Yilen Gómez Maqueo

Hi 🧪

Has there been any media coverage of this letter from almost 5000 scientists calling on Israel to stop its inhumane treatment of Palestinians in Gaza? I haven’t been able to find Anything.

sites.google.com/view/stateme...

I see the first articles in the UK press giving space to the claim that 3I/ATLAS is an alien spacecraft. Briefly:

It’s a comet that formed billions of years ago, passing through our Solar System.

It’s behaving like a comet.

There is no evidence it’s artificial.

"Nature has learnt that, as a result, some staff members are screening candidates’ social-media presences to check whether they have expressed negative views about the Trump administration or been involved in diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts...at their institutions." 🧪

Human rights are not up for debate. Democracy is not the same as justice.

#exoplanets #jobs 📣

I'm advertising for a postdoc! Come work with me in sunny SoCal on the Roman Galactic Exoplanet Survey Project Infrastructure Team. You'll help build the pipeline for Roman* occurrence rates.

*Launches NEXT YEAR!

Please RT & share with your networks!

aas.org/jobregister/...

A large coronal hole is now directly facing Earth. We may see the impact from its fast solar wind stream as early as June 25! I’ll be monitoring conditions. Minor geomagnetic storming is currently forecasted as a result of this coronal hole.

#heliophysics

My mind is absolutely blown by these stellar halos nearby NGC 4364!

Left: DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys (DR10)
Right: Newly released @vrubinobs.bsky.social imaging!!!

#AstroSci 🧪🔭

I have a few thoughts about this! I have a monthly column, I am regularly invited to give public science talks, and I've written a pop sci book that continues to sell remarkably well, four years in -- and is also taught in classrooms around the US.

AND I reached audiences that other pop sci didn't.

The NASA Exoplanet Archive and Exoplanet Follow-up Observing Program: Data, Tools, and Usage The NASA Exoplanet Archive and the Exoplanet Follow-up Observing Program service are two widely used resources for the exoplanet community. The NASA Exoplanet Archive provides a complete and accurate ...

Hey, the paper is online! 🎉🪐🔭 #exoplanet

Check out the shiny new NASA Exoplanet Archive and ExoFOP paper, which covers all the updates to our data and services since Akeson+2013.

Please update your .bib files and cite accordingly!!

arxiv.org/abs/2506.03299

Astronomers double down on claim of strongest evidence for alien life Are there aliens living on the exoplanet K2-18b? Some astronomers believe they have evidence for molecules on the planet that must have a biological origin, but others disagree

Ready for the latest K2-18b drama?

Madhusudhan is claiming *even stronger* evidence of DMS after analysing both near-infrared and mid-infrared JWST data. But another study finds no evidence at all.

Read on for a quick update on everyone's f̶a̶v̶o̶u̶r̶i̶t̶e most newsworthy exoplanet. 🧵

#exoplanets 🔭

They stole half the world ... why not my phone

When professors experience racism (sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc) at work, that’s part of their service load. It takes work to deal with that and still come back and do your job. That’s service to the department. It’s deeply unfair service. But it is service.

Let’s make today (May 10) Magnetosphere Appreciation Day!

A year ago today we had that huge aurora display, caused by the most powerful geomagnetic storm experienced in decades.

Lovely visualisations by NASA SVS/NASA DRIVE science centre on how our atmosphere and magnetosphere responded.

🧪🔭☀️🧲

And remember kids, the universe is too fucking fabulous for us to waste away in this capitalist bullshit, so we both have to get our shit together and remember to enjoy the universe along the way because they can take a lot from us but they can’t take our imaginations

Pulitzer Prizes Public Service Winner: ProPublica. Image (right) displays headline that reads: Their States Banned Abortion. Doctors Now Say They Can't Give Women Potentially Lifesaving Care.

JUST IN: ProPublica’s “Life of the Mother” series, which exposes the fatal consequences of abortion bans, has won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.

This is the second consecutive year we’ve been awarded this distinction and our eighth Pulitzer: www.propublica.org/series/life-...

For Pride month this year, Astrobites is looking to highlight transgender astronomers and we want YOU! We are planning to interview four astronomers about their experience being transgender in science, how they've dealt with barriers throughout their career . . . (1/4)

Sarah’s rules of looking for life with only chemical signatures:

1) the smaller the molecule(s) the more likely they can also be produced by abiotic processes

2) one molecule, if it can be produced by any abiotic process, will never be enough to definitively claim detection of life

It’s not life. It’s not a biosignature.

I’m so tired.

Y'all. K2-18b is back. The planet that haunts me since Paula Sarkis came into my office because she wanted my habitable 3D climate models applied to a planet that she had discovered.

I talked her out of it to call it habitable because it's a Mini-Neptune.

No surface -> no habitability.

It’s heroic, hardy and less than a millimetre long: meet the 2025 invertebrate of the year | Patrick Barkham Guardian readers around the world voted in the this year’s contest, but which creature won, asks natural history writer Patrick Barkham

Tardigrade won #invertebrate of the year! 😍
Probably the best news we'll see all day, and see below for a lovely quote 🧪

sometimes I feel like a dinosaur, cause no one looks anything up anymore 🦕

AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

It’s a good week for brown dwarf science and #blackinastro #blackandstem! Congrats to @bemiles.bsky.social on the new faculty job!!!! Congrats to @capricephillips.bsky.social on the Hubble Fellowship!!!!

Images of 73 protoplanetary discs in the Lupus star forming region (two of the images contain binary stars). Only a fraction of the discs extend beyond the orbit of Neptune, when compared to our own Solar System. Most of the observed discs are small and show no structures like gaps and rings. (c) Guerra-Alvarado et al. (c) Guerra-Alvarado et al. [high resolution]

A lot of cosmic exploration centers around "what's weird?" & "what's normal?"
Early studies of young stars showed an abundance of huge planetary systems forming. New observations show the opposite: Lots of small systems, much more compact than our solar system. 🧪🔭

www.astronomie.nl/nieuws/en/pr...

AI Search Has A Citation Problem We Compared Eight AI Search Engines. They’re All Bad at Citing News.

😱 more reasons not to use LLM chatbots for search engine tasks.

Lights, camera, action!

The world's largest digital camera has been installed at NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory! 🤩

The LSST Camera was the final major component of the observatory. With it in place, Rubin officially enters its final phase of testing!🔭

🔗: rubinobservatory.org/news/lsst-camera-installed

Figure showing a the plausible orbits for Eps Eri b, and a panel showing the scale of the orbits relative to the outer debris disk model of Booth et al.

A three panel figure showing the statistical distribution of inclination versus mass for the planet, broken down by seven different combinations of data. The scatter points follow an m*sin(i) curve, except for a series that does not include any RV data. A small black concentrated region shows the full model, with 1 and 3 sigma contours. The planet's mass is quoted at 0.98 +- 0.09 Mjup, and inclination as 41 +- 7 degrees.

Time for the promised thread on ε Eridani b!

I should emphasize this manuscript is a submitted draft—comments from the community are very welcome.

Bottom line: ε Eri b is likely a 1.0 Jupiter-mass planet, only 3.2pc away, on a 3.55 AU near-circular orbit, ~aligned with its debris disk. 🔭🪐🧪 [1/7]

Jacquie Ovalle is not of this world.

The final vote: 51-45, with 4 people absent.

CLOTURE FAILS, A CONGRESSIONAL SPORTS BAN WILL NOT HAPPEN.

Democrats hold firm, not a single dem voted for cloture.

MAJOR victory for everyone who called in today and this week in support of trans people.