Kevin Hardegree-Ullman

3/3
I guess urgent care is the best of the three options if you want to actually get any result, despite long wait times.

I just really don't want to be sick for my trip to Germany in 2 days. 😷

2/3
3 weeks later (after a lingering cough) cold symptoms return, and I make a same-day primary care doctor appointment. Since I have cough, sore throat, and runny nose, they make me go back to the car and wait for the doctor to call me. I have to go get tests from the pharmacy and run them myself.

1/3
Adventures in doctor land:

Have a cold, attempt to use teledoctor through insurance to save time. Teledoctor recommends going in to urgent care to get tests done.

Urgent care (no appointments available, but can walk-in and wait forever). There about 2 hours, they run flu, covid, & strep tests.

This image contains information about the 2027 IPAC Visiting Graduate Student Research Fellowship (VGSRF) program. The Call for Applications is now open for graduate students who hold U.S. citizenship, national, or permanent resident status by the application deadline, which is Mrach 31, 2026. Applicants may be currently enrolled at US or non-US institutions. Learn more about the program at https://www.ipac.caltech.edu/page/graduate-fellowship-2027.

IPAC's Visiting Graduate Student Research Fellowship (#VGSRF) is accepting applications!
✨Gain research experience and mentoring from IPAC scientists
✨Access large science datasets🔭
✨Receive a monthly stipend
Browse the projects and apply by 3/31: www.ipac.caltech.edu/page/graduate-fellowship-2027

#Astronomy grad students, apply for this incredible fellowship!

Let me know if you have any questions. I am a former VGSRF fellow and I am currently a mentor!

TESS confirms what we saw with Kepler and K2 - on average, ***every single small red star has a planet around it***! And a short-period one at that (<30 days).

And you know what the galaxy is mostly made of?

Small red stars.

PLANETS. PLANETS EVERYWHERE!!!

Happy weekend pondering that, everyone.

TESS Planet Occurrence Rates Reveal the Disappearance of the Radius Valley Around Mid-to-Late M Dwarfs We present the deepest systematic search for planets around mid-to-late M dwarfs to date. We have surveyed 8134 mid-to-late M dwarfs observed by TESS with a custom built pipeline and recover 77 vetted...

Interesting new M dwarf #exoplanet occurrence rates paper! I'm glad to see that the new TESS result (with much lower uncertainties) is consistent with our Kepler result!

arxiv.org/abs/2602.23364

Today, I'm 2000 weeks old. Surprisingly, it took that many weeks for me to get my first passport. 😬

Wow, pleasantly surprised to see this paper out in the wild again!

Are any #scientists/#astronomers here members of the Sigma Xi Scientific Research Honor Society? Are there any major benefits to joining?

Careful readers might see a familiar name quoted in the article. 😏

Just a reminder that I'm hiring! Looking for an engineer/research for some fun projects (some building! some designing!)

Come build spectrographs at UW.

Neat M dwarf #exoplanet system!

It's incredible how much of my work depends on services like ADS/@scixcommunity.bsky.social. Anybody know why they've been having intermittent/frequent issues the last ~week? #astronomy 🔭🧪

Apparently if your dog is sprayed by a skunk, the smell permeates everything in your house, even if the dog didn't try to rub off the ick onto it. -100/10, would not recommend. 🦨

Postdoctoral Research Associate in Exoplanet Science PRIMARY DETAIL - Salary Package: $109,272 - $117,108 (HEW Level A.6-A.8) - plus 17% employer's superannuation contribution and annual leave loading. - Full time, 3 year fixed-term role - Macquarie Uni...

Very happy to advertise a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Exoplanet Science position with me and Christian Schwab at Macquarie University in Sydney.

We'll be working on applying machine learning & differentiable physics models to extremely precise radial velocity surveys.

Maybe this was a skunk spray? We have skunks in the neighborhood, but they have smelled very different when they wake us up in the middle of the night.

A bright orange Monarch butterfly with white spots on a black outline. The butterfly is folded up, sitting on some green grass.

While searching for whatever the dog rolled in, I saw this Monarch butterfly just chilling in the grass.

To top off the extremely long day, our dog Galileo rolled in something bright yellow. It is excessively pungent and smells like a garlic electric fire. I can't find it outside. Any ideas?

A picture of a waxing gibbous moon on a baby blue sky seen between two trunks of a cactus in the foreground.

Another very Tucson photo. 🌵🌖

This image is a composite of artist's illustrations of NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope pointing towards a lengthy collection of exoplanets against a background image of the Galactic Plane. The text says "2026 Sagan Summer Workshop" and the theme "Exoplanets with Roman Surveys: Microlensing and Transits July 20-24, 2026, Pasadena, California" followed by the hashtag #sagan2026.

⏰Time to Register for #sagan2026⏰

The hybrid workshop focuses on expected #exoplanet science from the @nasaromantelescope.bsky.social Galactic Bulge Time Domain Survey. Travel support requests for early-career participants are due 3/5. nexsci.caltech.edu/workshop/2026
🔭 #astrocode #instrumentation

NASA Exoplanet Archive Learn how to use the free web services on the NASA Exoplanet Archive site to access datasets and conduct astronomical research. More information: https://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu

3 new videos are posted on YouTube for our Tour of the NASA #Exoplanet Archive series! 🔭🧪

Watch & subscribe: www.youtube.com/@NASAExoplanetArchive

A sunset picture with the sky fading from deep blue (top) to orange (bottom). Some thin clouds stripe the sky. Two cacti are visible near the center above a distant mountain range. A tall tree is visible in the foreground to the left, and a short tree to the right.

There's nothing quite like a Sonoran Desert sunset. 🌵🌅

Same with UC! I don't like Suprep since it's a prescription and tastes awful. I do fine with the OTC Ducolax+Miralax, but I know it doesn't always work for everyone, or the doctor prefers other prep. After my last colonoscopy they prescribed a different UC med, and it has been a game changer!

Writing in solidarity! I'm not yet 40, but I've had 5 colonoscopies due to gastro issues since grad school. The prep is definitely the worst part, but if I can get through it every 2 years, everyone else should be able to less frequently!

Yeah, mid-October was generally okay for me too. There's no great time for any deadline, but to coincide with ground-based telescope deadlines seems like a huge oversight to me.

STScI Announces the Timeline for the JWST Cycle 6 Call for Proposals

Here's a link to the announcement for the JWST Cycle 6 timeline:

www.stsci.edu/contents/new...

JWST Users Committee The JWST Users Committee provides user advice to the observatory as a whole and ensures operations proceed as expected to maximize the observatory's scientific performance.

The JWST Cycle 6 deadline will be September 30th. I don't think past JWST proposal deadlines have coincided with ground-based telescope deadlines.

I have expressed my concerns to the JWST User's Committee Chair and I encourage you to do the same. #astronomy 🔭

www.stsci.edu/jwst/science...

Of course this got pushed back when I am basically ready to hit submit... Reminds me of when the NESSF (now FINESST) deadline was pushed because of another winter storm. We had 2 feet of snow at that time. ❄️ #exoplanets

Despite all this, I still prefer it 100% of the time over any other video conference platform.