Peter Gao

recently found out that an exoplanet colleague is related to one of the writers of the Stargate franchise and it’s taking a lot of energy not to pepper them with insane questions

screenshot of a Gmail notification that says “Google Gemini - You're now using Gemini on your iOS device Key information about data usage and your privacy choices.”

oh ok

going to get some gas anyone has one of those “I did that” trump stickers

the quality difference between Lego and Mega Bloks is staggering I don’t know why they even bother

JWST COMPASS: A NIRSpec G395H Transmission Spectrum of Radius Valley-Dweller TOI-260 b We present a JWST/NIRSpec G395H transmission spectrum of TOI-260 b, a $T_\mathrm{eq}\sim 490$ K, $R_\mathrm{p} = 1.76\,R_\oplus$ planet. The transmission spectrum is derived by combining two transit o...

Two new JWST COMPASS papers on arXiv today! ✨

Transmission spectra of HD 15337c (led by @nicolewallack.bsky.social & @planetarygao.bsky.social) and TOI-260 b (led by myself & @planetarygao.bsky.social):
arxiv.org/abs/2602.22327
arxiv.org/abs/2602.22329

She’s the next regeneration

The existence of Catherine Zeta-Jones implies the existence of Catherine Epsilon-Jones

Data and Picard talking about the Irish Unification of 2024 from TNG

we have failed them

a sheet of snow on the windshield of a car, the top half having slid down a bit causing the sheet to fold over itself

Gravity

car stopped in the traffic circle with hazards on like yeah bro add to the chaos

misspelled radial velocities as radical velocities

spending a lot of time at home due to school closures and the kids getting sick and I’m beginning to lose all sense of time and reality

do I have a job? Is there a world outside this house? are the people on my zoom calls real? if I don’t answer my emails do they go away? what is space? and so on

Screenshot of google search results showing the link to the Wikipedia entry “Victorian era”, which says “The Victorian era was the reign of Queen Victoria, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901.”

Screenshot of the Doritos Wikipedia entry showing among other things its sick logo and the fact that it was introduced in 1964

a Victorian child could have eventually eaten Doritos

what do you mean coronation street has more than 11,000 episodes and a character who has been there since episode 1 in 1960

A cartoon of JWST on a chip bag

JWST in the wild

Melting snow with grass peeking out showing small “towers” of snow that was compressed by footsteps

footsteps in the snow preserved during the melt

black background white text and white frame, around the edges are colorful things like galaxies, planets, leaves, and sea creatures

can’t believe it’s finally my turn to do this but:

COVER REVEAL!!

here is the long-awaited cover for CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF STARSHIPS by the incredibly talented Kamille Rodriguez

pre-order here: www.barnesandnoble.com/w/cloudy-wit...

my 7 yo has successfully reprogrammed my brain to think 67 is funny

My new exoplanet figure, showing the relationship between planet radius and planet diameter, may be the most precise population-level trend yet discovered

A Defense of the Radius-Period Diagram (w/ the SS planets overlaid):

It shows:
- the huge range of separations and sizes
- the very large number of discoveries
- how many different detection methods have contributed (and where!)
- how most of what we’ve found isn’t like the Solar System

We all show this figure, but I seriously agree with Peter that we need to rethink that. It tells a story but doesn't actually convey more than one or two important facts. It's almost ritualistic.

Screenshot of an email that says “We would like to introduce ourselves as the Journal of Petroleum Gas & Chemical Engineering ISSN: 3069-2075 | DOI: 10.64030/3069-2075 Hello Dear. Peter Gao, I hope you are doing well. This is a kind reminder regarding your preprint entitled “Clouds and Hazes in the Atmospheres of Triton and Pluto”.”

these spam emails are getting worse

Rather be a loser than a pedo

the irony with AI is that it could be an extremely powerful tool for the betterment of humanity but its main spokesmen are douchebag techbros

nice of her to confirm that all of the rich and powerful are depraved sociopaths who should be jettisoned to space

anakin from anakin and padme meme

audience: if you know the mass the radius should be easy to back out, right?

me:

I’m hiding in the sub-Neptune clump they can’t find me without that diagram

it must be hilarious at a direct imaging conference it’s like “please ignore this giant mass of points here and instead focus on the sparse upper right corner”

audience: what’s the current distribution of known exoplanets?

me: uhhhh nobody knows

historic banger