Reposted by Erika DunningAmerican Astronomical Society (AAS) @aas.org · 19/03/2025🚨 Action Alert: Ask your members of congress to support federal science funding! Learn how to submit constituent appropriations requests: aas.org/posts/action... We welcome anyone interested in taking action to our Q&A/co-working session on Friday at 1:30 pm ET: aas-org.zoom.us/meeting/regi... 0126
Erika Dunning @astrodunning.bsky.social · 20/03/2025Oh my Kepler, I might be getting HARPS data on my circumbinary planet system 🤯 000
Reposted by Erika DunningBohdan Pavuk @bpavuk.neocities.org · 26/12/2024if you see this post, your actions are: - if you have a spare buck, give it to Wikipedia, then repost this - if you don't have a spare buck, just repost your action is mandatory for the world's best source of information to survive 2612715935200
Erika Dunning @astrodunning.bsky.social · 15/01/2025#RivertheAstronomer has been working hard. She’s only a year and a half, and while she’s had some challenges, she’s a (starship) trooper. She’s doing her part. Are you? #disabledinstem 071
Erika Dunning @astrodunning.bsky.social · 15/01/2025#AAS245 is at the Gaylord National Convention center this year, and the big atrium makes me think about what a futuristic Mars colony could look like, sans the blue sky. Lots of space, plants, and an open-air feeling. 000
Erika Dunning @astrodunning.bsky.social · 14/01/2025River and I were thrilled to share our circumbinary planet poster with all of you at #AAS245. Come and say hi if you see us! 091
Erika Dunning @astrodunning.bsky.social · 13/01/2025Presenting my poster on our two new circumbinary exoplanet candidates at #aas245. Come say hi! 040
Erika Dunning @astrodunning.bsky.social · 13/01/2025Service dog #RivertheAstronomer is very intent on watching the planery talks at #AAS245. Come say hi if you see us! #disabledinstem #astronomyaccessibility 092
Erika Dunning @astrodunning.bsky.social · 09/01/2025(2/2) Gaia is a high-resolution, spectroscopic survey of stars while TESS is a low-resolution survey of bright stars with the predominant aim of finding planets. Both telescopes are excellent but produce different data for different purposes. #Astronomy #LearnAstronomy #DisabledinSTEM 010
Erika Dunning @astrodunning.bsky.social · 09/01/2025It's a scary world right now, so here is a fun plot I made. This is the star field around one of my research targets from #TESS. Here, you can see stars from the Gaia survey over-plotted on the TESS field. This is a great way to see the range of precision in modern #telescopes. (1/2) 010
Erika Dunning @astrodunning.bsky.social · 27/12/2024What do circumbinary planet transits look like? As the planet crosses each star, it creates a dip in the light curve (brightness of the system plotted versus time). These dips (transits) have different depths and lengths which are dependent on many different factors. #LearnAstronomy #Astronomy 021
Erika Dunning @astrodunning.bsky.social · 17/12/2024Today’s #AstronomyFactoftheDay is that Uranus (and no, this isn’t a joke) is one of the most mysterious planets in our solar system. It orbits the Sun on its side, its interior generates far less heat than a gas giant of its size should, and its magnetic field is offset from its rotational. 110
Erika Dunning @astrodunning.bsky.social · 16/12/2024Make an academic poster is difficult because you have so much to say, but so little space. Let me sing the praises of circumbinary planets with fanciful prose pulled from the depths of literature. Let me emblazon the skies with the glory of the CBP research empire! 010
Erika Dunning @astrodunning.bsky.social · 16/12/2024Here we can see the joy of modern science. The posters of yesteryear have been replaced with iPosters. Now grad students and researchers everywhere can deal with a poor UI and not nearly enough formatting options. All modern creations come with their own issues, but at least we can use videos now. 020
Erika Dunning @astrodunning.bsky.social · 14/12/2024The Pleiades cluster in Taurus is known as a bright, young star cluster, but did you know that up to 25% of the cluster’s population are brown dwarfs? These are objects with insufficient mass to be a star but are far more massive than planets. #Astronomy Fact of the Day 010
Erika Dunning @astrodunning.bsky.social · 13/12/2024Did you know that Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, has lakes of ethane and methane? Larger lakes, called Maria, are named after mythical sea creatures, and the smaller lakes (lacūs) are named after lakes on Earth of a similar size and shape. 021
Erika Dunning @astrodunning.bsky.social · 07/12/2024Excellent question! Circumbinary exoplanets (CBPs) are planets that orbit two stars instead of just one. While we have discovered around 6,000 exoplanets around single stars, only 16 have been discovered around binary stars even though half of all stars are in binary or higher order systems. (1/3) 250