iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Julien Girard

Space Telescope Science Institute @stsci.edu · 27/08/2026

NASA and SpaceX are targeting #NASARoman’s liftoff for no earlier than 7:26 a.m. EDT Sunday, August 30, from Launch Complex 39A at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. 🎥 Launch coverage begins at 6:20 a.m. 🔭

nasa.gov

NASA Sets Coverage for Roman Space Telescope Launch from Florida - NASA

Coverage plans are ready for NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope prelaunch and launch activities. Roman is NASA's next-generation observatory designed to

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Sarah E Moran @offallingstars.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

"We do what we can with the universe we've been given" (he was talking about direct imaging of exoplanets, but thta's some pretty profound and wide-ranging wisdom from @juliengirard.space at the BDExoCon meeting today)

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Julien Girard @juliengirard.space · 07/04/2026

So so so deserved, happy for you William @balmer.bsky.social !!

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Julien Girard @juliengirard.space · 07/04/2026

It’s really refreshing nowadays to hear the #artemis2 crew deliver humanist, universally good and sensible words while doing something extraordinary. The cognitive dissonance is real, what humanity can achieve and what humanity can destroy.

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Reposted by Julien Girard

Dr. Skylar Grayson @skylargrayson.bsky.social · 04/04/2026

NASA just dropped this image of Artemis II astronaut Christina Koch looking back at us. The first woman to ever see our planet in its entirety. I’m not crying you’re crying 🥹🔭🧪 📸: NASA

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American Astronomical Society (AAS) @aas.org · 25/02/2026

AAS President Dara Norman and Past President Kelsey Johnson published an opinion article in SpaceNews today titled "The future of astronomy is both on Earth and in space." The article is signed by 15 past, current, and incoming AAS presidents.

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Julien Girard @juliengirard.space · 23/02/2026

On October 19 2025 it was my 20th PhD anniversary, believe it or not, I may have well consumed a bit of the second part of my career. I didn't feel like celebrating or posting anything then. Meh, just another year. I had been meaning to update my professional website.... www.juliengirard.space

juliengirard.space

Julien H. Girard, astronomer, AURA Scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI)

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Julien Girard @juliengirard.space · 13/01/2026

Our "Unprecedented Look Into Heart of Circinus Galaxy", an AGN using JWST/NIRISS Aperture Masking Interferometry (AMI) mode. NASA @stsci.edu Press Release: science.nasa.gov/missions/web... Nature Comm. paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41... Props to Anand Sivaramakrishnan who did so much for AMI!

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Julien Girard @juliengirard.space · 09/12/2025

Debris disk around TWA 20, a M star, imaged with JWST/NIRCam coronagraph at 2µm! Palatnick et al. 2025 arxiv.org/abs/2510.20216

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Julien Girard @juliengirard.space · 05/12/2025

The CHesapeake bay area EXOplanet Meeting #CHEXO12 has started @jhuapl.bsky.social with a nice and big crowd despite the snow! www.chexo.org #exoplanets

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Julien Girard @juliengirard.space · 12/11/2025

Good news! En hora buena! I know this is probably not the time yet but choosing Tenerife (or even Madrid or Barcelona) for Spanish HQ would be wise, more attractive for scientists, engineers, staff and their families :) No offense for Santa Cruz de La Palma, looks beautiful!!

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Reposted by Julien Girard

Kevin Hainline @kevinhainline.bsky.social · 11/11/2025

this is from a paper I'm putting together of a 300 K brown dwarf and it's kind of insane how similar it is

a chart showing the flux from a Y dwarf as a function of wavelength, with a picture of the little brown dwarf in the top right (it looks like a rose), and the 1D and 2D spectra underneath. It rises only at longer wavelengths. It looks a lot like this chocolate price chart.

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Reposted by Julien Girard

Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics @mpe-garching.bsky.social · 21/10/2025

🤩The @4most-eu.bsky.social (#4MOST) facility on @eso.org VISTA telescope in Chile achieved first light. #MPE scientists played a leading role in developing the Operations System, enabling to link #eROSITA’s X-ray universe with large-scale structure of galaxies. ➡️ More: www.mpe.mpg.de/8102833/news...

mpe.mpg.de

4MOST Begins its Journey of Cosmic Discovery

4MOST embarks on a cosmic journey, capturing spectra of thousands of celestial objects simultaneously, unlocking secrets of the universe.

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Reposted by Julien Girard

4-meter Multi-Object Spectroscopic Telescope (4MOST) @4most-eu.bsky.social · 21/10/2025

First Light for 4MOST! The 4-metre Multi-Object Spectroscopic Telescope (4MOST) has captured its very first spectra! Video Credit: AIP/R. de Jong, AIP/K. Riebe, AIP/A. Saviauk, CRAL/J.-K. Krogager

youtu.be

First Light for 4MOST!

YouTube video by 4-meter Multi-Object Spectroscopic Telescope

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Matthew Kenworthy @mattkenworthy.bsky.social · 09/09/2025

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.

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Reposted by Julien Girard

Meg Schwamb @megschwamb.bsky.social · 25/08/2025

JWST successfully observed interstellar object (ISO) 3I/ATLAS. Interesting results. The composition of the coma could be due to a few different scenarios. Additional JWST observations of the object closer to the sun are needed. science.nasa.gov/blogs/3iatla...

science.nasa.gov

NASA’s Webb Space Telescope Observes Interstellar Comet - NASA Science

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope observed interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS Aug. 6, with its Near-Infrared Spectrograph instrument. The research team has been

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Julien Girard @juliengirard.space · 26/08/2025

Amazing!!!! A NEW gap-carving planet! So far, we haven't been able to image many. WISPIT 2b, like PDS 70 b&c is imaged at many wavelengths from 656nm (H⍺, blue here) to 3.7µm (👏MagAO-X @xwcl.science.web.brid.gy). VLT/SPHERE polarized scattered light at 1.6µm+reddish planet at 2.2µm in the gap, wow!

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Reposted by Julien Girard

SETI Institute @setiinstitute.bsky.social · 08/08/2025

Next #SETILive: Closest Exoplanet Yet? TODAY, 8 August, 3:15 pm PDT Join astronomers @allplanets.bsky.social and Julien Girard (STScI) as they discuss recent evidence of a Saturn-mass gas giant orbiting Alpha Centauri A—located just 4 light-years away. 🧪 🔭 WATCH LIVE: buff.ly/TplMAD5

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Julien Girard @juliengirard.space · 07/08/2025

Wow, Tonight I just completed 8 years @stsci.edu. I love it 😊 I realize I now have worked there in Baltimore as much as I spent @eso.org in Chile. 16 years as scientist, collectively supporting instruments, operations, maximizing the science return at major observatories, ground and space!

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Kelly Lepo @kellylepo.bsky.social · 01/08/2025

The Space Telescope Science Institute's MAST archive contains 300 million astronomical observations from over 23 different missions. Here is an animation showing how the archive has built up over time. Credit: Julie Imig, STScI

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Julien Girard @juliengirard.space · 29/07/2025

Experiencing FOMO big time, not attending #HWO2025) I am glad a lot is youtube broadcasted. I am especially eager to watch these panels sessions on ground/based synergies and on how the #RomanCoronagraph will inform the design choices of the HWO coronagraphs www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Vq3...

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Julien Girard @juliengirard.space · 23/07/2025

Who saw this coming? Maybe that should go into the discussion of what @eso.org will do after it's ELT, an ELT-N with a TMT design? I think as a community what we all want is A >25m telescope in the North.

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Julien Girard @juliengirard.space · 23/06/2025

"This is just a small peek" In 9 hours, livestream!

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Julien Girard @juliengirard.space · 10/06/2025

Please watch the @aas.org Press Conference where @balmer.bsky.social presented this thrilling result: THE NEW(even if expected from astrometry)LY IMAGED, COLD (~2ºC), MATURE giant exoplanet 14 Her c with JWST/NIRCam!!! Congrats Daniella, William and the whole team 😀 www.youtube.com/live/Z7niXAH...

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Matthew Kenworthy @mattkenworthy.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

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.

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Julien Girard @juliengirard.space · 14/05/2025

Chen Xie, Christine Chen et al., colleagues of our EPSIG group at STScI/JHU just published water ice detections with #HighContrast Near-Infrared (IFU) Spectroscopy with #JWST/NIRSpec!!

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Julien Girard @juliengirard.space · 26/03/2025

I could not help it… (note, the top picture was taken in Jura, France by the weather forecast group a météo franc-comtoise)

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Julien Girard @juliengirard.space · 25/03/2025

We'll be presenting this Coronagraphy JWebbinar with Aarynn Carter and Jonathan Aguilar, register here before March 30 if you're interested. #JWST #Coronagraph www.stsci.edu/jwst/science... under 2025, it's number 40

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Reposted by Julien Girard

JWST Observer @jwstobserver.bsky.social · 24/03/2025

A new series of python-based Jupyter notebooks are now available for all four #JWST instruments and 13 observing modes. Read more: ow.ly/bjZ850VnlG8

Line drawing of JWST on a composite background of the Cosmic Cliffs observed by JWST

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Julien Girard @juliengirard.space · 17/03/2025

So happy & proud of what William Balmer (PhD student @johnshopkinsiaa.bsky.social + in our group at @spacetelescope.bsky.social) has managed to do with the JWST/NIRCam Coronagraphy mode. To achieve this incredible image, we had to push performance to the max, 1/n science.nasa.gov/missions/web...

science.nasa.gov

NASA’s Webb Images Young, Giant Exoplanets, Detects Carbon Dioxide - NASA Science

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured direct images of multiple gas giant planets within an iconic planetary system. HR 8799, a young system 130

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Julien Girard @juliengirard.space · 27/02/2025

Direct Imaging aleeeert! JWST keeps delivering, this is a record breaking 0.3 MJup (~1 Saturn mass) for direct imaging, taken at 11 µm with one of MIRI's coronagraph, right in the disk where it was ~expected. Anne-Marie Lagrange and colleagues strike again 👏 🙌 arxiv.org/abs/2502.15081

arxiv.org

Evidence for a sub-jovian planet in the young TWA7 disk

Planets are thought to form from dust and gas in protoplanetary disks, and debris disks are the remnants of planet formation. Aged a few Myr up to a few Gyr, debris disks have lost their primordial ga...

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Julien Girard @juliengirard.space · 26/02/2025

I met @stevenwilsonhq.bsky.social during his first visit of Paranal in May 2017. I was just getting up after many observing nights, going to the gym probably.. Christine was the head of logistics. It's cool when talented artists visit, I miss that (and the southern skies, the colleagues @eso.org).

Photo taken in May 2017 at the Residencia of the Paranal Observatory in Northern Chile
Julien Girard, ESO Astronomer (2009-2017)
Christine Desbordes, Head of Department Logistics & Facilities management at the Paranal Observatory (2016-2020)
Steven Wilson, Musician

https://www.juliengirard.space/
https://www.eso.org/public/france/blog/environmental-footprint/?lang
https://stevenwilsonhq.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Wilson

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Julien Girard @juliengirard.space · 22/02/2025

Drive to Goddard today, had a meeting about the Roman Coronagraph with an esteemed colleague, discussed awesome Webb observation with another amazing collaborator, ate at a Greek food truck and finally went to see the Nancy Grace Roman space telescope in the high-bay clean room. 1/2

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Julien Girard @juliengirard.space · 20/02/2025

I used to observe Sgra* a lot with adaptive optics instruments at VLT (NACO & SINFONI). I remember witnessing one of the longest flares to date (~3h I think) in "real time", well, with a ~26,700 years delay, time the light takes to travel from the center of the Milkyway to our telescope on Earth. 1/

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Reposted by Julien Girard

Heidi B. Hammel @hbhammel.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

CNEOS/Sentry downgraded the impact probability to 1.5% today, so that's one bit of good news

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Heidi B. Hammel @hbhammel.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

Image by Michael Carroll shows some asteroids to scale. We did NOT see the little one coming & it hit Earth above Chelyabinsk in 2013, injuring >1400 people. Asteroid 2024 YR4 is bigger than the little one, perhaps as large as the football field! JWST 🔭 data next month will help pin down the size.

Image by Michael Carroll illustrating the sizes of some asteroids in 2013. The asteroids are shown in comparison to a US football field. We had seen the big one coming, and it just buzzed Earth. But the littler one we did NOT see coming, and it hit Earth above Chelyabinsk, creating a shockwave the blew out windows and injuring more than 1400 people. The asteroid we are monitoring now - 2024 YR4 - is bigger than the little guy, but maybe as large as the whole football field! Our JWST measurements next month will help pin down the size. Source: https://carrollspaceart.com/gallery/comparisons/

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Julien Girard @juliengirard.space · 14/02/2025

VLT (FORS2 I guess) observations (~2h sequence) of ~40-100 meter wide asteroid #2024YR4 that hopefully won't hit Earth on 22 December 2032. To the best of the community's knowledge Today, it's a ~1% chance and that will be refined as observations go. Pretty cool www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_jQ...

youtube.com

Near Earth Asteroid 2024 YR4 observed with the VLT

YouTube video by European Southern Observatory (ESO)

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ESA Space Science @science.esa.int · 10/02/2025

Our dark Universe detective 🕵️ Euclid has discovered a stunning Einstein ring! 💍 It surrounds galaxy NGC 6505, which is acting as a gravitational lens, bending light from a distant galaxy behind it. Why is this rare phenomenon so useful for scientists? 👉 www.esa.int/Science_Expl... 🔭🧪 #cosmology

$A sea of colourful stars and galaxies appear to swim in the vast blackness of space around a hazy halo at centre stage. In the middle of the image, the fuzzy-looking bulb of light in a warm shade of yellow extends around a small bright spot, nestled within a thin light circle that appears to be drawn closely around it. As we follow the central halo’s rim outwards, its brightness dims and blends smoothly into its surroundings. Here, extended discs of shades ranging from a warm purple to golden yellow, and piercing dots of light with sharp diffraction spikes are spread evenly across the image.$

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William Thompson @wrtastro.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

Perhaps a little premature since it's still under review, but I'd like to share a couple results from our preprint now up on the arXiv: arxiv.org/abs/2502.05359 🔭 We dive deep into the orbits of the binary brown dwarf companion 🪐 GL229 Ba / Bb newly discovered this fall by Xuan et al. [1/4]

A two-panel figure, showing plausible orbits of the outer companion, then a zoom in (labelled "1000x zoom") to show the inner orbit of the two brown dwarfs.

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Julien Girard @juliengirard.space · 11/02/2025

don't look at your phone, don't look at your phone, don't look at your phone, don't look at your phone, don't look at your phone, don't look at your phone, don't look at your phone, don't look at your phone.. It's hard but Yesterday I did look at my phone, news, too much and my energy went to zero.

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ESA Space Science @science.esa.int · 04/02/2025

This strangely looking object in space is protoplanetary disc HH30. Combining data from Webb, Hubble and ALMA has given astronomers an insight into the object’s distinct structures and drifting dust grains. Read more 👉 www.esa.int/Science_Expl... 🔭🧪

A close-in image of a protoplanetary disc around a newly formed star. Many different wavelengths of light are combined and represented by separate and various colours. A dark line across the centre is the disc, corresponding to the densest parts of the disc, made of opaque dust: the star is hidden in here and creates a strong glow in the centre. A band going straight up is a jet, while other outflows above and below the disc, and a tail coming off to one side.

A close-in image of protoplanetary disc HH 30. Parts of the image are labelled “Jet” (above and below the disc), “Conical Outflow”, “Possible Spiral”, “Dark Lane”, “Disk”, and “Tail”. A scale marker in the bottom-left is labelled “300 au”; this is a little wider than the disc itself, but less wide than the conical outflows above and below the disc.

A collage of four small and one large images of protoplanetary disc HH 30, from different telescopes and in various colours representing different wavelengths of light. Each displays different features of the disc and the outflows around it. They are labelled (top to bottom and left to right) “Hubble/Visible”, “Webb/Near-infrared”, “Webb/Mid-infrared”, “ALMA/Millimetre”, and (the large one) “Webb/Infrared”.

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Julien Girard @juliengirard.space · 28/01/2025

I was sick of deactivated QR codes (from free generators) so with the help of chatGPT I made one and posted it on Github, there is a prompt version too and you can include a logo. github.com/juliengirard... QR codes of the #RomanCoronagraph Community Interest Survey (< March 1st) and Primer

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Dr. Clarissa R. Do Ó @astroclary.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

had the wonderful opportunity to give an early career talk at ExoPAG 31. My last slide aims to convince people that cleanroom suits are very fashionable

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Julien Girard @juliengirard.space · 25/01/2025

Ilaria is rotating off, apply to the executive committee of the #ExoPAG (member and chair)

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