Erica Sawczynec

"this product is good because it's like having a pocket full of PhDs" just suggests to me you've never actually been in a room with a bunch of experts on a topic.

You think you're going to come away with a quick, simple, easy-to-digest summary of their expertise? Think again.

Sexual harassment is rife at US Antarctic research bases, fresh survey finds More than two-thirds of people polled had witnessed sexual harassment or assault on the ice.

We've been waiting for this report from NSF for many months — results of a survey on sexual harassment at US Antarctic stations. The numbers aren't good, but at least this problem is out in the open & starting to be tackled. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

whatsaltareyou.com

i don’t use any AI tools to write code or fix code bugs, instead i use the old fashioned way: pestering my postdoc until he helps me

MAST background in "standard" sky projection, in hues of blue. Lighter blue areas mark lots of observations, while darker areas are less. Numerous patterns are visible, like the continuous viewing zones as ovals in the lower-left and upper right, patterns from overlapping TESS FFIs, or the Kepler footprint shapes stamped along the ecliptic and in the original Kepler field in the upper-right.

A grid of 16 images, 4x4, showing the sky background only for specific missions to get a sense of where in the sky and how much of it each mission observed to at least some depth.

Ever wondered what the "MAST Sky" looks like, from our ~6 PB of data spanning 3 decades...check this out! spacetelescope.github.io/mast-blog/ma...

Really fun project led by the very talented Julie Imig at MAST, showing mission coverage sky-projected! They make VERY good video backgrounds, btw. 🔭

say less—more memes incoming for the next installment 😈

ASAB Guest Info ASAB is a podcast which brings on trans and non-binary guests in science (undergrad or grad students, technicians, professors, educators, researchers, science journalists, photographers, or even someo...

If you're a trans or non-binary scientist, consider appearing on the podcast Assigned Scientist at Bachelor's, the only podcast dedicating to interviewing, and highlighting the research of, trans and non-binary scientists, cohosted by your truly!

omg! hi! i participated in AMDS this spring and thought the MAUVE paper was a great example for an astrobites mini series to highlight all the things people don’t usually think about for mission design! thanks for writing such a comprehensive paper :-)

An Exercise in Satellite Mission Design: Instrument Requirements In today's bite we are once again revisiting the mission design concept MAUVE to learn how science objectives drive instrument design requirements!

‼️ back yet again👩🏼‍💻 with another @astrobites.bsky.social for MAUVE, the treasure trove mission design 🚀 paper! ‼️

today’s installment 🌟 focuses on how physical parameters and requirements from observables flow down ⏳ to instrument requirements 🔭 #instrumentation

Rubin Observatory perched atop its mountain summit site on Cerro Pachón. The observatory is boot-shaped at lower left with long white service building extending left and silver dome sticking up. The dome's vertical slit is open, revealing the telescope in the blackness within. The night sky is peppered with the pinpricks of stars, and the Moon shines like a spotlight at right. The Little Beehive Cluster of stars is a denser collection of pinpricks to the upper right of the observatory.

Oh, bee-have! 🐝

The Little Beehive Cluster 🐝 (also known as Messier 41) is a dazzling open star cluster about 2300 light-years away. It's made of about 100 stars born from the same cloud of gas. 🌫️

This stunning nightscape captures NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory and M41 together ✨🔭🧪

Elon Musk: That was how I felt when asking Grok 4 questions about materials science that are not in any books or on the Internet Tim Sweeney: Grok 4 feels like Artificial General Intelligence to me. It is clearly not just constructing statistically likely connections, but is drawing fairly deep insights on problems it hasn't seen before, in ways I haven't seen elsewhere. Here's an example: grok.com/share/bG...

What do you think is more likely, that Musk’s Nazi robot has made new discoveries in materials science or that Musk can’t tell when he’s being told scientific-sounding gibberish?

Hello World! A new chapter of Astronomy on Tap just dropped in sunny Tempe, AZ ☀️. We’re so excited to announce that starting this August, we’ll be hosting FREE monthly events at Four Peaks Brewing with professional astronomers who love talking about space! Follow for event details and sneak peaks 👀

a large pile of boxes on a mail delivery cart in the elevator

optics storage cabinets with the parts all labeled on the outside of each drawer (been on my wish list for a while)

christmas in the lab today 🥹🙂‍↕️ #instrumentation

always classic

Transgender in Astronomy: Interview with Dr. Megan Pickett For Pride Month, Astrobites is interviewing one transgender astronomer every week. This week we interviewed Dr. Megan Pickett, an Associate Professor of Physics at Lawerence University!

From Kaz Gary: For Pride Month, Astrobites is interviewing one transgender astronomer every week. This week we interviewed Dr. Megan Pickett, an Associate Professor of Physics at Lawrence University! 🔭✨☄️
astrobites.org/2025/06/27/m...

the outside of the SOAR telescope, the door is painted a unique teal color just like rubin’s accent color!

the inside of the SOAR telescope has many accents with the same teal!

a picture i took inside rubin while it was still in construction last spring—the telescope shares the same teal accents as SOAR

me smiling outside with the rubin dome! two bars that support the dome opening are the same teal as SOAR

did you know that @vrubinobs.bsky.social and the nearby SOAR telescope share their unique teal accent colors? :-) 🔭 #instrumentation

Here's a little side-by-side of a patch of our Virgo imaging (from Mihos+17) compared to today's Rubin release. I knew that Rubin field looked familiar! Nice to see they recover a lot of that low surface brightness structure. 🔭

wichahpi is one of my close friends at UT austin! it has been such an honor getting to know them over the past few years. i am so proud of their resilience through everything they’ve faced—esp being a trans and native astronomer in TX 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈

1st images from the Vera C Rubin Observatory will drop on June 23. Here's why that's such a big deal "People are going to be amazed at what we're able to see already."

This will arguably mark the biggest moment in astronomy since the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope were revealed in the summer of 2022.
www.space.com/astronomy/1s...

YouTube video by NOIRLabAstro The Cosmic Treasure Chest

Oh wow!

Look it!

First new images from @vrubinobs.bsky.social!

These are stunning 😍

This is what 3200-megapixel resolution gives you!

HERE IT IS: www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTBI...

#RubinFirstLook #CaptureTheCosmos 🔭🧪

YouTube video by Rubin Observatory A Swarm of New Asteroids - VIDEO - EN

Just wow! The teaser to what we're going to get when the Legacy Survey of Space and Time starts in about November - 2104 asteroids in 10 hours of data #RubinFirstLook www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTuq...

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

Chatbots — LLMs — do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they’re “right” it’s because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That’s all.

🔭 ~1,400 people globally have contributed to the construction of Rubin, including

500 construction staff,
500 contractors,
100 staff on operations (so far), and
300 in-kind contributors, from software and hardware contributions to follow-up observing time on other telescopes

Panoramic view of Mount Baker near a fire lookout tower, with snow-capped peaks and surrounding lush green forests under a clear blue sky.

ULTRASIP, mounted on a tripod, set up on a rooftop with mountains in the background.

ULTRASIP, a new tool from the University of Arizona, could detect wildfire smoke by tracking how it alters sunlight’s polarization, helping spot fires even when they’re out of sight.

Learn about this project in the latest issue of #PhotonicsFocus! ➡️ spie.org/news/photon...

Screenshot of a Nature Astronomy article titled “Empowering voices and building bridges across the space community with Black In Astro.” The article discusses the origins and growth of Black In Astro, a grassroots organization supporting Black individuals in astronomy and space-related fields. It highlights the group’s mission to celebrate, connect, and uplift the Black space community, particularly early-career researchers. The article also features the upcoming Black Space Week 2025 and emphasizes the importance of visibility, mentorship, and interdisciplinary engagement across STEM and beyond.

🚀 Celebrating 5 years of #BlackInAstro! We continue to uplift, connect & advocate for Black voices across astronomy & space-related fields 🌍✨ Read how we’re expanding community, opportunity, and impact 👇
#BlackSpaceWeek #EquityInSTEM
🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...