Sarah E Moran

UT Austin Astro is hiring! It's an open call, but definitely interested in getting another exoplanet person! Feel free to reach out with any questions about the department or living in Austin! aas.org/jobregister/...

@infinitescream.bsky.social I need you

Congratulations, Doctor!!!

B5 reference makes me happy 😎

I'm actually fully saturated with students already, but I'd be happy to host postdoc fellows for the NHFP, the 51 Peg b, NSF AAPF, etc. Please feel free to reach out!

the seal of the University of Maryland. It has the red, white, black, and gold banners of the Maryland flag in a circle and with the year 1856 on either side.

Life news -- starting Fall 2026, I'll be an Assistant Prof in University of Maryland, College Park's Astronomy Department!

I'll be starting up a lab to measure all the substellar cloud things 🌤️🪐✨ and continuing alllllll the atmospheric model things

Lowkey obsessed with the mascot #FeartheTurtle

Some people would rather bring back acid rain and disrupt global wind/weather patterns instead of installing protected bike lanes & bus priority lanes/signals so we drive less and emit less CO2.
This is why I fight so hard for bike lanes and transit

IMO it is completely and totally ethical to lie about comorbidities to get a COVID vaccine. This is not like 2021 where supply was limited and you were jumping the line in front of someone more vulnerable. We have enough vaccines! The restrictions are fake and purely anti-vax bullshit.

Screenshot of research.gov after logging in, showing link for "Prepare and Submit Proposals" on the left in a red oval.

Screenshot of "Prepare New Full Proposal" on research.gov, with "add a new role" and "NSF 22-621" circled in red. In order to see the listing of the NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship, one must change role to "Proposed Postdoctoral Fellow"!

NSF Astronomy & Astrophysics Postdoc Fellowship apps are OPEN! 🔭 However, app only appears on research.gov if your role "Proposed Postdoctoral Fellow"! Click "Proposals", "Prepare and Submit Proposals", then "Prepare New". If you do not see NSF 22-621, change role to "Proposed Postdoctoral Fellow"!

A blond woman stands behind a lectern, with a slide reading “2025 DPS Awards ceremony” with a list of prizes and names. To the left of the lectern, a tall man holds a certificate, while a shorter bespectacled woman smiles and waves, also holding the certificate.

Congrats to @joneskuma.bsky.social, co-winner of the DPS Urey Prize for early career researchers! #EPSCDPS

If you're at #EPSCDPS2025 come to the Aerosols session happening now to hear me talk about this brand new paper!

(My talk is in an hour but cool Titan aerosol science currently in progress 🪐)

Many thanks also go to the team, which is rounded out by Natasha Batalha, @kzohno.bsky.social , Sanaz Vahidinia, @markmarley.bsky.social , @stellarplanet.bsky.social , and Zoë Leinhardt

Look for Part 2 coming soon (paper just submitted), where Matt expands to look at aggregates in other atmospheres with clouds made of other materials!

Fractal Aggregate Aerosols in the Virga Cloud Code I: Model Description and Application to a Benchmark Cloudy Exoplanet We introduce new functionality to treat fractal aggregate aerosol particles within the Virga cloud modeling framework. Previously, the open source cloud modeling code Virga (Batalha et al. 2025), the ...

✨✨✨Another Virga advert✨✨✨

Introducing V2.0, with fractal aggregate clouds! Restricted to spheres no more! We handle the dynamics and the optics self consistently.

Led by me and PhD candidate extraordinaire Matt Lodge (who is looking for a postdoc 👀 and is amazing).

arxiv.org/abs/2509.06708

NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP)

The GRFP lives!! (due end of October)
www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...

Stating "yeah I'm going to the Sun to see Venus" or "I'm to Mars to hear about Titan" makes one sound deranged. Can't decide if I respect it or hate it.

"you're like human Grammarly" - @joneskuma.bsky.social

I've never been so flattered tbh

Ah will have to trek back there. Thanks!

What's the secret to find the Internet pw? 👀

Further update: I have chills and an achy despite consuming much Pedialyte all day. So I guess my immune system is gonna be ready

The “problem” with vaccines? They so effective at preventing deaths that they create generations of people that question whether disease was a problem in the first place because they have never experienced the horrors of a world without vaccines.

As a report. Walgreens in Baltimore City. My insurance covered it no problem. I was not asked which condition qualifies me as high risk. In and out.

The solidarity in this Walgreens this morning to get the COVID booster is off the charts.

The real question: are there enough googly eyes for them all? 👀

I do want your guns taken away, FYI.

VLT/CRIRES+ observations of warm Neptune WASP-107 b: Molecular detections and challenges in ground-based transmission spectroscopy of cooler and cloudy exoplanets Atmospheres of transiting exoplanets can be studied spectroscopically using space-based or ground-based observations. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses, so there are benefits to both approache...

Do you love WASP-107 b? Do you love making use of *both* ground VLT + space JWST obs to detect molecules in a "warm" (Teq<800K) #exoplanet in transmission, even in a crazy confusing cloudy atmosphere?!

🚨 It's PAPER* DAY! Which means #scicomm thread!

🧵⬇️🔭🪐🧪

*pre-print!

arxiv.org/abs/2508.18964

Indeed!!

Our local theorist (Channon Visscher) approved.

"But Virga has been out for like 5 years, hasn't it?"

Yes, but now there is a PAPER you can read/cite for the methodology!!

Natasha Batalha (not on bksy), lead developer & code wrangler extraordinaire, put so much into this. Please give her the credit she is massively due when you use Virga!!

Condensation Clouds in Substellar Atmospheres with Virga Here we present an open-source cloud model for substellar atmospheres, called Virga. The Virga-v0 series has already been widely adopted in the literature. It is written in Python and has heritage fro...

A quick advert for the ✨✨✨Official✨✨✨ release of the Virga cloud code (the python version of everyone's favorite EddySed model by @markmarley.bsky.social and Andy Ackerman).

arxiv.org/abs/2508.15102

Say Goodbye to Juno, NASA’s Groundbreaking Mission to Jupiter The Juno spacecraft has rewritten the story on Jupiter, the solar system’s undisputed heavyweight

NEW: The White House wants to kill off Juno, NASA's mission to uncover Jupiter's secrets. Fortunately, its legacy is clear.

Juno's a scientist, but also an artist: it revealed Jupiter as a living van Gogh painting hanging in the sky.

Me @sciam.bsky.social www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-...