Ava Polzin

It's becoming increasingly clear to me that Reflect Orbital's fucking stupid giant mirror satellite, with absolutely NOTHING useful to offer, which will cause countless safety issues, ecological disasters, and destroy the night sky, is going to launch.

A bunch of astronomers and I have sent out […]

Today my @nytimes.com colleagues and I are launching a new series called Lost Science. We interview US scientists who can no longer discover something new about our world, thanks to this year‘s cuts. Here is my first interview with a scientist who studied bees and fires. Gift link: nyti.ms/3IWXbiE

This is why we fund scientists to study things like oyster slobber even if you don’t think it sounds important

A leading Democrat in the Senate just released an important report documenting how NASA has been working to implement the president's proposed budget, not Congressionally approved funds, in slashing missions. Read more ⬇️

Huge thanks to @highzclouds.bsky.social for showing me Las Campanas!!

The Milky Way over the open dome of the Baade Telescope at Las Campanas Observatory

The center of the Milky Way over the open dome of the Baade Telescope

The Milky Way over the Clay Telescope

Silhouette of a person (me) standing in front of three visible galaxies — the SMC and LMC (left) and the Milky Way (right)

Big fan of observing in person 🔭

Article on BBC news. Title: AI designs antibiotics for gonorrhoea and MRSA superbugs Description: Two new potential drugs have been designed by AI to kill drug-resistant bacteria, in a major Massachusetts Institute of Technology study.

I really dislike how science has started calling almost any fancy computational technique AI. 🧪

The framing of this entire article makes it sound like a benevolent AI independently made these drugs.

That is *pure fantasy*.

Instead: a team of scientists made a machine learning model for a study.

For the morning crowd, here are all the observations stored in the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes. A visual created by Julie Imig, one of our amazing astronomical data scientists. Follow the link below for more colors and even a movie.

Now formally published!

It really is perfect that this code, named both for the PSF spikes and as a nod to a favorite Buffy character -- hence the logo, should find its home in JOSS...

github.com/avapolzin/sp...

🔭🧪☄️

A map of the US with the states the republican senators are from marked in red and states the democratic senators are from marked in blue: Senator Susan Collins (Republican - Maine) Senator Mitch McConnell(Republican - Kentucky) Senator Lisa Murkowski(Republican - Alaska) Senator Lindsey Graham(Republican - South Carolina) Senator Jerry Moran(Republican - Kansas) Senator John Hoeven(Republican - North Dakota) Senator John Boozman(Republican - Arkansas) Senator Shelley Moore Capito(Republican - West Virginia) Senator John Kennedy(Republican - Louisiana) Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith(Republican - Mississippi) Senator Bill Hagerty(Republican - Tennessee) Senator Katie Britt(Republican - Alabama) Senator Markwayne Mullin(Republican - Oklahoma) Senator Deb Fischer(Republican - Nebraska) Senator Mike Rounds(Republican - South Dakota) Patty Murray(Democrat - Washington) Richard Durbin(Democrat - Illinois) Jack Reed(Democrat - Rhode Island) Jeanne Shaheen(Democrat - New Hampshire) Jeff Merkley(Democrat - Oregon) Christopher Coons(Democrat - Delaware) Brian Schatz(Democrat - Hawaii) Tammy Baldwin(Democrat - Wisconsin) Chris Murphy(Democrat - Connecticut) Chris Van Hollen(Democrat - Maryland) Martin Heinrich(Democrat - New Mexico) Gary Peters(Democrat - Michigan) Kirsten Gillibrand(Democrat - New York) Jon Ossoff(Democrat - Georgia)

Are you from one of these states? Then we need your help to save American science!

The Senate Appropriations Committee will be marking up the President's Budget Request for science on Wednesday. People have been saying the proposed cuts "decimated" US science, but that's wrong: they are apocalyptic

NASA just won an Emmy for our live broadcast of the total solar eclipse last year. We produced a documentary film about the James Webb Space Telescope that's out in theaters and on Netflix. We have podcasts, we write feature stories. People wear the agency logo on t-shirts. We're still getting cut.

Congratulations, Sanjana!

NASA is being told to cancel 19 *active* missions to save $6B, which looks to be less than the ICE *hiring/retention* budget going forward.

I need people to let that sentence sink into their bones for a minute.

Alex Ji, speaking at Galactic Frontiers II, using the cat “chonk chart” to classify dwarf galaxies, where his favorite ultrafaints are “fine bois”.

Definitely using the novel Ji (@alexji.bsky.social) mass-based dwarf galaxy classification scheme moving forward 🔭

A sprawling, textured field of galaxies scattered across the deep black of space. It is filled with the delicate smudges and glowing cores of galaxies of many shapes, sizes and colors, as well as the bright multi-colored points of stars. The image focuses on a collection of interacting galaxies connected by delicate streams of stars. At top center lies a large elliptical galaxy that is dense and smooth, like a polished stone glowing with golden light. Like delicate spider silk or stretched taffy, these stellar bridges link the large elliptical to the few larger galaxies beneath, evidence of past collisions. All throughout the image, thousands of galaxies gather in clusters or are spread throughout, like glittering gems strewn on a table. Some are sharp-edged and spiral, like coiled ribbons; others round and diffuse, like polished pebbles. Still others are just smudges of various colors against the black of space. The background is peppered with pinpoint stars in reds, yellows, and blues, crisp against the velvet black.

A cosmic tapestry of glowing tan and pink gas clouds with dark dust lanes. In the upper right, the Trifid Nebula resembles a small flower in space. Its soft, pinkish gas petals are surrounded by blue gas, and streaked with dark, finger-like veins of dust that divide it into three parts. It radiates a gentle, misty glow, diffuse and soft like the warmth of breath on a cold hand. To the lower left, the much larger Lagoon Nebula stretches wide like a churning sea of magenta gas, with bright blue, knotted clumps sprinkled throughout where new stars are born. Both nebulae are embedded in a soft tan backdrop of gas that is brighter on the left than on the right, etched with dark tendrils of dust and sprinkled with the pinpricks of millions of stars.

A sprawling, textured field of galaxies scattered across the deep black of space. It is filled with the delicate smudges and glowing cores of galaxies of many shapes, sizes and colors, as well as the bright multi-colored points of stars. To the lower left is a region filled with the hundreds of golden glittering gems of a distant galaxy cluster. In the foreground, below and right of center, two blue spiral galaxies look like eyes beneath the entangled mass of a triple galaxy merger in the upper right. A few bright blue points of foreground stars pierce the glittering tapestry. All throughout the image, thousands of galaxies gather in clusters or are spread throughout, like glittering gems strewn on a table. Some are sharp-edged and spiral, like coiled ribbons; others round and diffuse, like polished pebbles. Still others are just smudges of various colors against the black of space. The background is peppered with pinpoint stars in reds, yellows, and blues, crisp against the velvet black.

Introducing...your sneak peek at the cosmos captured by NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory!

Can you guess these regions of sky?

This is just a small peek...join us at 11am US EDT for your full First Look at how Rubin will #CaptureTheCosmos! 🔭🧪

#RubinFirstLook
ls.st/rubin-first-look-livestream

This Budget Plan Would Devastate U.S. Space Science Scientists are rallying to reverse ruinous proposed cuts to both NASA and the National Science Foundation

"You’re punching a generation-size hole, maybe a multigenerational hole, in the scientific and technical workforce. You don’t just Cryovac these people and pull them out when the money comes back. People are going to move on.”

www.scientificamerican.com/article/prop...

Cuts have consequences, illustrated. As seen on TV 📺

These are gorgeous!

The stars of the constellation Ursa Major glow particularly brightly over the nighttime landscape of Devils Tower.

A circular fisheye view of Devils Tower at night. A few large boulders are visible in the foreground, and the tower is silhouetted by a combination of airglow and the Milky Way.

Bear Lodge 🌌🐻

If you can’t secure the giant bear of legend for your cliff-scarring needs, Ursa Major will do in a pinch.

🏷️: 📸🌿🐡🔭

Bonus: here's an animation I generated showing how the sausage was made. Each frame is one commit from the paper repo.

Fefe, a fluffy (and always slightly disheveled) brown cat with big blue eyes, sits on a shelf with books and records. (She’s named for Félicette, the first cat in space.)

Looks like Fefe has been reading the news…

Job Opportunities | University College Cork Learn, Study and Research in UCC, Ireland's first 5 star university. Our tradition of independent thinking will prepare you for the world and the workplace in a vibrant, modern, green campus.

Hey I’m hiring a 4-year PhD student in #astronomy at UCC to work on studying massive black holes in cosmological simulations! Fast turn around on this bc it is so late (due 6 June) but please pass on to any interested and qualified students! Feel free to dm/email me! 🔭🧪

www.ucc.ie/en/astro/job...

NOAA's new GOES-19 satellite continuously monitors solar activity, to protect satellites, communications & electrical systems. (It also catches the Earth & Moon photobombing its view of the Sun.)

One small example of what NOAA funding does... 🧪🔭

www.nesdis.noaa.gov/news/noaas-l...

In the centre is an elliptical galaxy, seen as an oval-shaped glow around a small bright core. Around this is wrapped a broad band of light, appearing like a spiral galaxy stretched and warped into a ring, with bright blue lines drawn through it where the spiral arms have been stretched into circles. A few distant objects are visible around the ring on a black background.

⭕ A stunning cosmic lens!

A distant background spiral galaxy appears to be wrapped around a closer foreground elliptical galaxy, forming an Einstein ring.

Captured by the NASA/ESA/CSA James #Webb Space Telescope. Read more 👉 www.esa.int/ESA_Multimed...

🔭 🧪 ☄️

#NASAWebb provides high-resolution details of Herbig-Haro 49/50—an outflow from a nearby still-forming star and background galaxies. Webb reveals the fuzzy object at the tip of the outflow in the Spitzer image is actually a distant spiral galaxy: webbtelescope.pub/4iGQg9K 🔭 🧪

In the same vein as albumpl and for talks, posters, papers, or even March Madness, here's a little package with >80 university-inspired, matplotlib color palettes and colormaps :)

github.com/avapolzin/ra...

Congratulations!!

GitHub - avapolzin/spike: All-in-one tool to generate, and correctly drizzle, HST, JWST, and Roman PSFs. All-in-one tool to generate, and correctly drizzle, HST, JWST, and Roman PSFs. - avapolzin/spike

Code here: github.com/avapolzin/sp... 🔭🧪

spike: A tool to drizzle HST, JWST, and Roman PSFs for improved analyses Point spread functions (PSFs) describe the distribution of light for a pure point source in an astronomical image due to the instrument optics. For deconvolution, as for point source photometry and fo...

Paper day! I introduce a new all-in-one tool to generate and drizzle/resample space-based point spread functions for more accurate photometry 🔭🧪

arxiv.org/abs/2503.02288

Ack! Clearly a typo, but the abstract should read "*This* talk explores..." 🤦‍♀️