iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Bruce Macintosh

Michael Busch @michael-w-busch.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Today on the #arXiv : Miles et al. 2026 describe the weather on the brown dwarf WISE 0855: arxiv.org/abs/2609.20664 . Patchy water clouds along with carbon monoxide, methane, ammonia, and phosphine. When a star is as cold as ice...

arxiv.org

Water Cloud and Chemical Modulations in the Coldest Brown Dwarf

We present high signal-to-noise, medium resolution (R ~ 1000), time-series JWST/NIRSpec spectra of WISE 0855 (265K), the coldest known brown dwarf. Medium resolution, time-series spectroscopy gives us...

1163

Bruce Macintosh @bmacastro.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Postdoc opportunity! I'm looking for a postdoc to work with me on coronagraph performance and modeling and science. The primary project is understanding Roman with an eye to HWO; secondary project could be a side order of GPI2. aas.org/jobregister/...

aas.org

Postdoctoral Scholar in Adaptive Optics & Coronagraphy | American Astronomical Society

The Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and University of California Observatories has an opportunity for a postdoctoral researcher working on analyzi...

093

Bruce Macintosh @bmacastro.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

On a good day I can understand interferometery for a pair of telescopes because it's basically the two-slit experiment, and once I understand something for N=2 I can leave it to other people to generalize.

260

Bruce Macintosh @bmacastro.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Of all the big franchises, Star Trek remains by far my favorite - formative exposure as a 6-year-old to just having watched TWOK on the big screen with my kid. Optimistic, with a belief that the future really can be better, and that good people can solve problems with science and diplomacy.

191

Reposted by Bruce Macintosh

Bryan Gaensler @scibry.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

I’m excited to announce that you can all now enroll now for our new online course, "Science Communication I: Sharing Science with a General Audience”, taught by the team from the renowned UC Santa Cruz Science Communication Program! It’s a 10-week course, which you can complete at your own pace.

0126

Bruce Macintosh @bmacastro.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

Astronomy versions would be what? Telescope&fog, rebooting the AO realtime computer, loss of coolant…

3130

Reposted by Bruce Macintosh

vincentholst.bsky.social @vincentholst.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

In 2023, @nature.com published 'Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time', receiving world-wide media attention. Our Matters Arising, published after a 32 month delay (more on that soon), shows that the reported decline can largely be attributed to dataset artefacts. 🧵

The average CD_5 index per year for Web of Science. The original Park et al. decline (top curve) becomes essentially flat (bottom curve) when removing papers with CD_5=1. Those papers largely correspond to dataset artefacts.

9351173

Bruce Macintosh @bmacastro.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Remember the whole “science is getting too safe and boring (and less disruptive)?” Turns out to be mostly a database artifact, shown in this brilliant thread.

162

Reposted by Bruce Macintosh

Dr Space Junk (Alice Gorman) @drspacejunk.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

What I need male academics to understand is that you, YES YOU, still benefit from a system where you are seen as superior to the women students and staff around you. You don't have to lift a finger. You are not exempt because you're nice or a feminist. YES YOU. #AcademicSky

514938

Reposted by Bruce Macintosh

John Bull @garius.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

Many, many years ago I worked for a certain legal news website to which Lindsey Graham subscribed. Anyway i hardcoded it to always spell his name wrong in the top corner, no matter how many times he tried to manually correct it.

643849506

Bruce Macintosh @bmacastro.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

@ucobservatories.bsky.social is searching for a leader for our outreach and public education programs - looking for a scientist who is passionate about science communication and bringing astronomy to the public. Feel free to reach out with questions or interest! recruit.ucsc.edu/JPF02124

recruit.ucsc.edu

Academic Coordinator for Program Development & External Engagement

University of California, Santa Cruz is hiring. Apply now!

087

Bruce Macintosh @bmacastro.bsky.social · 23/05/2026

I was at Lawrence Livermore National Lab twenty years ago when the Bush administration did something similar to University of California and the NNSA national labs (LLNL and Los Alamos) the outcome wasn't a disaster but it wasn't great.

1116

Bruce Macintosh @bmacastro.bsky.social · 23/05/2026

It’s also an effect of running against impossible policies without a media system that points this out. If Trump says “we will raise tariffs and this will lower your gas prices by 400%“ it’s hard to sound better with proposals for EITC changes. Nothing real can compete with “magic ponies for all”

122

Reposted by Bruce Macintosh

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 14/05/2026

VERY FEW NEWS ORGANIZATIONS ARE REPORTING THIS OUT CORRECTLY: "The House bill, though, does not restore funding levels to 2026 for all of its major programs. Exploration gets a $1.1 billion increase compared with 2026, but science funding would be cut by $1.25 billion." 🧪🔭⚛️

spacenews.com

House appropriators approve spending bill that keeps NASA budget flat

The House Appropriations Committee advanced a spending bill May 13 that rejects many of the cuts to NASA proposed by the administration.

217085

Bruce Macintosh @bmacastro.bsky.social · 25/04/2026

The NSB is pretty important in US science policy and included a lot of brilliant people thinking about hard questions, and even though they’re presidentI’ll appointees historically have been fairly apolitical and serve through multiple administrations. This seems bad.

1136

Bruce Macintosh @bmacastro.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

I'll try to have more to say about this tomorrow, but Olivier Hainaut is a global astro-hero for doing this kind of careful quantitative modeling.

0122

Reposted by Bruce Macintosh

Tactical Onions Vendor @inkana.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

bluesky: the website for leftists who can recite the specs of every plane used by the allies in operation torch

4798

Bruce Macintosh @bmacastro.bsky.social · 15/03/2026

To be fair, he didn’t say if this was real GDP or nominal. .

120

Bruce Macintosh @bmacastro.bsky.social · 15/03/2026

Best it could find was He II . Is ionization hell?

A whiteboard covered with astronomy. The word “hell”does not appear. He II does. For weird historical reasons, astronomers refer to singly ionized helium as He II pronounced “Helium two”. Double ionized would be “He III”, pronounced “Helium 3”, not to be confused with the isotope He 3 pronounced “Helium 3”. Fortunately most astronomers don’t build things where this confusion could result in something exploding.

051

Reposted by Bruce Macintosh

Ava Polzin @avapolzin.bsky.social · 08/03/2026

Happy International Women's Day! Perfect time for me to (re)share our white paper on increasing the retention of women in professional astrophysics (really full of suggestions that broaden participation in academic science in general). arxiv.org/abs/2512.24465 🧪🔭☄️👩‍🔬

Cover of "Picture an Astronomer: Best Practices for Retaining Talent in Astrophysics", which features an illustration of a 19-year-old Vera Rubin looking through a telescope over a backdrop of a first light image of spiral galaxies from the Rubin Observatory.

318470

Bruce Macintosh @bmacastro.bsky.social · 08/03/2026

If you live in the Bay Area, are bored on Wednesday night, and would like to hear flippant remarks about exoplanets and see pictures of golden retrievers, come here me talk at Foothill College: www.seti.org/events/pictu...

seti.org

Pictures of Distant Worlds

0153

Reposted by Bruce Macintosh

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 27/02/2026

the consolidation of major media institutions by the president’s oligarch friends is obviously bad, but i do wonder about the ultimate impact. it is clear that trump and his allies believe that you can buy up media and pull an orban or a putin. but…

1325516950

Reposted by Bruce Macintosh

Thomas Fuchs 🫯 @thomasfuchs.at · 11/02/2026

🔭🧪 Are you interested in having a night sky? (Like at all?) File comments with the FCC telling them to deny permission to Starlink for “a million satellites” and to Reflect Orbital for their giant sunlight mirror in space. The American Astronomical Society has info on how 👇

aas.org

How to Submit Comments on Satellite Applications to the FCC

Step-by-step guide for submitting comments on satellite applications to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

2228152

Bruce Macintosh @bmacastro.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

We all show this figure, but I seriously agree with Peter that we need to rethink that. It tells a story but doesn't actually convey more than one or two important facts. It's almost ritualistic.

Plot showing the planetary mass vs orbital semi-major axis of known exoplanets, colorcoded by discovery technique. Mostly it doesn't actually tell you anything useful. If you take your glasses off it looks like two upside down dinosaurs.

4152

Reposted by Bruce Macintosh

Jonathan O'Callaghan @astrojonny.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

Bump on this - looking for an expert specifically on orbital data centres available in the next few hours. If that's you let me know!

142

Bruce Macintosh @bmacastro.bsky.social · 22/01/2026

@lickobservatory.bsky.social update: the dome is now sealed! Thanks to the summit staff, contractors, and main-campus staff for an amazing amount of work over the past four months. Now we can catch our breath and plan how to checkout/repair the telescope and the dome.

35510

Bruce Macintosh @bmacastro.bsky.social · 07/01/2026

I am not, as many people know, I am not a naturally optimistic or supportive person, but let me say that this is an impressive concept by some smart people that could do some real science. (More thoughts later when I’ve digested the paper.)

080

Bruce Macintosh @bmacastro.bsky.social · 02/01/2026

One nice piece of detective work for the Christmas morning shutter failure at Lick - staff astronomer Dr. Elinor Gates (with others) figured out exactly what time the shutter fell down. The first major clue: records from the seismometer in the building. There's a sharp red spike just after 3:16 AM.

Seismograph readings from Lick Observatory showing a sharp shock just after 3:16 AM

1111

Bruce Macintosh @bmacastro.bsky.social · 29/12/2025

Lick updates: We got a crane up there Friday and the winds dropped enough by Saturday to get the shutter off the roof.

Large crane going up the narrow road. Photo by Jamey Eriksen

Crane attaching to the shutter. Photo by Elinor Gates

Crane lowering the shutter into the parking lot. Photo by Elinor Gates

46712

Bruce Macintosh @bmacastro.bsky.social · 27/12/2025

In not-very-good news, extreme winds (114 mph gusts) on the early morning of the 25th caused significant damage to the 36" Great Refractor at Lick Observatory. Half of the main shutter broke off and landed on the main building.

68530

Bruce Macintosh @bmacastro.bsky.social · 18/12/2025

I’m supportive of while mildly skeptical of the various fusion startups - most are smart and sincere but it’s a hard problem and after decades it’s unlikely there’s a easy solution - but nothing says “this is a complete scam” like merging with Trump social media. www.theguardian.com/media/2025/d...

theguardian.com

Trump Media announces $6bn merger plan with fusion power company

TMTG, which owns president’s Truth Social platform, unveils link-up TAE Technologies to respond to AI boom

182

Bruce Macintosh @bmacastro.bsky.social · 08/12/2025

Movie you’ve watched more than six times with a gif. Hard mode (no Star Wars or Star Trek, LOTR, Marvel, Disney, or Pixar)

4192

Bruce Macintosh @bmacastro.bsky.social · 05/12/2025

This suggests an obvious strategy for modifying Earth's climate cycles and delaying or hastening ice ages by destroying huge chunks of Mars with nuclear weapons or other techniques. I believe @theplanetaryguy.bsky.social would strongly support this.

130

Bruce Macintosh @bmacastro.bsky.social · 05/12/2025

This was inspired by the long-running (SF) Bay Area exoplanet meetings (originally organized by Tom Greene at Ames and still going strong.) It's a lovely format - local and informal with a good balance of elderly but supportive curmudgeons like me and @markmarley.bsky.social and young people.

2121

Reposted by Bruce Macintosh

Feral T. Robot, Oil Swamp Utility Bot #7629 @feralrobots.bsky.social · 27/11/2025

Hey @nature.com, have you got an explanation for how the hell THIS happened? & especially why you accepted a paper with such a bizarre piece of genAI slop in it?! & more to the point, why we should take you seriously at all going forward? www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Figure 1 from a paper published in Nature (linked in post). The figure purports to be an infographic depiction of the "Overall working of the framework" for 'explainably' diagnosing autism spectrum disorder. The infographic is plainly nonsense, containing many spelling errors, nonsense words, meaningless images and graphs. Clearly created using generative AI and (crucially) NEVER CHECKED AT ANY STEP OF THE WRITING OR PUBLICATION PROCESS.

741281341

Reposted by Bruce Macintosh

Allan Murphy @cullenskink.bsky.social · 22/11/2025

Now I've heard there was a secret chord That yours truly played, and it pleased the Lord But you don't really care for music, do you? It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth The minor falls, the major lifts The pontifex composing Hallelujah

Il Papa is crooning into a mic, holding it with both hands; beside him are some press and archbiships and the like, in front of him is a gold chair with red upholstery (I think).

0533

Bruce Macintosh @bmacastro.bsky.social · 16/11/2025

We should never, ever be assuming that just because our friends and colleagues are strong that they should have to take crap like is described in this thread, and it's our job to try and build a world where they don't have to.

08019

Reposted by Bruce Macintosh

Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net · 16/11/2025

Larry Summers needs to resign or be pushed out of Harvard. This is absolutely unacceptable.

491867389

Reposted by Bruce Macintosh

Zoë McLaren, PhD @zoemclaren.bsky.social · 16/11/2025

I’m an economics professor and I approve this message. We have a deep bench of economists that are better qualified for this role.

092

Reposted by Bruce Macintosh

Euclid Consortium @ec-euclid.bsky.social · 15/11/2025

Those were beautiful #aurorae in the past days. A solar storm brought a lot of protons to Earth. Not only to Earth but also to #ESAEuclid – but does #Euclid notice? Oh yes. www.euclid-ec.org/here-comes-t... #ESA #Sun #SpaceWeather #space

Snapshot of a part of Euclid VIS detectors, almost saturated with cosmic ray hits.

37932

Reposted by Bruce Macintosh

Trent Dupuy @trentdupuy.bsky.social · 13/11/2025

Astro PhD applications for Edinburgh are open! Deadlines are: * 24 Nov: Career Development Scholarship (for students of Black heritage) * 5 Dec: Bell Burnell Scholarship (for all URM students) * 5 Jan: all applications Come to beautiful Scotland! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Applying is free! 🔭🧪 ifa.roe.ac.uk/phds-jobs-fe...

Picture looking up at the sky, with the Royal Observatory Edinburgh East Tower in the lower right-hand corner and stars overhead surrounded by the pink/purple glow of the Northern Lights.

03219

Bruce Macintosh @bmacastro.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

This is a pretty darn important election here in California for an odd-numbered year. Get out there!

060

Reposted by Bruce Macintosh

Maria Vincent @themariavincent.bsky.social · 30/10/2025

My #AO4ELT talk summarised the results from the new DM at @keckobservatory.bsky.social , and one of my favorite results is a video of applying a waffle on the DM. So here's my latest fun activities with the HAKA DM! HAKA: High Order Keck Adaptive Optics #astronomy #adaptiveoptics

052

Bruce Macintosh @bmacastro.bsky.social · 26/10/2025

Or in other units, this "donation" is $3 per service member per day. In addition to the illegality, presenting it as if it makes any difference whatsoever is nonsense.

010

Reposted by Bruce Macintosh

Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 25/10/2025

For context, annual military compensation is about $600 billion. So $130 million is about $100 per service member or 0.02% of total annual costs. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/25/u...

24406108

Bruce Macintosh @bmacastro.bsky.social · 24/10/2025

I had my first real visit to @ucmerced.bsky.social to meet students and leaders and give a public talk, and had a wonderful time - hoping to come back some time soon.

251

Bruce Macintosh @bmacastro.bsky.social · 20/10/2025

Now with proper link! Inspiring people with science is a major part of UC Observatories' mission. We have an opening for a support astronomer at Lick Observatory to both support science and also to lead our amazing mountain-top public programming. aas.org/jobregister/...

aas.org

Support Astronomer for Lick Observatory | American Astronomical Society

The University of California Observatories (UCO) at UC Santa Cruz seeks a Support Astronomer for Lick Observatory on Mt. Hamilton. UCO operates Lick and partners with Keck and TMT; this role ensures w...

14221