iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

I’m running a grid of MESA models on this right now! Been using it since I started at BU.

Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · 14/03/2026

Wrapping up our senior field trip to Arizona! Got amazing tours of Lowell Observatory, the LDT, the Grand Canyon, and we observed with BU's Perkins Telescope for student projects. As always, thanks to our gift fund and generous donors who help sponsor these trips!

Students with the Pluto discovery telescope at Lowell Observatory

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · 20/01/2026

Hats off to the BU Astronomy Graduate Students who organized an excellent Boston Area (Exo)Planetary Science Meeting last week! Photo credit: Laura Chin

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · 30/10/2025

Ugh these announcers. Less is more fellas. Never thought I’d say this, but I miss Joe Buck. I miss Vin Scully even more.

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Reposted by Philip Muirhead

Dr. Gerard van Belle @fringedoctor.bsky.social · 10/10/2025

Brief life update: On Monday I resigned from my appointment at Lowell Observatory. I wish my remaining friends and colleagues the best of luckin their endeavors in increasing new visitor center visitation, and continuing to pursue world-class research in the face of having ended tenure today.

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · 20/07/2025

Congratulations to Dr. Allison McCarthy, who successfully defended her PhD “The Physical Basis for L and T Dwarf Variability” on Friday! Allie is now off to Trinity College Dublin for a postdoc with the ExoAimsir group led by Prof. Johanna Vos! 🪐🔭 @alliemccarthy.bsky.social @johannavos.bsky.social

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Reposted by Philip Muirhead

Casey Dreier @caseydreier.bsky.social · 31/05/2025

Four charts showing the extent of cuts to NASA in the FY26 budget: - Cuts to every science division - Smallest science funding since 1984 - 19 active, inflight missions cancelled - Smallest NASA budget since FY 1961

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · 17/04/2025

Congrats to my colleague Merav Opher on winning a 2025 Guggenheim Fellowship! And congrats to BU for tying with Princeton for the most Guggenheim fellows this year (6)!

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

Thank you to our Perkins-Telescope-partner North Carolina A&T @ncatsuaggies.bsky.social for hosting me for their Physics Colloquium this week! I had a wonderful time meeting with their undergrads, grad students, and faculty, and talking about small stars, brown dwarfs and exoplanets!

Students and faculty in a colloquium room.

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Reposted by Philip Muirhead

Johanna Vos @johannavos.bsky.social · 03/03/2025

Check out our newest results from JWST, led by @alliemccarthy.bsky.social and published today in ApJ Letters! 🔭🪐

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · 03/03/2025

Excited to share this press release of our investigation into the atmosphere of a "rogue planet"!

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · 21/01/2025

In Lewis Lapham’s last Notebook for Harper’s, he wrote that reading history “lessons our fears of what might happen tomorrow.” Wow, was he wrong about that.

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · 14/01/2025

It’s my birthday and my wife got me a label maker 😍 You can probably guess my age from how happy I am about this gift.

A label maker sitting in a kitchen counter.

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · 12/01/2025

My first thought: Must be intensity interferometry because there’s no way they are beam combining that many telescopes, unless each is heterodyned with an LFC and amp/phase written to disk. [Reads acronym, looks at poster]🤦‍♂️

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · 18/12/2024

Really hoping the Social Security Fairness Act passes the Senate this week. My mom lives on a meager Texas teacher’s pension (below poverty earnings) but can’t collect her or my late father’s social security from their non-govt work because of the GPO provision. SSFA would fix that!

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · 16/11/2024

Another paper from our BU-RIT-UToronto collaboration on benchmark post common envelope binaries (close white dwarf + main sequence stars). Graduating UToronto PhD student Steffani Grondin's catalog of PCEBs in open clusters is published! www.dunlap.utoronto.ca/astronomers-...

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · 12/11/2024

Pro tip: If you are writing NSF proposals and can't upload it because research(dot)gov says you don't have a broader impacts section, when most definitely do have a broader impacts section, try moving your figures further from the broader impacts heading.

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · 11/11/2024

Not sure how many New England Falls we have left on this planet, but yesterday's Boston Half Marathon could not have been nicer.

Runner holding his daughter while she eats a sandwich after a race.

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · 29/10/2024

Several years ago I sent a random message to a generic NASA inquires email about WORF on the ISS for a possible experiment. Don Pettit replied and sent a photo…from space.

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · 26/10/2024

Every department has one. Or several. Or all 😂

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · 25/06/2024

Great talks at Cool Stars 22 by BU PhD students Caeley Pittman and Allie McCarthy!

Caeley Pittman giving her talk at Cool Stars 22.

Allie McCarthy giving her talk at Cool Stars 22.

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · 21/06/2024

If you missed BU-PhD-student Allie McCarthy's awesome weather-app-inspired poster at Exoplanets V, you can catch the TALK version at Cool Stars 22 on Monday!

Allison McCarthy standing in front of her poster at Exoplanets V.

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · 06/06/2024

The third largest tall ship in the world is currently a block from my apartment. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish...

Man and baby in front of a large tall ship.

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · 30/05/2024

Thanks to a college friend for pointing me to George Dyson's Symphony in G. I had no idea Freeman Dyson's father was a (knighted) composer. www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3-a...

youtube.com

George Dyson - Symphony (1937)

Sir George Dyson KCVO (28 May 1883 – 28 September 1964) was an English musician and composer. After studying at the Royal College of Music (RCM) in London, a...

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · 29/04/2024

Bunky, the Bunker Hill turkey, stands watch over Charlestown. Apparently wild turkeys can fly? Or she just took the stairs @universalhub.com

A wild turkey looks down from a perch on the roof of a building.

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · 12/04/2024

10 years of service to Boston University including endless thankless roles (grad admissions, faculty council, gen ed council, grad AND undergrad curriculum revision committees, observatory director, Nat Sci taskforce, to name a few) and yet my daughter was still denied a spot in BU daycare. 🤬

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · 08/04/2024

I’m 1\3 with traveling for totality. Shanghai in 2008 and Rochester today were cloudy. But makes me realize how special it was to see the 2017 one in Nashville! So happy for everyone who saw it today!

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · 26/02/2024

New paper (accepted to ApJ) led by BU PhD student Allison McCarthy. She used the PINES reduction algorithm to (re)analyze multiwavelength observations of SIMP 0136, a planetary mass object. We suggest 2 patchy cloud layers can explain the results, though atm models struggle to match the data!

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · 18/01/2024

Bonding leave started today. Ferry ride to the Aquarium! It’s 26F and icy but baby has the Marimekko spacesuit.

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Johanna Vos @johannavos.bsky.social · 20/11/2023

🚨🚨I'm hiring !!🚨🚨 I’m looking for a Research Fellow to join my team at Trinity College Dublin to work on Extrasolar Atmospheres ☘️🪐☁️🔭 Deadline: December 31st Ad: jobregister.aas.org/ad/c1a19f23 Please share widely!

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · 15/11/2023

🫣https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2023arXiv231107699D/abstract

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · 13/11/2023

US-based astronomers' best friend this week: \linespread{1.1513}

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · 01/11/2023

Octopus costume for me and the quadroweek.

Man wearing a baby wrap in an octopus costume.

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · 22/10/2023

Sam was my first friend in college. We met summer of 2001 for orientation at the University of Michigan. She went on to become a powerful force for peace and progress in Michigan and Detroit. This news is shocking, hard to believe, and just horrible. www.nytimes.com/2023/10/21/u...

nytimes.com

Synagogue Leader Is Killed in Detroit, but Motive Is Not Known, Authorities Say

Samantha Woll, 40, the president of a synagogue downtown, was lauded as a dynamic figure in the community.

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · 18/09/2023

My attempt at reposting to the Astronomy Feed! 🔭

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Reposted by Philip Muirhead

Alisa Bokulich @alisabokulich.bsky.social · 18/09/2023

Boston Univ Postdoc Fellows program for early-career scholars with a commitment to interdisciplinary & inclusive scholarship. All Scholars will be assigned one or more suitable faculty mentors from relevant dept Applications due 11:59 PM EST October 16, 2023. www.bu.edu/cas/career-d... #philsci

bu.edu

Society of Fellows | Arts & Sciences

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · 12/09/2023

BU Astro is hiring! Happy to answer questions about the search, our department and our resources. academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/25624

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · 01/09/2023

“It gets easier. Every day it gets a little easier. But you gotta do it every day. That’s the hard part. But it does get easier.” … “Ok”

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · 31/08/2023

Cool Stars 22 Invited Speakers have been announced! coolstars22.github.io/program.html

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · 28/08/2023

JAXA's pre-stream EDM > NASA's IMO. More bars before repeat. www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TTT...

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