Dr. Alison Duck

What’s Going On Inside GJ 486b? Astrobites reports on a warm, rocky exoplanet and what might be hidden beneath its atmosphere.

Kaz Gary reports for @astrobites.bsky.social on a warm, rocky exoplanet and what might be hidden beneath its atmosphere. aasnova.org/2025/08/05/w... 🔭

Image from 2025 summer graduation at Ohio State with 5 people in PhD regalia in front of empty seats and a stage with the OSU seal. L to R: Laura Lopez, Joy Bhattacharyya, Caprice Phillips, Alison Duck, Scott Gaudi.

Honored to celebrate 3 new astro doctors yesterday @joybee8.bsky.social, @capricephillips.bsky.social, @astroalison.bsky.social with @scottgaudi.bsky.social! Thanks to @jajohnson.bsky.social for lending me UC Santa Cruz regalia & to the OSU French & Italian prof who fixed my own backwards hood. 😂

OSU astronomy undergrad alum Trinity Webb and OSU astro PhD student @astrojennifer.bsky.social led this Chandra program showing diffuse X-rays coincident with very young stars identified with JWST! Here's this great work: ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2024ApJ....

OK, looks like 3I/ATLAS is a comet! If it were an asteroid the image would be symmetric circles. The distortion is likely due to ices sublimating to form a gaseous tail.

🔭🧪 SPHEREx data are at IRSA! irsa.ipac.caltech.edu/Missions/sph...

Rubin opens its eye. And what it sees is the Universe. Mind-blowing first images from the huge telescope.

I give you a momentary reprieve from the madness:

The Vera Rubin Observatory has taken its first images of the sky, and they are *extraordinary*. Mind blowing detail, jaw dropping beauty.

badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/rubin-open...

🔭 🧪

#exoplanets #jobs 📣

I'm advertising for a postdoc! Come work with me in sunny SoCal on the Roman Galactic Exoplanet Survey Project Infrastructure Team. You'll help build the pipeline for Roman* occurrence rates.

*Launches NEXT YEAR!

Please RT & share with your networks!

aas.org/jobregister/...

Exoplanet discovery database, ExoFOP, reaches 1 million files and counting Discovering an exoplanet doesn’t mean having one, definitive eureka moment. Instead, it requires multiple observations, sometimes from multiple observatories, and the scientific community coming toget...

Some fun news to interleave in your TLs - the Exoplanet Follow-up Observing Program is an open sandbox for the astronomy community to collaborate on confirming and characterizing planets. It's totally voluntary, but apparently, if you build it, they will come!

www.ipac.caltech.edu/news/exoplan...

The Presidents Budget Request for NASA is out. It’s a bloodbath

Canceled are DAVINCI, VERITAS, Juno, OSIRIS-APEX, US participation in ExoMars and EnVision…

Huge cut to R&A. No funding to begin development of the Uranus Orbiter.

If you’ve ever cared about NASA, time to contact congress.

Introducing Dr. Alison Duck, PhD (Astronomy), The Ohio State University (and soon Jet Propulsion Lab)!
@astroalison.bsky.social

The Challenges of Detecting Gases in Exoplanet Atmospheres by Luis Welbanks et al. Abstract: Claims of detections of gases in exoplanet atmospheres often rely on comparisons between models including and excluding specific chemical species. However, the space of molecular combinations available for model construction is vast and highly degenerate. Only a limited subset of these combinations is typically explored for any given detection. As a result, apparent detections of trace gases risk being artifacts of incomplete modeling rather than robust identification of atmospheric constituents, especially in the low signal-to-noise regime. We illustrate these challenges using the sub-Neptune K2-18~b, where recent claims of a potential biosignature detection vanish when the considered model space is expanded. We show that numerous alternative models without potential biosignature gases provide equivalent or better fits to the observations. We demonstrate that the significance of a claimed detection relies on the choice of models being compared, and that model preference does not necessarily imply the presence of any specific gas. https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.21788

The K2-18b saga deepens with a great new paper out today by @luiswel.bsky.social (arxiv.org/abs/2504.21788).

Turns out hydrocarbons can explain K2-18b's new JWST MIRI spectrum *without* the need to invoke DMS or DMDS as biosignatures.

Read on to find out more! 🧵

#Exoplanet 🔭🪐

Vibrant aurora colors glimmer near the horizon. A foreground hill leaves a diagonal shadow at the bottom of the frame.

Made it to Montana just in time to catch a bit of aurora!

🏷️: 📸🌿🐡🔭

Astronomy PhD candidate receives prestigious NASA Hubble Fellowship Caprice Phillips, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Astronomy at Ohio State, has always aimed for the stars through her research and outreach. Now, she will have the opportunity to continue th...

So proud of Caprice, a brilliant scientist & a tremendous leader! She is the 2nd Black woman to earn their PhD in the OSU astronomy department; the first was Dr. Kiersten Boley last year. I am excited to see all the great science they will do in their careers! artsandsciences.osu.edu/news/astrono...

Promising hints of life found on distant planet K2-18b Scientists find new but tentative evidence that a faraway world orbiting another star may be home to life.

An astonishing headline reporting on new observations from a team led to Nikku Madhusudhan claims they’ve found ‘hints of life’ on a planet orbiting a dwarf star some 124 light years away. What’s going on? (1/n) www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... 🔭 🧪

Photos of OSU astronomy faculty, staff, and graduate students, including 26 faculty Todd Thompsons, 27 staff Todd Thompsons, and 33 grad student Todd Thompsons.

Listing of all department members and their office locations, with T Thompsons all the way down.

A picture of Todd's face at the center of an eclipse diagram.

To acknowledge the many ways our chair advocates for our department, OSU astronomy has undergone some personnel changes today, April 1. 😂 🔭

Dear federal scientists: If you have been affected by the probationary firings and would be willing to speak with Science, please reach out to me by email (klangin@aaas.org) or on Signal. We can guarantee annonymity.

Workers at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center are surrounding a covered spacecraft on a platform in a clean room environment.

#NASARoman: NASA has successfully joined the sunshade to the Roman observatory’s ‘exoskeleton.’

The visor-like sunshade will help prevent unwanted light from entering the telescope: go.nasa.gov/4hQItFR

False colour JWST NIRCam image of a nearby star forming region in front of a deep back ground of colorful galaxies. NASA, ESA, CSA, K. McQuinn (STScI), J. DePasquale (STScI)

Oh come ON now. This new JWST image is just ASTOUNDING.

I feel like I’m falling looking into it, and that I would fall forever, and that I would enjoy it.

NASA, ESA, CSA, K. McQuinn (STScI), J. DePasquale (STScI)

So excited to present my dissertation work in Transits III at 2pm at #AAS245

It has only been 100 years! Now we know there are SO MANY GALAXIES. They evolve! They merge! Totally wild stuff.

Escribe para Astrobitos Estamos buscando estudiantes entusiastas que quieran unirse al equipo de Astrobites en Español. Sigue leyendo →

astrobitos.org/2024/10/31/e...

#AAS245 Navigating the American Astronomical Society’s winter meeting can be a daunting experience for first-time attendees. However, with the right planning, you are sure to have an inspiring and engaging experience. 🔭

Left half of a two-panel frame showing a vibrant auroral light show over the famous outline of Tahoma (Mt. Rainier). This half of the frame shows aurora of a more blue-ish purple hue extending out of the bright green portion of the display near the horizon.

Right half of a two-panel frame showing a vibrant auroral light show over the famous outline of Tahoma (Mt. Rainier). This half of the frame features a small dark cloud and shows hints of more red-tinted aurora extending out of the bright green portion of the display near the horizon.

10/10, No Notes 🎆🏔️🎆

Scenes from last month's spectacular celestial light show over Tahoma. Turns out I picked a very good year to get serious about landscape astrophotography!

🔗: www.pjvphotography.com/Environment/...

🏷️: 📸🌿🐡🔭

A logo spelling out "E M A C" short for NASA Goddard's Exoplanet Modeling and Analysis Center. The letters are floating in front of a sunrise on Earth as seen from the international space station.

Hey #exoplanet community! NASA Goddard's Exoplanet Modeling and Analysis Center (emac.gsfc.nasa.gov) just joined. Nothing there yet, but consider giving it a follow! @exoplanetmodels.bsky.social

It's PAPER DAY 📣 My first first-author paper is now published in ApJ 🎉
Read about how star clusters contribute as galactic cosmic ray sources. Comments and questions are welcome 🤗
Gamma-Ray Emission from the Star-forming Region RCW 38

iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...

STIPS: The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Imaging Product Simulator The Space Telescope Imaging Product Simulator (STIPS) is a Python-based package that can be used to simulate scenes from the upcoming \textit{Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope} (\nancy). STIPS is able...

If you’re interested in simulated data products for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, this paper is for you! Great work from my @spacetelescope.bsky.social colleagues >> arxiv.org/abs/2411.11978

Here is my regular check on demographics data of astronomy and physics PhD attainment by race/ethnicity group in the US using the NSF Survey of Earned Doctorates (ncses.nsf.gov/surveys/earn...). Latino PhD attainment has increased; Black, Indigenous, & Asian PhD attainment fairly constant.

In honor of all the new arrivals, I'm sharing one of my favorite videos.

It shows 24 hours of Earth's rotation, with the camera locked to the sky instead of the ground. We're all hanging out on this spinning rock.

Brilliant work by Bartosz Wojczyński. 🧪

artuniverse.eu/gallery/1907...

Hey! Are you an #astronomy grad looking to grow your network? Astro undergrad interested in seeing what grad school is like? Astro professor looking for some gossip? General fan of astronomy interested in learning more? Drop a follow!

go.bsky.app/G1JVEGr