Tad Komacek

Impressive work, Richard!

Acquiring a white bowtie has been on my to-do list since the last viva I served as an internal examiner for! I'll be sure to get one by @nichollsh.bsky.social's viva in January.

YouTube video by BOWIE+ Seminars Demystifying the Sub-Neptune Frontier with JWST by Anjali Piette

Dr. Anjali Piette of the University of Birmingham gave a wonderful talk on connecting sub-Neptune atmospheres to their interiors as a part of the BOWIE+ Seminar Series. The video is now available on Youtube. #exoplanets #astronomy

www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHrT...

Really enjoying Dr. Shreyas Vissapragada's @carnegiescience.bsky.social seminar on three population-level surveys of atmospheric escape @oxoplanets.bsky.social!

Very exciting and well deserved @ntlewis.bsky.social, and I'm looking forward to seeing what you find!

I'm looking forward to the groundbreaking on Tuesday!

YouTube video by BOWIE+ Seminars Atmospheres on Rocky Exoplanets by Ryan Macdonald

As a part of the launch of the BOWIE+ Seminar Series, Dr. Ryan MacDonald (@distantworlds.space) gave a great overview of our current understanding of rocky worlds thanks to JWST. The talk is now up on Youtube if you're interested. #exoplanets #astronomy

www.youtube.com/watch?v=hN3y...

A Stellar Revolution: How Open-Source Tool MESA Changed the Way We Study Stars A Stellar Revolution: How Open-Source Tool MESA Changed the Way We Study Stars on Simons Foundation

Great article from the Simons Foundation about the open source MESA stellar evolution code, which has a had a huge impact on astrophysics over the past 15 years.
I had not heard that the code's architect, software guru Bill Paxton, had passed away in July.
www.simonsfoundation.org/2025/08/12/a...

Registration is open now for our fall workshop on Atmospheric Escape and Replenishment in Planetary Systems!

🔭 #exoplanets

Congratulations @timlichtenberg.bsky.social!! Very well deserved.

Just how bad will climate change get? The only way to know is to fund basic research Predictions of climate change are uncertain. That’s why we need to keep finding out how our atmosphere works.

Predictions of climate change are uncertain. That’s why we need to keep finding out how our atmosphere works, says Tim Palmer

go.nature.com/414QrVV

Two postdoc jobs available on our Arctic Butterflies project! (Not actual butterflies - basically Arctic dynamics and predictability - the butterfly effect in the Arctic...)

Oxford job: tinyurl.com/yc6h4b35

Reading job: tinyurl.com/ypn75jh2

Please help spread the word!

Job alert: we are looking for a postdoc to join the Atmospheric Dynamics group in Oxford to study Arctic atmospheric dynamics. The focus is on energy transfers between scales and implications for predictability. More details here: tinyurl.com/yc6h4b35

In our now-published paper we model the early history of three exoplanets to specifically study the role of tidal heating on their capacity to solidify. A physically robust feedback mechanism can keep them molten, even with relatively thin atmospheres, which may extend to lots of rocky exoplanets.

Geometric Considerations in Hot Jupiter Magnetic Drag Models Magnetic fields are expected to impact the atmospheric dynamics of hot and ultra-hot Jupiters due to their increased ionization fractions, compared to that of cooler exoplanets, but our ability to mod...

My paper with Tom Evans-Soma and Nathan Mayne on magnetic drag models is now accepted and up on the arXiv. For a quick summary, look at the PDF of my Exoclimes poster that I shared last week.

www.arxiv.org/abs/2507.08511

51 Pegasi b Guidelines and Application.pdf | Powered by Box

Do you want to work with me as a postdoc? The 51 Pegasi b fellowship is now open for applications heisingsimons.app.box.com/s/y8jg5tbsbd... This is one of the highest profile and most effective fellowships for early-career scientists studying exoplanets. (Read on for important news)...

See also my explainer thread below!
bsky.app/profile/nich...

Volatile-rich evolution of molten super-Earth L 98-59 d Small low-density exoplanets are sculpted by strong stellar irradiation but their origin is unknown. Two competing scenarios are that they formed either with rocky interiors and H2-He atmospheres (`ga...

New paper on the molten Super-Earth L98-59d by @nichollsh.bsky.social in our group. arxiv.org/abs/2507.02656

everything is terrible except for this

Three-dimensional Transport-induced Chemistry on Temperate sub-Neptune K2-18b, Part I: the Effects of Atmospheric Dynamics The low equilibrium temperatures of temperate sub-Neptunes lead to extremely long chemical timescales in their upper atmospheres, causing the abundances of chemical species to be strongly shaped by at...

I recommend giving this paper by @jiachenliu.bsky.social, @astroduncan.bsky.social, and Jun Yang a close read: arxiv.org/abs/2506.23891. Sub-Neptunes like K2-18b lie in an interesting regime where both the radiative feedback and mixing of chemical tracers is important, I’m looking forward to Part 2!

So very excited to see our collaboration with Nature Astronomy out today on #Juneteenth. These articles for #BlackSpaceWeek2025 were labors of love and I encourage folks to check them all out!
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Congratulations, Ryan! I'm looking forward to having you around as a UK faculty peer.

My 15th Science Olympiad National tournament as part of the Astronomy event led by the fearless Donna Young — as usual, we’re hard at work proctoring and marking 60 exams, making it as fun as possible for the students (and ourselves!).

There’s Probably No Life on K2-18b After All, Three Studies Conclude In April, astronomers said they had detected a possible signature of life on the exoplanet K2-18b. Now, three independent analyses discount the evidence.

Here's my follow-up story on K2-18b, the distant planet where scientists claimed to see a possible sign of life last month. In three preprints, other researcher argue that the signal is noise. nyti.ms/4jaqQRv

Next, let's have wild camping become legal in every UK national park!

Interesting paper by Yang et al. on arxiv today arguing clouds might _help_ us observe O2/O3 on exoplanets in some cases:

arxiv.org/pdf/2505.07760

3D visualisation of dust and wind currents in the atmosphere of Mars as simulated by the UK Met Office Unified Model. Image credit: Danny McCulloch (U. Exeter).

Exciting PhD opportunity at @exeter.ac.uk: Forecasting Martian Dust Storms (funded by @ukspaceagency.bsky.social)! Please share widely!

More details: www.exeter.ac.uk/study/fundin...

Nice to see this research note on K2-18b from @astrojake.bsky.social, which demonstrates that a flat line (i.e. no spectral features) is a good fit to the MIRI data.

#exoplanet 🪐 🔭

arxiv.org/abs/2504.15916

“I’d like to propose a golden rule for press releases:

A release should convey to its audience the same impression of a result that an independent expert would get from reading the paper which describes it itself.”

Hampton U (HBCU in VA) is looking to hire assistant/associate prof in atmospheric and planetary science! They are interested in exoplanetary science too!

#BlackInphysics #BlackandSTEM #BlackInAstro #BlackInChem

home.hamptonu.edu/hr/2025/02/1...