Eliot Halley Vrijmoet

Good morning! Yes, this is he

Gosh I swear this happens to me every 3 months like clockwork. Zero fun.

AAS President Dara Norman and Past President Kelsey Johnson published an opinion article in SpaceNews today titled "The future of astronomy is both on Earth and in space." The article is signed by 15 past, current, and incoming AAS presidents.

A piece of seared salmon with herbs sits in a bowl atop a mushroom cream sauce.

Husband has been doing all the cooking since Baby arrived. Tonight I said "hey btw I bought a salmon and forgot to tell you" and he's like no problem, sounds fun ♥️

My institution has declared a snow emergency "parking ban" tomorrow (i.e., no parking on campus), yet classes are not cancelled. How is that supposed to work? Did my faculty teleporter get lost in the mail?

Our daycare teacher at dropoff today: "so did your baby start eating solids recently? Because I got KFC for lunch and she tried to steal it right out of my hand... several times..."

Someone at work asked my pronouns and I was so excited I rambled on for several minutes straight. What the HECK, brain! That's not good for making friends!

Don't talk yourself out of it just because you don't know the state of the art in teaching. Tons of teachers do great work using just their pure intuition and vibes.

Middle school is an interesting age, though. "Classroom management" is absolutely a factor and worth a couple hours reading up on.

This was us at the start of semester! Winter break, 3 days of school, 1 week of illness, 1 day of school (a Friday), weekend... I was like, am I sure I'm still employed?

Pretty sure it's because this was the week my students had to do their "find and read 4 papers" assignment. :P

For a sec I thought this was Cambridge, U.S.A., and I was like WOW so much flying!

Reviewing my recent paper proofs has taught me that I really love hyphens... and my AAS journals copy-editors do not! 🤣

After 2 weeks of daycare, baby (and I) are on daycare cold #2, and I'm realizing I should have just stopped my immunosuppressants this month 😓

Astronomers/physicists: is the postdoc job market this year ultra difficult? I know seven people with no job offers right now, and I feel like they would have had many offers in previous years. In my career, I have never seen this lack of jobs at the postdoc level before. 🔭

The Landscape of Undergraduate Astronomy and Astrophysics Degree Requirements In this document we summarize the results of a survey of undergraduate degree-granting programs conducted by the 2024-2025 American Astronomical Society Education Committee's Subcommittee on UndeRgrad...

Our AAS Education Committee report on 'The Landscape of Undergraduate Astronomy and Astrophysics Degree Requirements' is now available on arXiv: www.arxiv.org/abs/2602.03959. Please give it a read!

This is it! In most contexts I refer to it as ongoing.

Wow, the exact same date as the NOIRLab deadline? That is pretty brutal. :/

This paper was delayed for a few years, for many reasons -- dissertation, new job, pregnancy, depression -- so, even though it's not a fancy paper, it feels AMAZING to finally get it finished. I've got some wonderfully patient co-authors.

Nine orbits of low-mass star binaries from our program. The orbits range in size from a few dozen milliarcseconds to a few hundred milliarcseconds, and are mostly around 0.3 eccentricity, although they are projected to a variety of shapes on the sky.

The next issue of "the Solar Neighborhood" is up! 🔭

In TSN 54 we present 54 orbits of nearby M dwarf binaries. These come from our 300-star, 4-year speckle program at SOAR.

Also included: 1000+ relative astrometry points -- keep watching these for longer orbits later!

arxiv.org/abs/2601.18905

Some new recommendations from our AAS Working Group on Graduate Admission: aas.org/posts/news/2...

Holy crap, teaching while parenting is a serious step up in difficulty.

Will baby go to daycare tomorrow, or will she stay home sick? Will she be ok with going to meetings? Will two zooms in a row be too many? Should I just cancel everything now?

And here's the Subaru, mid-excavation.

Snow comes halfway up the side of a fence that is usually 4 ft high.

Snow completely covers a car in front of a derelict garage. The car underneath the snow is a 2007 Subaru Outback.

Snow piles halfway up two city trash bins and covers their tops like big white hats.

We got 20 inches of snow (and counting) in western Massachusetts. Here you see our fence (4 ft high), trash bin, and a mountain formerly known as our 2007 Subaru Outback.

Baby's first trip to the emergency room ✅ done!

(She's fine -- turns out she's so big and strong, she just needs way more Tylenol than the box suggests)

It was so awkward but I wanted John to have company 😆

It's like vacation! Everything is so peaceful! Never before have I had such fulfilling separation of work and life

Our paper has been accepted and is on its way through the journal machina. "The Solar Neighborhood #54" will feature 54 orbits. That worked out so perfectly! 🔭🧪

So apparently she cried so much, all the other babies in the room cried all day too. A natural born leader!

Just dropped baby off at her first day of daycare, and now I might cry -- from pure *relief*. She gets to be with real playmates and I get to have hours and hours of work, chores, coffee, all those wonderful boring adult things. 😌

Last two weeks of January was rejection season for me. But also when I had a very good interview! Hang in there.