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AstroMonnier

@astromonnier.bsky.social
90 followers 76 following 83 posts

John Monnier, Professor of Astronomy, U. of Michigan Favorite Things: Imaging Stars & Exoplanets with Interferometry Developer: MIRC-X, MYSTIC, STARI 2014 Michelson Investigator Prize; 2019 AAS Joseph Weber Award monnier.us Opinions my own.

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AstroMonnier @astromonnier.bsky.social · 11/10/2026
I've updated our STARI website! We are working toward passing starlight between two CubeSats—a step toward space interferometry. New papers, team news, and ways to help. Check it out and let me know what you think! starimission.space #stari #nasa
starimission.space
STARI: STarlight Acquisition and Reflection toward Interferometry
STARI is a twin-CubeSat mission developing formation flying and starlight transfer technologies for future space-based optical interferometry.
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AstroMonnier @astromonnier.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
It was great getting up Sunday morning and watch the flawless launch of Roman Space Telescope! And great job @dominicbenford.bsky.social on #NASA TV with clear explanations of the science goals!
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AstroMonnier @astromonnier.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
This is a great summary of the potential for space interferometry of exoplanets.
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AstroMonnier @astromonnier.bsky.social · 19/04/2026
Disturbing. Are accreditation agencies paying attention? www.washingtonpost.com/education/20...
washingtonpost.com
Students are speeding through their online degrees in weeks, alarming educators
Some online colleges allow students to take unlimited courses on their own time, leading to quick degrees and worries about devaluing credentials.
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AstroMonnier @astromonnier.bsky.social · 13/01/2026
But he didnt know about interferometry. The #chara Array is just down the road from these amazing solar towers continuing this legacy. We can now study quite a diverse range of stars in quite some detail with milliarcsecond resolution.
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AstroMonnier @astromonnier.bsky.social · 08/01/2026
Amazing projects all-around. Could the LFAST telescopes design be a basis for a new fiber-coupled interferometer?
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AstroMonnier @astromonnier.bsky.social · 01/01/2026
Happy New Years! I will be attending AAS Meeting in Phoenix to present a poster on our STARI Mission. Look me up to learn more or to catch up. starimission.space
starimission.space
STARI: STarlight Acquisition and Reflection toward Interferometry
Space website with enhanced multi‑layer parallax.
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AstroMonnier @astromonnier.bsky.social · 19/12/2025
Working on my first AAS "iPoster"... I hadn't realized the presenting screens are much smaller than a typical physical poster and so not sure this is really an upgrade for most people. What am I missing?
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AstroMonnier @astromonnier.bsky.social · 10/12/2025
My STARI (starimission.space) Collaborators Simone D'Amico and Sam Low (Stanford) took time to make this image as we prepare for our System Requirements Review on Friday! tinyurl.com/4ett99wv #stari #nasa @jwcutler.bsky.social
Real image of Super Moon by Sam Low with mock up of the STARI formation flying mission included with an artistic touch by Simone D'Amico
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AstroMonnier @astromonnier.bsky.social · 09/12/2025
Happy to announce a paper 20+ years in the making: arxiv.org/abs/2512.06066 In a huge group effort with new data from VLA, ATCA, Swift, Chandra, Keck aperture masking, and Keck adaptive optics, we report a "shocking" result about colliding wind WR112. Enjoy! Let me know if you have any questions!
arxiv.org
Revealing the accelerating wind in the inner region of the colliding-wind binary WR 112
Colliding winds in massive binaries generate X-ray-bright shocks, synchrotron radio emission, and sometimes even dusty "pinwheel" spirals. We report the first X-ray detections of the dusty WC+O binary...
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Reposted by AstroMonnier
The Associated Press @apnews.com · 07/12/2025
BREAKING: No. 2 Indiana beats No. 1 Ohio State 13-10 for its first Big Ten championship since 1967 and likely lock up the top seed in the playoff.
bit.ly
No. 2 Indiana beats No. 1 Ohio St. 13-10 to end Big Ten title drought, lock up top playoff seed
Fernando Mendoza’s 17-yard touchdown pass to Elijah Sarratt gave No. 2 Indiana the lead midway through the third quarter and the Hoosiers' stingy defense pitched a shutout the rest of the way to beat No. 1 Ohio State 13-10 for their first Big Ten championship since 1967 while likely locking up the t
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AstroMonnier @astromonnier.bsky.social · 07/12/2025
When I was a grad student, we dreamed of imaging nova (and supernova) explosions with our then-new infrared interferometers. And while we are still waiting for a Milky Way SUPERnova, we CAN now see novae go boom using CHARA with instruments built at U. Michigan! news.umich.edu/seeing-stell...
news.umich.edu
Seeing stellar explosions in high definition
An international team of astronomers, including researchers from the University of Michigan, has captured unprecedented images of two stellar explosions—known as novae—within days of their eruption.
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AstroMonnier @astromonnier.bsky.social · 11/11/2025
This article seemed to say the Observatory has 135 employees and can only afford 2 astronomers. :/
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AstroMonnier @astromonnier.bsky.social · 22/10/2025
Ha. The “Urban Experience Fee” unexpectedly cost us an extra $25 extra per night during our recent stay in Chicago. But look at what amenities were included:
Card showing the benefits
Of the Urban experience fee in a chicago hotel
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AstroMonnier @astromonnier.bsky.social · 14/10/2025
Amazing work solving a tricky calibration problem with JWST aperture masking data! Any hope to improve ground-based systematics with this general approach? @benjaminpope.bsky.social arxiv.org/abs/2510.09806
arxiv.org
AMIGO: a Data-Driven Calibration of the JWST Interferometer
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) hosts a non-redundant Aperture Masking Interferometer (AMI) in its Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) instrument, providing the only dedicate...
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AstroMonnier @astromonnier.bsky.social · 07/10/2025
Its much harder to help my kids with homework post-covid with no textbooks. Can’t help but wonder if the move to online resources is hurting learning across the board, but especially middle and high school.
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AstroMonnier @astromonnier.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
Seems like you should try the method it on one of the classic CHARA datasets, either lambda and or zeta and. Is that in the works?
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AstroMonnier @astromonnier.bsky.social · 29/08/2025
Thanks @planet4589.bsky.social One ride to terminator every few years.... Check it out, @jwcutler.bsky.social !
Two-panel meme. Top: hand-drawn sketch of Earth, Sun, and a red sun-synchronous orbit, with notes asking about allowed orbit angles. Caption: “How it started.” Bottom: polished 3D visualization of Earth with day/night shadow, orange SSO orbits, blue other orbits, and a red terminator line. Caption: “How it’s going.”
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AstroMonnier @astromonnier.bsky.social · 27/08/2025
This is brilliant. So a few are close to terminator but not many. Does your database contain the full dataset, including cubesats put in non polar orbits?
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AstroMonnier @astromonnier.bsky.social · 27/08/2025
🚀 Rideshare reality check: @planet4589.bsky.social — is there a good source for CubeSat drop-off orbits from the past 5 years? I’m modeling #STARI (a LEO formation-flying mission) and need to know the most common insertion orbits. Dream case is SSO terminator—but I’m told those are unicorns 🦄.
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AstroMonnier @astromonnier.bsky.social · 13/08/2025
Bravo to the organizers of the 2025 #smallsat Conference! Lively talks, great interactions, and flawless organization — plus free coffee, ice cream, lunches, and industry socials that set a high bar. Hope #AAS and #SPIE are taking notes! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
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AstroMonnier @astromonnier.bsky.social · 11/08/2025
Excited to attend my first SmallSat conference in Salt Lake City this week. Many cool CubeSat missions and innovative companies exhibiting. I’ll talk about our formation flying mission STARI later in week. #smallsat #stari
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AstroMonnier @astromonnier.bsky.social · 10/08/2025
Really hate to see Stanford going back on its pledge to halt legacy admissions. stanforddaily.com/2025/08/06/s...
stanforddaily.com
Stanford to continue legacy admissions, reinstate standardized test requirements
New admissions criteria announced a continuation of legacy consideration and a reinstatement of the standardized testing requirement for class of 2030 applicants
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AstroMonnier @astromonnier.bsky.social · 09/08/2025
Bravo.. “ — making “Harvard astronomer” the scientific equivalent of “Florida man” didn’t just happen; it took long-term dedication.”
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AstroMonnier @astromonnier.bsky.social · 08/08/2025
It is cool to see a movie about local Ann Arbor History funded by kickstarter! Congratulations to the filmakers! www.kickstarter.com/projects/196...
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AstroMonnier @astromonnier.bsky.social · 02/08/2025
Ahh yes. Indeed, Justin is working on that! I should check in on that. Also folks are working on HWO targets with CHARA.
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AstroMonnier @astromonnier.bsky.social · 02/08/2025
If characterizing nearby hot stars is important, We should talk about a chara survey to look for faint companions. We can do delta mag 8 within 0.15” for bright stars with modest effort. Open time through noirlab
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AstroMonnier @astromonnier.bsky.social · 25/07/2025
Not sure how american those dollars are…
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AstroMonnier @astromonnier.bsky.social · 25/07/2025
Toliman excepted?
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AstroMonnier @astromonnier.bsky.social · 21/07/2025
Just wow.
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AstroMonnier @astromonnier.bsky.social · 15/07/2025
For those also waiting, I just got a late NSF-ATI rejection today. The letter says only 10% success rate, notably lower than historical practice. With MRI shutdown for next year, I suspect ATI (the only other NSF instrumentation programs) will be overwhelmed!
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AstroMonnier @astromonnier.bsky.social · 15/07/2025
Would be interesting compare images using this novel polarization method with those by interferometry See these images of same star by #VLTI www.eso.org/public/news/...
eso.org
Best Ever Image of a Star’s Surface and Atmosphere - First map of motion of material on a star other than the Sun
Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer astronomers have constructed the most detailed image ever of a star — the red supergiant star Antares. They have also made the first map of the velociti...
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AstroMonnier @astromonnier.bsky.social · 15/07/2025
Ok. So NSF has officially cut funding for one of its largest instrumentation programs for next year. Hope this is temporary. www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...
nsf.gov
Changes to NSF Major Research Instrumentation Program for FY 2026
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AstroMonnier @astromonnier.bsky.social · 12/07/2025
Spent time to visit Copernicus in old Krakow. He worked at The Jagiellonian University in Krakow, the 4th oldest University in Europe, where they started out only teaching 3 disciplines: Law, Medicine, and Astronomy.
John in front of Copernicus statue in Krakow
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AstroMonnier @astromonnier.bsky.social · 26/06/2025
Heard of this ? astro.theoj.org/post/3096-th...
astro.theoj.org
The Cost of the Open Journal of Astrophysics | Published by The Open Journal of Astrophysics
Our annual running costs remain lower than the Article Processing Charge for a single paper at many journals
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AstroMonnier @astromonnier.bsky.social · 14/06/2025
Thank you!
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AstroMonnier @astromonnier.bsky.social · 10/06/2025
I’d like to advertise the Michigan Society of Fellows, a unique opportunity for recent PhDs to carry out cutting edge research while also developing their teaching skills. Any Interferometrists or ELT-METISians interested? Note early deadline Sep 15. societyoffellows.umich.edu/the-fellowsh...
societyoffellows.umich.edu
The Fellowship – University of Michigan Society of Fellows, Established 1970
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AstroMonnier @astromonnier.bsky.social · 09/06/2025
Website says 150euros/page. So probably better but not cheap.
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AstroMonnier @astromonnier.bsky.social · 09/06/2025
150 euros per what?
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AstroMonnier @astromonnier.bsky.social · 09/06/2025
Fellow Astronomers: With ApJ page charges running $3K these days, what are some alternate journals to submit to?
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AstroMonnier @astromonnier.bsky.social · 05/06/2025
Ive also been disappointed by the silence of our National Academy of Sciences. Perhaps if the membership of the NAS itself was being cut by 50% we would hear more complaint. arstechnica.com/science/2025...
arstechnica.com
US science is being wrecked, and its leadership is fighting the last war
Facing an extreme budget, the National Academies hosted an event that ignored it.
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AstroMonnier @astromonnier.bsky.social · 31/05/2025
Reasonable NSF budget cut: * Choose to support only one Extremely Large Telescope Project Unreasonable NSF budget cut: * Choose to support only one of the two essential LIGO Gravitational Wave Interferometer detector sites.
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AstroMonnier @astromonnier.bsky.social · 31/05/2025
Space science is probably the only area in technology that the USA is the undisputed world leader. Squandered.
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AstroMonnier @astromonnier.bsky.social · 30/05/2025
Maybe this has been written before, but one of explanations for the increased and more widespread administrative mayhem of the new govt compared to last must be chatgpt.
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AstroMonnier @astromonnier.bsky.social · 29/05/2025
I could not disagree more with revoking student visas based on nationality. As the PhD advisor of multiple international students over past 20years, there is no doubt our Country is stronger and more prosperous with their contributions.
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AstroMonnier @astromonnier.bsky.social · 29/05/2025
www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2025/05/24/i...
hawaiinewsnow.com
‘I’m not a criminal’: Military wife detained, deported at Honolulu airport
U.S. border officials denied entry for Nicolle Saroukos, who says she was "treated like a criminal."
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AstroMonnier @astromonnier.bsky.social · 25/05/2025
Potentially legit reasons to withdraw tax-exempt status for Universities: * increasing student tuition faster than inflation * paying U Presidents >$1M/yr Not legitimate reasons: * defending student and faculty academic freedom * pursuing DEI activities legally allowed by state and federal laws
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AstroMonnier @astromonnier.bsky.social · 24/05/2025
Will US news outlets please verify and shine a spotlight on these abuses? Does not MAGA. www.news.com.au/travel/trave...
news.com.au
Ex-cop jailed and deported during holiday to US
A former NSW police officer has described the terrifying ordeal she faced after she was detained, jailed overnight and deported from the United States – despite travelling there legally on a tourist visa to visit her US military husband.
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AstroMonnier @astromonnier.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
Great seeing these dust shells. Im finishing an update paper on WR112. Now do mysterious WR98a !
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AstroMonnier @astromonnier.bsky.social · 15/05/2025
The politicization of basic government functions must not stand. Thanks for the reporting and spreading this news.
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