@rubybyrne.bsky.social
astrophysicist • postdoc at Caltech • NSF AAPF fellow
Creative illustration. In it, we see a divided-into-five screen. Each screen portion contains a graphical representation of one of the Rubin Observatory's Science Goals.
We are 4 days from Rubin First Look, so we're locked in on our 4 science goals! 🔭🧪
NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory will focus on:
🧐 Understanding Dark Matter and Dark Energy
🌎 Creating an Inventory of the Solar System
🌌 Mapping the Milky Way
☄️ Exploring the Changing Sky
When we reviewed the 1,450+ NIH grants terminated by the Trump administration, we found that:
• More than 550 were focused on health disparities or inequities
• More than 300 were focused on LGBTQ+ health care
Full story 👇
A screenshot from the proposed NSF budget request showing the number of people involved in NSF activities dropping from 330,100 in FY2024 to 90,000 in FY2026.
I need to actually get to my gate in time, but am stuck processing this particular table:
30.05.2025 21:05 — 👍 105 🔁 62 💬 4 📌 20This is the postdoctoral fellowship I had, and used to do novel, career defining work. Zeroing this program out is America saying clearly we don’t want to be leaders in science anymore
30.05.2025 21:53 — 👍 15 🔁 3 💬 1 📌 0I just got the official email from the NSF about the drastic cuts and I think the correct translation is "if you are a young researcher who still wants to do science strongly consider leaving the United States if you can." which, really, is not an ideal message to be sending.
02.05.2025 19:55 — 👍 2779 🔁 629 💬 56 📌 22
Galaxies are collections of gas, stars, and dark matter held together by gravity. But how do galaxies, like our own Milky Way, change over their lives? Join us for a 30-minute lecture about galaxies followed by guided stargazing with telescopes:
outreach.astro.caltech.edu
Planet Nine on NPR! And me! And @vrubinobs.bsky.social. What more could you want? www.npr.org/2025/04/09/n...
10.04.2025 14:18 — 👍 70 🔁 14 💬 2 📌 0Proud to march in downtown LA today with a cohort from Caltech.
09.04.2025 06:59 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
The GRFP is an extremely cost-effective way to nurture young talent in science. Cuts are short-sighted and cruel, but that's the aim of this administration, isn't it? 🧪💔
09.04.2025 05:14 — 👍 29 🔁 11 💬 1 📌 1Also Harvard and all UCs have cancelled their faculty searches (and probably others). It’s a tough time to be an early career academic.
07.04.2025 20:26 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Nature reporters' ongoing coverage of Trump 2.0 impacts on science and scientists is collected here: www.nature.com/collections/...
Reach me at alexwitze.01 on Signal, or witzescience[at]gmail.com, with tips, feedback, follow-ups, anything we should be covering, etc.
Graph showing an Earth-Venus-Earth detection in one transmission transmitted with the Dwingeloo Telescope, received with the Stockert Telescope.
The data we collected during our successful Earth-Venus-Earth experiment is now available at data.camras.nl/venus/, including an example notebook by @telkamp.eu showing how the reflection of our signal off the surface of Venus can be detected in this data.
01.04.2025 20:07 — 👍 6 🔁 2 💬 1 📌 0
Legal fund for Rümeysa Öztürk:
chuffed.org/project/just...
This is devastating. So much hard work wasted and careers interrupted.
31.03.2025 18:30 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Reference: https://www.astronomerstelegram.org/?read=17114 and https://www.astronomerstelegram.org/?read=17115
The dawn of a new era: the very first sub-arcsecond localization of a fast radio burst using the CHIME telescope and its outriggers.
Congratulations to the amazing group of students and postdocs who have led this incredible achievement over the past frenetic 11 days!
“If NIH doesn’t study the health impacts of climate, we are not going to be able to prevent some of those health impacts, and we aren’t going to be able to find ways to deal with them.”
NIH Ends Funding to Study the Health Effects of Climate Change
From a spokesperson just now:
“NASA is committed to optimizing its workforce and resources in alignment with [DOGE] initiatives. As part of this effort NASA has identified and phased out $420 million in contracts that were determined to be redundant or misaligned with our core mission priorities."
Black background filled with stars and distant galaxies. From the bottom right to the top left is a red and orange pillar. Ripples move through the material like the wake or a boat. At the tip of the pillar happens to be a bright blue galaxy core with deep red spiral arms.
Wake up nerds, new JWST image just dropped!
Herbig-Haro objects are associated with newborn stars. They appear as bright regions where jets ejected by young stars interact with the surrounding interstellar medium, forming shockwaves and ionizing the ambient gas. (1/2)
Breaking News: A Columbia University student, who is being hunted by ICE, sued the Trump administration to prevent her deportation after taking part in campus protests. The 21-year-old is a legal resident who moved to the U.S. with her family from South Korea when she was 7.
24.03.2025 20:54 — 👍 1480 🔁 347 💬 62 📌 52
Cosmic Distance Calibration xkcd.com/3066
21.03.2025 19:49 — 👍 12067 🔁 1015 💬 100 📌 43
How has the universe changed and evolved in the billions of years since the Big Bang? Dr. Ruby Byrne discussed this topic at our most recent Stargazing Lecture and the video is now up on our YouTube channel:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGf1...
My presentation for the @caltech.edu Stargazing Lecture Series is now available on YouTube. Hear me talk about observational cosmology and radio #astronomy. These lectures are a great way to engage the public and non-experts in the work we do in Caltech Astronomy. www.youtube.com/live/ZGf1QcI...
10.03.2025 23:16 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0In response to headline “Cruz-Led Investigation Uncovers $2 Billion in Woke DEI Grants at NSF, Releases Full Database” I want to re-emphasize that all these grants were public record and written in response to public solicitations supporting DEI content. No “uncovering” or “releasing” was done here
12.02.2025 19:40 — 👍 1119 🔁 249 💬 9 📌 4It's not just PRFB, other NSF fellowships are affected (including mine, the AAPF).
31.01.2025 00:44 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
National Science Foundation suspends salary payments, leaving researchers unable to pay their bills www.statnews.com/2025/01/30/t...
Story by @ericboodman.bsky.social
Email stating: "Hi Ms. Byrne, Thank you for contacting Congresswoman Chu’s office regarding the White House Office of Management and Budget’s memorandum on a funding freeze for all federal grants and loans. Thank you for bringing your urgent situation to our attention. Currently, the White House has rescinded this decision but please let me know if you have any issues with funding. Congresswoman Chu also issued a statement about the memorandum when it came out, and it can be viewed here: https://chu.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/rep-chu-statement-illegal-trump-funding-freeze Please feel free to contact me if you have any further questions, thank you! Sincerely, Maile"
My Congresswoman's office assumes the freeze was reversed. Meanwhile I don't know when I'll be paid next.
30.01.2025 23:27 — 👍 26 🔁 0 💬 7 📌 0
“If the freeze is not stopped, I might lose my house."
Some NSF-funded postdocs are having trouble paying rent and credit card bills because their salaries were paused this week, even though the federal funding freeze memo was rescinded.
www.statnews.com/2025/01/30/t...
To update people on the NSF PRFB situation: despite the court challenge and rescinding the original memo, the NSF has continued to comply with the executive order. They have not communicated with us at all and our paychecks are still canceled indefinitely. I know people who cannot pay their rent.
30.01.2025 14:37 — 👍 944 🔁 533 💬 22 📌 57Winning an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship is a huge vote of confidence in the career of a freshly-minted researcher, and right now an entire cohort of people with distinction are apparently waiting to find out when they'll get their next paycheck as the month ends
30.01.2025 20:46 — 👍 132 🔁 43 💬 2 📌 1
