UT Austin Astro is hiring! It's an open call, but definitely interested in getting another exoplanet person! Feel free to reach out with any questions about the department or living in Austin! aas.org/jobregister/...
Little old Texas just *quietly* transitioning to our clean energy future shhhhhh don't tell anyone. Drill baby drill, uh, sir.
ERCOT fuel mix from 2006 to 2024 now available:
- Natural gas above its 19-year running average of 43% to 44% in 2024.
- Solar hitting 10% of total energy generated.
- Wind holding steady %-wise, but up in absolute terms.
- The ERCOT grid is now 42% clean energy!
Definitely saw this quickly and thought "OH NO What's wrong with Andrew's spine?!?!"
๐จ SPECIAL FIRST POST ๐จ
Applications to @exoclimes.bsky.social (7-11 July, 2025 at @umontreal.ca) is now OPEN until Jan 24, 2025! Join us for a week of exciting talks on planetary atmospheres interspersed with ample opportunities to discuss and forge new collaborations! forms.gle/mpeZ3LXGoFb9...
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What!!!
This is wrong, it does get easier. No one remembers how hard and time-consuming babies are.
signed, someone with two ultra-chaotic preschoolers running my household, who are nonetheless easier than babies
We even have places in Austin where men, women, and non-binary folks all wash their hands next to each other. Quelle horreur!
Bonus of this: you learn that a shocking number of men walk out of the urinal-closet-room and DON'T WASH THEIR HANDS
WHERE DID ALL YOU PEOPLE COME FROM? WE WERE ENJOYING TALKING AMONGST THE TWELVE OF US HERE!
Just kidding hi AstroTwitter! I'm an associate professor on a blue island in a deep red state and therefore have only lukewarm takes on the world unless you meet me in person. We have the best tacos though.
Apropos of nothing... Taylor Swift has released collections of her songs divided into the 5 stages of grief. This one is anger.
music.apple.com/us/playlist/...
"Should I trust the Dark Lord who attempted to topple the White City of Gondor? Or do I trust the Elf Queen representing the coalition of Men and Elves who defeated Sauron when he tried to enslave the Free Peoples, but could maybe do more meet-and-greets?"
www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/im-...
New email signature day!
Itโs been a wild ride for the past 6 years of Assistant Professor life at UT, growing a research group amidst a global pandemic and growing my family. Happy and proud to be leveling up today to Associate Professor with tenure. Hereโs to the next 6 years!
The NASA Hubble Fellowship Program has named 24 new fellows to its 2024 roster. These young scientists will begin their programs in the fall of 2024 at a university or research center of their choosing in the United States: bit.ly/49c3ZjK
There is an equivalent for JWST! outerspace.stsci.edu/display/SBOI...
It's been weighted like this for many years. That said -- this was a surprise to me the first time I served on an HST panel. I highly recommend serving on a panel to figure out the secret sauce of getting STScI telescope time!
As someone who's reviewed for STScI before -- this is often taken by the panel to be "out of subfield impact" -- like, maybe I'm studying cold brown dwarfs which is interesting to me, but why is it interesting BROADLY for exoplanets, solar system planets, atmospheres overall, or planet formation
WHY ARE GEN-Z ARMS SO LONG?!
This is funded by a NASA TCAN grant and has "nodes" in New York (AMNH) and Silicon Valley (NASA Ames) -- so there could be options to travel frequently to these locations too.
Hi Bluesky! I'm advertising a position to join our modeling efforts to bring GPUs and machine learning/AI into both self-consistent and retrieval models for exoplanets. If you have interest in either ML/AI or in modeling brown dwarfs/exoplanets, please apply! due 2/12
jobregister.aas.org/ad/0395a595
It is good practice! Iโd say itโs normal for a โvisitโ (colloquium, seminars, etc.) to end up with lots of meetings (minus the interview). But when I hire postdocs we just do a 1-hour zoom call.
May have just handed a person sniffing and sneezing in my vicinity at the gate for my flight my spare N95 mask ๐ฌ Too bold? He looked surprised but did put it on!
Hard disagree! It's like a party in my inbox. We don't have that many reasons to celebrate, don't spoil our fun!
UT Austin is hiring a new assistant professor this year! Come join us! We have a great group of faculty here, and awesome students/postdocs. And telescopes! And Austin is in the habitable zone for at least 8 months every year.
jobregister.aas.org/ad/359bf302
I'll show my "pandemic baby" (x2!) privilege and say.... you can just stay home, AAS will be there forevermore. I am so much more chill about missing out or not "pulling my weight" now.
But to answer your actual question, I tried pumping at a meeting once and it was terrible.
I am hoping to hire a postdoc to start in the summer or fall, to work on exoplanet or brown dwarf atmospheres! Details here: jobregister.aas.org/ad/c0d2c3a8
Join us here in beautiful Austin!
๐ฅ๐ฒ๐ฎ๐๐ผ๐ป๐ ๐๐ผ ๐ฏ๐ฒ ๐๐ฐ๐ฒ๐ฝ๐๐ถ๐ฐ๐ฎ๐น ๐ฎ๐ฏ๐ผ๐๐ ๐๐ต๐ฒ '๐ผ๐ฐ๐ฒ๐ฎ๐ป ๐ฝ๐น๐ฎ๐ป๐ฒ๐ ๐๐ถ๐๐ต ๐ฝ๐ผ๐๐๐ถ๐ฏ๐น๐ฒ ๐๐ถ๐ด๐ป๐ ๐ผ๐ณ ๐น๐ถ๐ณ๐ฒ'.
Ok, probably everyone has seen the headlines about K2-18b by now.
I've put together this thread to collate some thoughts on why many exoplanet astronomers are pretty sceptical about these claims - THREAD (1/N)
Youโre inspiring me to take my co2 monitor to work next week (once Iโm recovered from Covid because the start of the semester is going GREAT so far)
Congratulations!!! :-D
Save the date for Cool Stars 22! It's been fun to be on the SOC of Cool Stars for the first time, and I'm excited for our all-star list of invited speakers! See you in San Diego, June 24-28
coolstars22.github.io/program.html
I'll now be taking bets on whether 0, 1, 2, or all 3 of the rest of us test positive this evening ๐ซฃ
