Jayne Birkby

Planetary Science MS/PhD Positions for Fall 2026 Crowd sourced list of people who are looking for MS/PhD students to help connect prospective students with advisors so we can do even more fabulous planetary science! (Submitting a response indicates ...

I am community sourcing a list of people who are actively in search of MS/PhD students in planetary science/astrobiology/exoplanets for Fall 2026. If you are such a person, please fill out the following google form:
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Yes, high spectral resolution in space is surely the future for exoplanets. It doesn't even need to be that "high" res, JWST's R=2,700 is delivering great science, just think what could be done with a R=3,000-5,000 integral field spectrograph behind a coronagraph on HWO 🤯

gorgeous new JWST spectrum of the rogue planet PSO J318 from @paulmolliere.bsky.social ! Strong absorption at 10 microns likely due to small SiO particles, acting as seeds for cloud formation arxiv.org/pdf/2507.18691

Hubble Space Telescope images of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS are out! These were taken 5 hours ago. Plenty of cosmic rays peppering the images, but the comet's coma looks very nice and puffy. Best of luck to the researchers trying to write up papers for this... archive.stsci.edu/proposal_sea... 🔭

Want to come and join our lovely facilitation team in Oxford Physics? my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...

Stunning data, brightness maps of the supergiant star Antares showing its convective cells 😲 congrats Pilate et al.! ⭐

You can read more about how high resolution spectroscopy can constrain sub-Neptune atmospheres (and provide constraints that are comparable with JWST…) in the paper we published this year! (ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2025MNRA...)

Groundhog at U of Montreal

One of the many #ExoclimesVII groundhogs, enjoying a nibble of grass on a sunny Montreal day

Exoclimes VII has officially begun!! 👽🧑‍🚀👩‍🚀🚀🚀 Things have kicked off with some welcoming words from our fearless leaders Lisa Dang @astrolisadang.bsky.social & Romain Allart! And now off to our first review talk from Nicolas Cowan about Exoplanet atmospheric Dynamics 🪐☄️

In our new paper we model the complete evolution of L 98-59 d from 'birth' up to the present day. We show that it cannot be a gas dwarf or a water world; it's a 'hybrid' planet with an H2-rich atmosphere containing H2S and SO2 (photochemistry!), and a deep magma ocean.

@timlichtenberg.bsky.social

Those of you at @exoclimes.bsky.social can hear all about Dr Vaughan's work on Wednesday next week!

Dr Vaughan's thesis work on studying exoplanet atmospheres in reflected light opens a vital avenue to seeking biosignatures on nearby habitable worlds with the Extremely Large Telescope in 2030, and beyond with the Habitable Worlds Observatory! @eso.org ras.ac.uk/news-and-pre...

Absolutely thrilled for Dr Sophia Vaughan, winner of the RAS Michael Penston Thesis Prize! Congratulations @sophiavaughan.bsky.social, very much deserved and it's been an absolute pleasure working with you! Bring on the ELTs! @oxfordphysics.bsky.social www.physics.ox.ac.uk/news/dr-vaug...

New paper out! This is a review of the published JWST observations of rocky exoplanets so far: arxiv.org/abs/2507.00933

Quick summary of the key points:

Measuring the Suns radial velocity variability due to supergranulation over a magnetic cycle In recent years supergranulation has emerged as one of the biggest challenges for the detection of Earth-twins in radial velocity planet searches. We used eight years of Sun-as-a-star radial velocity ...

It’s paper day 🎉!! If you are interested in seeing how supergranulation changes over a solar cycle in RVs give it a read! arxiv.org/abs/2506.23693

PSA: ExoMol has a special high res data base, ExoMolHR which now also contains a column with ✨energy uncertainties✨ You can now choose to leave out lines with high uncertainty when making high res model spectra! #AllTheWavelengths @trovemaster.bsky.social

Mitchell Yzer (Oxford): The Prospects of Using High-Resolution Spectroscopy to Search for Technosignature Gases on Nearby Rocky Exoplanets with the ELT.

#AllTheWavelenghts

Mitchel Yzer: techno signatures in exoplanets using high resolution methods #Allthewavelengths

Wakeford: near-infrared wavelength spectra are not good predictors of what happens at UV/optical wavelengths. We need the information from the broader spectral range. #exoplanets #allthewavelengths

Thank you for the summary thread Ryan @distantworlds.space! #AllTheWavelengths

J. Tennyson: ExoMol updates #AllWavelenghts
- We now provide Atoms, ExoAroms database
- We have tackled line broadening using semi-classical, quantum mechanical, ML methods

What else do we need @exomol.bsky.social to provide? Please let us know!

J. Tennyson: ExoMol updates:
....
- ExoMlolHR database is to provide a selection of High Res lines
- Predissociation ; new methodology
- Dissociation : New methodology
- Photodissociation data does not exist in abundance, mostly room T or even no T (T=0) in Leiden database 1/n

#AllTheWavelengths

@plotastro.bsky.social This is a pretty visualization of hydrocarbon opacities in the atmosphere of Titan in arxiv.org/abs/2506.12144

Status: lost in Rubin images @vrubinobs.bsky.social skyviewer.app/explorer

A view looking into the LSST Camera's huge opening. The camera opening is a large black donut shape, with reflections of ceiling light revealing the presence of glass lenses. In the center of the opening is the camera's focal plane detector, which is made of 189 square CCD chips arranged in a roughly square shape. The camera is suspended on a white metal frame with white handrails. The completely white room gives the image an overall sterile feel.

‼️We're just TWO DAYS from Rubin's first images! #RubinFirstLook‼️ So let's talk images📷

NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory's LSST Camera — the largest digital camera ever built — produces 3200-megapixel images... 🔭🧪

But what does that mean, exactly? 🤨

📷: J. Orrell/SLAC Lab

A sprawling, textured field of galaxies scattered across the deep black of space. It is filled with the delicate smudges and glowing cores of galaxies of many shapes, sizes and colors, as well as the bright multi-colored points of stars. The image focuses on a collection of interacting galaxies connected by delicate streams of stars. At top center lies a large elliptical galaxy that is dense and smooth, like a polished stone glowing with golden light. Like delicate spider silk or stretched taffy, these stellar bridges link the large elliptical to the few larger galaxies beneath, evidence of past collisions. All throughout the image, thousands of galaxies gather in clusters or are spread throughout, like glittering gems strewn on a table. Some are sharp-edged and spiral, like coiled ribbons; others round and diffuse, like polished pebbles. Still others are just smudges of various colors against the black of space. The background is peppered with pinpoint stars in reds, yellows, and blues, crisp against the velvet black.

A cosmic tapestry of glowing tan and pink gas clouds with dark dust lanes. In the upper right, the Trifid Nebula resembles a small flower in space. Its soft, pinkish gas petals are surrounded by blue gas, and streaked with dark, finger-like veins of dust that divide it into three parts. It radiates a gentle, misty glow, diffuse and soft like the warmth of breath on a cold hand. To the lower left, the much larger Lagoon Nebula stretches wide like a churning sea of magenta gas, with bright blue, knotted clumps sprinkled throughout where new stars are born. Both nebulae are embedded in a soft tan backdrop of gas that is brighter on the left than on the right, etched with dark tendrils of dust and sprinkled with the pinpricks of millions of stars.

A sprawling, textured field of galaxies scattered across the deep black of space. It is filled with the delicate smudges and glowing cores of galaxies of many shapes, sizes and colors, as well as the bright multi-colored points of stars. To the lower left is a region filled with the hundreds of golden glittering gems of a distant galaxy cluster. In the foreground, below and right of center, two blue spiral galaxies look like eyes beneath the entangled mass of a triple galaxy merger in the upper right. A few bright blue points of foreground stars pierce the glittering tapestry. All throughout the image, thousands of galaxies gather in clusters or are spread throughout, like glittering gems strewn on a table. Some are sharp-edged and spiral, like coiled ribbons; others round and diffuse, like polished pebbles. Still others are just smudges of various colors against the black of space. The background is peppered with pinpoint stars in reds, yellows, and blues, crisp against the velvet black.

Introducing...your sneak peek at the cosmos captured by NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory!

Can you guess these regions of sky?

This is just a small peek...join us at 11am US EDT for your full First Look at how Rubin will #CaptureTheCosmos! 🔭🧪

#RubinFirstLook
ls.st/rubin-first-look-livestream

A dark starfield is covered in galaxies. Many of them are surrounded by a faint halo of light - two blue spirals in the bottom right stand out.

We're celebrating today with the release of the first images from @vrubinobs.bsky.social. (Image credit: NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory). This one, of part of the Virgo cluster, is my favourite.

Carly's looking for a postdoc to join her team at @oxfordphysics.bsky.social to work on Europa exploration - go join them! #planetaryscience

The GMT has received official approval from the National Science Foundation (NSF), confirming that the observatory will advance into its Major Facilities Final Design Phase, one of the final steps before becoming eligible for federal construction funding: bit.ly/3SO8Di0

Evaporating planets

I was also recently reminded that the term Neptini exists…