AstroMonnier

AMIGO: a Data-Driven Calibration of the JWST Interferometer The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) hosts a non-redundant Aperture Masking Interferometer (AMI) in its Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) instrument, providing the only dedicate...

Amazing work solving a tricky calibration problem with JWST aperture masking data! Any hope to improve ground-based systematics with this general approach?
@benjaminpope.bsky.social

arxiv.org/abs/2510.09806

Its much harder to help my kids with homework post-covid with no textbooks. Can’t help but wonder if the move to online resources is hurting learning across the board, but especially middle and high school.

Seems like you should try the method it on one of the classic CHARA datasets, either lambda and or zeta and. Is that in the works?

Two-panel meme. Top: hand-drawn sketch of Earth, Sun, and a red sun-synchronous orbit, with notes asking about allowed orbit angles. Caption: “How it started.” Bottom: polished 3D visualization of Earth with day/night shadow, orange SSO orbits, blue other orbits, and a red terminator line. Caption: “How it’s going.”

Thanks @planet4589.bsky.social

One ride to terminator every few years.... Check it out, @jwcutler.bsky.social !

This is brilliant. So a few are close to terminator but not many. Does your database contain the full dataset, including cubesats put in non polar orbits?

🚀 Rideshare reality check: @planet4589.bsky.social — is there a good source for CubeSat drop-off orbits from the past 5 years? I’m modeling #STARI (a LEO formation-flying mission) and need to know the most common insertion orbits. Dream case is SSO terminator—but I’m told those are unicorns 🦄.

Bravo to the organizers of the 2025 #smallsat Conference! Lively talks, great interactions, and flawless organization — plus free coffee, ice cream, lunches, and industry socials that set a high bar. Hope #AAS and #SPIE are taking notes! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Excited to attend my first SmallSat conference in Salt Lake City this week. Many cool CubeSat missions and innovative companies exhibiting. I’ll talk about our formation flying mission STARI later in week.
#smallsat
#stari

Stanford to continue legacy admissions, reinstate standardized test requirements New admissions criteria announced a continuation of legacy consideration and a reinstatement of the standardized testing requirement for class of 2030 applicants

Really hate to see Stanford going back on its pledge to halt legacy admissions.

stanforddaily.com/2025/08/06/s...

Bravo..

“ — making “Harvard astronomer” the scientific equivalent of “Florida man” didn’t just happen; it took long-term dedication.”

It is cool to see a movie about local Ann Arbor History funded by kickstarter!

Congratulations to the filmakers!

www.kickstarter.com/projects/196...

Ahh yes. Indeed, Justin is working on that! I should check in on that. Also folks are working on HWO targets with CHARA.

If characterizing nearby hot stars is important, We should talk about a chara survey to look for faint companions. We can do delta mag 8 within 0.15” for bright stars with modest effort. Open time through noirlab

Not sure how american those dollars are…

Toliman excepted?

Just wow.

For those also waiting, I just got a late NSF-ATI rejection today. The letter says only 10% success rate, notably lower than historical practice.

With MRI shutdown for next year, I suspect ATI (the only other NSF instrumentation programs) will be overwhelmed!

Best Ever Image of a Star’s Surface and Atmosphere - First map of motion of material on a star other than the Sun Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer astronomers have constructed the most detailed image ever of a star — the red supergiant star Antares. They have also made the first map of the velociti...

Would be interesting compare images using this novel polarization method with those by interferometry

See these images of same star by #VLTI

www.eso.org/public/news/...

Changes to NSF Major Research Instrumentation Program for FY 2026

Ok. So NSF has officially cut funding for one of its largest instrumentation programs for next year. Hope this is temporary.

www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...

John in front of Copernicus statue in Krakow

Spent time to visit Copernicus in old Krakow.

He worked at The Jagiellonian University in Krakow, the 4th oldest University in Europe, where they started out only teaching 3 disciplines: Law, Medicine, and Astronomy.

Heard of this ?

astro.theoj.org/post/3096-th...

Thank you!

I’d like to advertise the Michigan Society of Fellows, a unique opportunity for recent PhDs to carry out cutting edge research while also developing their teaching skills.

Any Interferometrists or ELT-METISians interested?

Note early deadline Sep 15.

societyoffellows.umich.edu/the-fellowsh...

Website says 150euros/page. So probably better but not cheap.

150 euros per what?

Fellow Astronomers:
With ApJ page charges running $3K these days, what are some alternate journals to submit to?

US science is being wrecked, and its leadership is fighting the last war Facing an extreme budget, the National Academies hosted an event that ignored it.

Ive also been disappointed by the silence of our National Academy of Sciences. Perhaps if the membership of the NAS itself was being cut by 50% we would hear more complaint.

arstechnica.com/science/2025...

Reasonable NSF budget cut:
* Choose to support only one Extremely Large Telescope Project

Unreasonable NSF budget cut:
* Choose to support only one of the two essential LIGO Gravitational Wave Interferometer detector sites.

Space science is probably the only area in technology that the USA is the undisputed world leader. Squandered.

Maybe this has been written before, but one of explanations for the increased and more widespread administrative mayhem of the new govt compared to last must be chatgpt.