescopes on the instrument platform of the #ELT… gulp! ☄️ #astrodon Follow along on #ExoELT

    A graphic of the Extremely Large Telescope with one 8.4m Very large Telescope sitting on ONE of the Nasmyth platforms!
    → 1:53 PM, Nov 17

  • ‘An Overview of Exocomets’ is a very comprehensive review led by Daniela Iglesias started at an @issibern.ch meeting. I worked on Figure 1 detailing comets around the Sun, Beta Pic and a white dwarf - I’m very proud of it, and it is available on @github.com: Exocomet systems #astrodon #exoplanet ☄

    A magnificent plot showing the equilibrium temperature as a proxy for distance from the Sun and two other stars, indicating the locations of debris belts, planets, and detected exocomets.
    → 9:32 AM, Nov 12

  • So, I have a 2019 Macbook Pro whose battery life is now less than one hour. I asked our IT department for a quote to replace the battery, but apparently it is now considered “vintage” by Apple and would cost the best part of 1000 Euros to replace(!) or until I get the urge to fix it myself…

    A vintage Apple prototype with breadboard circuitry on the left, with a few straggly coloured wires reaching over to the clunky keyboard on the left. Coal chute for the power supply not visible from this angle.
    → 12:15 PM, Nov 11

  • Lammers and Winn “On the Exoplanet Yield of Gaia Astrometry” makes breathtaking predictions for the Gaia DR4 data release in December 2026 - around 7500 new exoplanets around nearby stars! It will be revolutionary… and indicate new nearby systems to be imaged… #astrodon #exoplanets ☄️

    A plot of exoplanet detections with semimajor axis versus planet mass. Scattered points show transit and radial velocity detections, with a titanic black smear of GAIA DR4 and DR5 expected detections in the upper right corner.
    → 9:34 AM, Nov 7

  • Shah+ on “The nature of ASASSN-24fw’s occultation” going for an exoring/exodisk explanation for the occulter with a minimum mass of 4 Jupiters for the companion #exoplanet #astrodon ☄

    A light curve of ASASSN-24fw over several months, showing a deep and extended eclipse that has a different depth depending on wavelength, indicating it is a dusty eclipser.
    → 10:31 AM, Nov 6

  • A polite golf clap to Suárez Mascareño with “In space there will be no need to scream Limits to the presence of giant planets in the ζ² Ret system” allowing us to all breathe a sigh of relief that Weyland Yutani will not be endangering the Earth any time soon… 👽 #astrosci #astrodon

    → 11:25 AM, Oct 31

  • Gibson et al. “TESS Discovers a Second System of Transiting Exocomets in the Extreme Debris Disk of RZ Psc” showing 24 exocomet transits and the existence of a broken power law for the sizes of these exocomets, unlike Beta Pic’s exocomet distribution #exoplanet #astrodon #astrosci

    TESS light curve of RZ Psc, showing several dog tooth-like dips indicating exocomet transits.Plot os radius of exocomet versus cumulative number count - the RZ Psc shows a distinct change in slope at 2.5km, whilst the Beta Pic distribution from des Etangs shows a single straight power law.

    → 5:10 AM, Oct 14

  • A lovely morning to go rowing in #Leiden - my sculling needs improvement, but it’s fantastic to be on the water on these calm Autumn days.

    Two single rowing boats with orange striping sit in the water next to a wooden decking. The sky is blue and dotted with clouds, the three quarters Moon is shining in the sky to the top right. The river is flat and still, and a reflection of a windmill can be seen in the water.
    → 10:34 AM, Oct 10

  • Santos-Sanz+ with “JWST occultation reveals unforeseen complexity in Chariklo’s ring system” - I’m fascinated by #exorings and seeing more activity and weirdness with small bodies in the Solar system gets me very intrigued indeed….. #astrosci #astrodon

    A plot showing the light curve of a star passing behind Chariklo's rings. A horizontal line, with two narrow dips. Zoomed in panels showing the eclipses in detail show positive excursions from diffraction around the edge of the rings.
    → 8:15 AM, Oct 9

  • Getting mentally prepared to read all the #slack channels on #wispit2 #JWST proposals

    A middle aged man wearing a metal helmet and what looks like welders glass in ski giggles. It is a photo from the 1950's showing army equipment.
    → 9:31 AM, Oct 8

  • Wolff, @andrasgaspar.bsky.social et al. with a beautiful analysis of “JWST/MIRI Imaging of the Warm Dust Component of the Epsilon Eridani Debris Disk”, the last of the “Big Four” circumstellar disks with #JWST - a smooth disk at all but the longer wavelengths and hosting an RV #exoplanet ☄️

    Four images showing a smooth round disk face on to our line of sight. The longest wavelength image a thin ring can be seen superimposed in the image.
    → 9:01 AM, Sep 30

  • Cugno and Grant @sierragrant.bsky.social with “A Carbon-rich Disk Surrounding a Planetary-mass Companion” detected using #JWST - an impressive detection of several different carbon molecules that are very promising for #exomoon formation around the directly imaged #exoplanet CT Cha b ☄

    An image of the planetary companion CT Cha b shown as a red dot next to its parent star, with a spectrum from 12 to 16 microns from JWST showing several rotational and vibrational bands in emission for several carbon molecules.
    → 8:33 AM, Sep 30

  • A very cool result! Julo+ with a paper on “Stellar halo subtraction … with integral field spectroscopy… on the PDS70, HTLup, and YSES1 systems” showing that the YSES 1b #exoplanet has a lot of emission lines - H alpha , H beta, He I, Ca H and K triplets, Na in absorption… oh my! #astrodon ☄

    Two spectra of the planet YSES 1b. The left hand spectrum shows a huge peak of Hydrogen alpha emission, and the right hand spectrum shows Calcium II triplet in emission, next to a fuzzy Sodium absorption feature.
    → 8:17 AM, Sep 16

  • Some sad #exoplanets news in a paper led by me: “YSES 2b is a background star”. A distant M dwarf star some 2 kiloparsecs behind the star just so happens to have a non-zero proper motion in EXACTLY the wrong direction: this required multiple GRAVITY observations to solve… #astrosci #astrodon

    A coiled spiral representing proper motion plus parallax shows a fit to several astrometric points, showing that the object next to the star YSES 2 is probably a very distant M dwarf star far away in our Galaxy. Drat, damn and blast!
    → 8:05 AM, Sep 12

  • My periodic reminder for #astrosci #astrodon #exoplanets Early Career Researchers to please, please, please have a simple web site with your current email address on it - rationale here: kenworthy.space/advice/

    A pen sketch of a web page for an astronomer, showing name, email, optional phone number, and professional contact details, with a one sentence summary of their research and an ADS link.
    → 5:22 AM, Sep 12

  • Two papers announcing the discovery of a directly imaged 6 Jupiter mass planet around binary system HD 143811 AB Squicciarini+ and Jones+ in Sco-Cen - Keck, Gemini and VLT all imaging this companion and confirmed with several years of common proper motion. #astrodon #exoplanet #exosci

    Figure from Squicciarini et al. showing three panels with a white dot on a black and blue stippled background, indicating the location of the planet in GPI and SPHERE IRDIS data.&10;Three panel image from Jones et al. showing a white dot on a stippled background. The planet is in the 11 o'clock position in all three images.

    → 10:29 AM, Sep 9

  • We had WISPIT 2 yesterday, and today we have van Capelleveen et al. with “WIde Separation Planets In Time (WISPIT): Two directly imaged exoplanets around the Sun-like stellar binary WISPIT 1” with 10 and 4 Jupiter mass planets at 338 and 840 au respectively #astrodon #exoplanet #exosci

    A star as imaged by the SPHERE/VLT is shown, with a white ring and surrounded by white spikes, artifacts of the data reduction. Three small white points are seen near the star to the lower left. Two of them are highlighted and are images of the planets WISPIT 1b and 1c. From van Capelleveen+ (2025).
    → 10:25 AM, Aug 27

  • Proud supervisor moment: #LeidenObservatory graduate student Richelle van Capelleveen led one of two papers on our discovery of WISPIT 2b, a 5 Jupiter mass exoplanet clearing a path in a circumstellar disk. Laird Close and his team saw it in H-alpha, indicating gas accretion #astrodon 🔭 🧪

    A series of concentric black and white ovals against a black background, with a dim red dot in the lower left of one of the paths of a black ring. The ovals are dust rings around a young star, and the red dot is a 5 Jupiter mass exoplanet called WISPIT 2b.
    → 12:51 PM, Aug 26

  • Resorting to somewhat extreme methods to focus my easily distracted self in the last week of #astronomy grant writing #AcademicChatter

    A black and white photograph from a magazine showing someone from the early 20th century wearing "The Isolator", a full head helmet with two eye holes and oxygen tube, making it look like a deep sea helmet. The person is sitting at a writing desk, working diligently (one presumes) on their grant proposal.
    → 11:31 AM, Aug 24

  • “If you’re fond of sand dunes and salty air,

    Quaint little villages, here and there…”

    #SouthCoast #BluebirdCafe #GrooveArmada

    “At the river” by Groove Armada

    A pebble beach takes up the bottom half, a blue sky the top half. In the middle, a roofed two story building with dining tables around it, with "Bluebird Cafe" printed on the side of it.A clear small river in the bottom two thirds, with grassy banks on either side. In the distance, the low green rolling hills of the South Downs can be seen. Some trees are off to the right, and the blue sky is dotted with some clouds.

    → 10:51 AM, Aug 8

  • If you are rowing in the Netherlands, you get used to sharing the waterways with the occasional BFB. Weirdly enough their wakes are not a problem if you’re sculling, but smaller cruisers can cast waves big enough to flood your footwell. I’m lucky I can get to enjoy the waterways here.

    A grey sky with a road bridge that has opened up to allow a Big Flipping Boat to pass under it. The boat is about 50 metres long and is painted blue and white. The photo is taken from the point of view looking from a single rowing shell, with the bow of the boat in the lower right of the image.
    → 9:18 AM, Jul 23

  • Once again, don’t trust the output of any #AI assistant without verification. This is not the HR 8799 exoplanet system, it’s the YSES 1 exoplanet system. Source: my (then) grad student Alex Bohn took this image using VLT/SPHERE. #astrodon #astronomy #exoplanets

    An image of the YSES 1 exoplanet system as posted on X by a farming account, with someone asking Grok "what is this system?" and Grok confidently giving completely the wrong answer.
    → 7:36 AM, Jul 17

  • I stumbled upon a terrifying plot legend in Wen (2025) “Updated Earth Tomography Using Atmospheric Neutrinos at IceCube”: “Vacuum earth is 5.16 sigma away” - but in which direction? Should we be nervous? Relieved? How far away is a sigma, exactly? So many questions!

    The top left corner of a scientific plot with a beige label with the text "Vacuum earth is 5.16 sigma away"
    → 7:06 AM, Jul 15

  • XKCD is hitting uncomfortably close to my group’s #exoplanet research! #astrodon

    XKCD comic showing over a dozen exoplanets orbiting around a star. These include a faint dust cloud, several gas giants, and a pulsar.
    → 7:59 PM, Jun 16

  • Dr. Kielan Hoch has a #Nature paper on #JWST observations of the star YSES 1 with its two gas giant planets. She and her team have discovered a circumplanetary disk around the larger 1b and silicate clouds in 1c. Wonderful results and more to come - watch this space! #exoplanet #astrodon

    The two gas giant planets YSES 1b has a circumplanetary disk surrounding a purple coloured visualisation of the gas giant, and a sandy coloured gas giant 1c in the lower right. The star can be seen in the distance. The image is by Ell Bogat at UMD.
    → 6:56 PM, Jun 10

  • Wow! Bryant+ with “A giant planet transiting a 0.2 solar mass host star” that has a transit depth of almost 20% - with that depth, this will be ideal for a very detailed spectroscopic study in the future. A very interesting outlier. #astrodon #exoplanets

    Three transit curves of the planet moving in front of the star, showing a U shaped dip down to 80% of full flux. The last figure shows raidal velocity measurements consistent with a planetary mass object.
    → 8:16 AM, Jun 10

  • Together with Sebastiaan Haffert our review on “High-Contrast Coronagraphy” is out - writing an ARA&A review has been on my academic bucket list, and I’m very proud of the result. It uses the showyourwork! framework, making it a completely reproducible paper. #FAIR #astrodon #exoplanets

    Different telescope mirror apertures and their resultant point spread functions.
    → 2:40 PM, Jun 4

  • I’m in Belfast this week, giving an Astrophysics Research Centre Seminar at #QUB on Wednesday 26th March titled “Scattered: Wide separation directly imaged exoplanets and shattered exomoons” (also soliciting pub recommendations!) #astrodon #exoplanets 🔭🪐 🌗🎆

    A Mustill plot, named by me. Made by Alex Mustil, this is a Venn set-like structure made of nested boxes representing planets and their gravitational domain. Multicolored lines go from left to right in the boxes, representing exomoons, and when they scatter and interact, they move from one box to another.A wireframe sculpture of a female figure holding up a hoop. The sculpture is against a blue sky dotted with clouds. It is called "The Beacon of Hope".

    → 9:28 AM, Mar 25

  • I keep forgetting when and where telescope observing cycles/periods are, so I spent a part of this morning making this spreadsheet which you can view. I will attempt to keep it updated (and yes, P116 is 7 months, not six!) #astrodon #exoplanets 🔭🪐

    A spreadsheet of telescope observing periods
    → 9:48 AM, Mar 15

  • Congratulations to Crawford+ for eliciting an audible groan from me with their paper title: “Peaky Finders: Characterizing Double-Peaked Type IIb Supernovae in Large-Scale Live-Stream Photometric Surveys” but the big question is if they have a Nick Cave song to go with it… #GolfClap

    → 6:08 AM, Mar 6

  • A seriously impressive paper by Thompson+ on the “Revised Mass and Orbit of ε Eridani b: A 1 Jupiter-Mass Planet on a Near-Circular Orbit”. They’ve combined RV, direct imaging and absolute astrometry to revise the planet to ~1 M_Jup and e~0 - close to being a Solar System analogue. 🔭🪐 #astrodon

    Twelve panels showing the past and future predicted positions of E Eridani b as coloured lasso hoops all lying roughly on top of one another, showing that the different detection methods agree with each other.A plot showing the probable mass of the planet versus the inclination of its orbit. There's a nice tight grouping superimposed on a weak horseshoe shaped cloud of possible points.

    → 10:08 AM, Mar 3

  • Clear sky last night allowed me to see the Moon and Venus (pictured), Mars and Jupiter but no joy with Saturn or Mercury which were both buried in twilight. Lovely Earthshine, though. 🔭🪐 #astrodon

    The deepening twilight sky with the silhouette of an electricity pylon in the foregroud, taken from a low angle looking up. The thin crescent Moon is in the lower part, with Earthshine visible. Venus glows brightly in between the pylon framework.
    → 9:51 AM, Mar 2

  • I enjoy teaching, but after teaching/managing three courses last semester and now having a semester free of teaching for the first time in five years, I am burning through those residual research TODOs for several papers… wheee! #AcademicChatter

    Me dancing through a green field, holding a giant green lollipop. (Caution: it is really Father Jack from "Father Ted" being nice)
    → 9:16 AM, Feb 27

  • Sometimes several feelings can be conveyed in only a couple dozen words…

    A paper card pinned up on a wooden shelf in a bookshop. The card has somewhat frantically written words in a pencil that may have been pressed a bit too hard, as if the author was extremely frustrated. The card reads: "Dear self-help browsers: no section gets as disorgansied as this one. PLEASE FOCUS! and respect alphabetical order. You will not only help us and the other customers, you will also help your self. THANK YOU."
    → 9:40 PM, Feb 25

  • A direct imaging claim by Lagrange+ [https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.15081](“Evidence for a sub-jovian planet in the young TWA7 disk”) - a very clear point source but only one epoch… but it’s in the gap in the disk around the star. Will be exciting to see follow up. 🔭🪐 #astrodon

    An image with a black circle in the middle that represents the blocked out light of the central star, with a bright point source to the upper left of the star at about 1 arcsecond. To the right is another point source, a background star and a galaxy.An image taken in polarized scattered light, showing the circumstellar disk around the star. The disk is face on and symmetric, apart from a wide faint gap in the upper left. The position of the gap is identical to the location of the candidate companion.

    → 9:23 AM, Feb 24

  • The giant ring transit ASASSN-21js is following the model prediction we made in our paper last year - the latest ASASSN data shows a slower rise than expected, but still consistent with a ringed disk. We still predict it finishing somewhere in 2026. 🔭🪐 #astrodon

    → 12:12 PM, Feb 14

  • I was asked what the most critical component of successful astronomy research was. My immediate response: “Colleagues who do what they agreed to do, in the time frame they said they would do it in. Treasure them dearly and reciprocate.” beat Them: “…that’s it?” Me: “Pretty much!” 🔭🪐 #astrodon

    → 2:41 PM, Jan 31

  • “Life in the Slow Lane: A Search for Long Term Variability in ASAS-SN” - Petz and Kochanek show the power of all sky surveys over many years - some absolutely fascinating behaviour in these light curves, from dust generation to curious eclipsing systems. 🔭🪐 #astrodon

    Six light curves of stars with ten year baselines, showing very different behaviour. Rapid variation over tens of days, with long term trends where the star brightens gradually or fades.
    → 8:03 AM, Jan 27

  • Not all those who wander are lost: Bhaskar and Perets on “Properties of Free Floating Planets Ejected through Planet-Planet Scattering” showing that 40-80% of planets are ejected (with small velocities), and that 5-10 planets per star can match the free floating planet population 🔭🪐 #astrodon

    → 8:48 AM, Jan 24

  • A summary of the DASCH project culminating in the DR7: Williams on “DASCH: Bringing 100+ Years of Photographic Data into the 21st Century and Beyond” - this project has brought online photographic plate photometry spanning over 100 years. Astounding, brilliant and tough work. 🔭🪐 #astrodon

    → 8:22 AM, Jan 23

  • Astonishing - intensity interferometry in your backyard! Mozdzen+ on “Intensity Interferometer Results on Sirius with 0.25 m Telescopes” with consumer Single Photon Avalanche Detectors. I’m genuinely amazed at what can be done - precision timing to hundreds of picoseconds(!) 🔭🪐 #astrodon

    A small white telescop dome on a gravel back yard, with the dome open and a 0.25m telescope pointing off to the right. A second identical telescoope sits outside and points in the same direction. The Sun shines on both telescopes from the left.A graph showing the g(2) correlation function from the experiment. It is a noisy line with one sharp distinct peak at about 202 nanoseconds.

    → 8:53 AM, Jan 20

  • An unexpected rainbow after six weeks of almost unbroken cloud cover here in the Netherlands.

    → 9:15 AM, Jan 13

  • Hon, Rappaport et al. on “A Disintegrating Rocky Planet with Prominent Comet-like Tails Around a Bright Star” with an orbital period of 1.27 days, this is a fascinating fourth example of this type of object. The eclipses vary from one orbit to another. 🔭🪐 #astrodon

    Several panels showing the brightness of the star as a function of time. The star is blocked by a dust tail which creates a light curve with an initially steep drop, followed by a slow rise back to the normal flux of the star. Each eclipse has a slightly different depth and shape.
    → 11:29 AM, Jan 10

  • Is there another massive exoplanet in the Beta Pic system? Lacquement+ on “Dynamics of the Beta Pictoris planetary system and possibility of an additional planet” show that the two known planets cannot sculpt the current circumstellar disk, but an additional one (or two) planets can! #astrodon 🔭🪐

    Two fuzzy grey circles represent the simulation of the disk around beta pictoris. Two small circles indicete the known exoplanets, and two additional larger circles the orbits of two hypothetical planets. The other figure shows the position of the four planets and the inner edge of the disk that is sculpted by them.
    → 8:25 AM, Jan 7

  • Happy Perihelion Day! The Earth’s orbit is slightly elliptical, and today is when the Earth is closest to the Sun. I also had a clear shot of the Dutch/NATO communications bunker near our house, which earned a 500kt nuclear device on Russian bombing maps in case of World War III :) 🔭🪐 #astrodon

    Blue skies over a large radio tower on the left, next to a low trapezoidal structure covered in winter trees. This is a concrete bunker built during the Cold War, covered in soil and several trees. In the foreground, a canal shows a reflection of the radio tower.
    → 10:34 AM, Jan 4

  • Happy Arbitrary Time Change Day! May you have good times with friends and family in the next 31 and a half million seconds :)

    A computer terminal window running the date program, showing Wed 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 CET
    → 9:42 AM, Jan 1
  • RSS
  • JSON Feed
  • Micro.blog