Peter Edmonds

I expect it already has!

Her broad science communication, which includes a strong Chandra component.

Preach!

A Decade of Gravitational Waves This is just a quick post to mark the fact that it is now ten years to the day since the first detection of gravitational waves by Advanced LIGO. The acronym LIGO stands for Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory. It wasn't until February 11th 2016 that the result was announced at a press conference (which I blogged about here), but the signal itself arrived on 14th September 2015, exactly a decade ago; the name given to the event was GW150914.

A Decade of Gravitational Waves

This is just a quick post to mark the fact that it is now ten years to the day since the first detection of gravitational waves by Advanced LIGO. The acronym LIGO stands for Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory. It wasn't until February 11th 2016 that…

Congrats to my brilliant colleague @kimberlykowal.bsky.social for this well-deserved award: “2025 Klumpke-Roberts Award is given to Dr. Kimberly Arcand”
chandra.si.edu/press/25_rel...

NASA discovers ‘clearest sign of life that we’ve ever found on Mars’ Detailed analysis of images of speckled rocks found by NASA’s Perseverance rover has found a “potential biosignature.”

LIFE ON MARS??!!
I know you’re wary of overhyped claims of ET life. & we need to be cautious. As Sagan used to remind us, life should be the hypothesis of last resort. But this is one to watch. Legitimately a “potential biosignature” which demands follow up.
🧪
www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

Thanks and good! I’ve heard of one or two LinkedIn posts by astronomers about astro news but I haven’t properly checked.

Bluesky now platform of choice for science community It’s not just you. Survey says: “Twitter sucks now and all the cool kids are moving to Bluesky”…

“Bluesky now platform of choice for science community” by @jenlucpiquant.bsky.social
My question: is that the case for astronomers now? arstechnica.com/science/2025...

Live updates: Tsunami alerts issued for Japan, Alaska, Hawaii and US West Coast after a major earthquake strikes Russia’s remote Far East | CNN Tsunami warnings have been issued for parts of Russia and Japan after a massive 8.7 magnitude earthquake struck Wednesday off Russia’s remote and sparsely populated far eastern coast. Follow for live ...

BREAKING: Tsunami alerts issued for Alaska, Hawaii and all of the US West Coast after a major earthquake struck Russia's remote Far East.

Follow live updates.

Brilliant

What a thumping signal!

This is exciting. The most massive black hole merger seen to date: #GW231123 #gravitationalwaves ligo.org/ligo-virgo-k...

As NASA's budget shrinks, Europe doubles down on Earth science: 'Climate change is the defining challenge of our generation' If NASA must pull back, Europe is ready to step up — and do so with open arms.

As NASA's budget shrinks, Europe doubles down on Earth science

The Biggest-Ever Digital Camera Is This Cosmologist’s Magnum Opus | Quanta Magazine Tony Tyson’s cameras revealed the universe’s dark contents. Now, with the Rubin Observatory’s 3.2-billion-pixel camera, he’s ready to study dark matter and dark energy in unprecedented detail.

I think the only thing more breathtaking than Rubin’s first images was hearing their lengthy backstory from Tony Tyson. If you’re interested in how it took 30 years to create these snapshots, my story below:

Transfusing sunlight as the sky grew darker, this exceptional display of noctilucent clouds was captured on July 10, reflected in the calm waters of Vallentuna Lake near Stockholm, Sweden. From the edge of space, about 80 kilometers above Earth's surface, the icy clouds themselves still reflect sunlight, even though the Sun is below the horizon as seen from the ground. Usually spotted at high latitudes in summer months, the night shining clouds have made a strong showing so far during the short northern summer nights. Also known as polar mesopheric clouds they are understood to form as water vapor driven into the cold upper atmosphere condenses on the fine dust particles supplied by disintegrating meteors or volcanic ash.

🔭 The Veins of Heaven

Image Credit & Copyright: P-M Hedén (Clear Skies, TWAN)

apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25071...

Senate spending panel would rescue NSF and NASA science funding Its support for a flat budget is a sign of congressional resistance to drastic cuts Trump has proposed

The Senate appropriations committee has voiced its intent to ignore the request by President Donald Trump to slash the budgets of the National Science Foundation and NASA science programs. scim.ag/4nW7XWi

US senators poised to reject Trump’s proposed massive science cuts Committee gives first hint that policymakers might preserve, rather than slash, funding for US National Science Foundation and other agencies.

The Senate Committee on Appropriations gave the first signs Congress will push back on Trump's proposed budget cuts to science and instead keep funding flat, though an unrelated issue (the location of the FBI headquarters) stalled any vote today.

@alexwitze.bsky.social and I report:

This. Is. Brilliant.

Check out this newly-discovered comet zooming along.

A map of the US with the states the republican senators are from marked in red and states the democratic senators are from marked in blue: Senator Susan Collins (Republican - Maine) Senator Mitch McConnell(Republican - Kentucky) Senator Lisa Murkowski(Republican - Alaska) Senator Lindsey Graham(Republican - South Carolina) Senator Jerry Moran(Republican - Kansas) Senator John Hoeven(Republican - North Dakota) Senator John Boozman(Republican - Arkansas) Senator Shelley Moore Capito(Republican - West Virginia) Senator John Kennedy(Republican - Louisiana) Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith(Republican - Mississippi) Senator Bill Hagerty(Republican - Tennessee) Senator Katie Britt(Republican - Alabama) Senator Markwayne Mullin(Republican - Oklahoma) Senator Deb Fischer(Republican - Nebraska) Senator Mike Rounds(Republican - South Dakota) Patty Murray(Democrat - Washington) Richard Durbin(Democrat - Illinois) Jack Reed(Democrat - Rhode Island) Jeanne Shaheen(Democrat - New Hampshire) Jeff Merkley(Democrat - Oregon) Christopher Coons(Democrat - Delaware) Brian Schatz(Democrat - Hawaii) Tammy Baldwin(Democrat - Wisconsin) Chris Murphy(Democrat - Connecticut) Chris Van Hollen(Democrat - Maryland) Martin Heinrich(Democrat - New Mexico) Gary Peters(Democrat - Michigan) Kirsten Gillibrand(Democrat - New York) Jon Ossoff(Democrat - Georgia)

Are you from one of these states? Then we need your help to save American science!

The Senate Appropriations Committee will be marking up the President's Budget Request for science on Wednesday. People have been saying the proposed cuts "decimated" US science, but that's wrong: they are apocalyptic

Every living NASA science chief unites in opposition to unprecedented… The entire past leadership of NASA’s science activities have released a joint statement condemning the proposed 47% cuts proposed to the agency’s science…

Today, *every* living prior leader of NASA's science directorate have released a joint letter condemning the proposed cuts to NASA science. These individuals every administration from Reagan to Biden, and all believe these cuts are insanely destructive: www.planetary.org/press-releas...

Every living prior Associate Administrator of NASA Science: "we unanimously urge Congress to reject the proposed cuts to NASA’s budget" planetary.s3.amazonaws.com/assets/pdfs/...

a large, white dish antenna telescope in the distance between the rolling hills. The trees in foreground and background are both golden amber as well as green.

US Friends!

The Green Bank Observatory (GBO) is a vital instrument in the global #RadioAstronomy network (incl. pulsar science), and it is under threat with the proposed funding cuts.

Please take action to keep it open: www.gogreenbankobservatory.org/take-action/

Pls share! 🔭📡🧪

📸 GBO/AUI/NSF

If any of my scientist *mutuals* wants to write an op-ed for their newspaper about science but you’re not feeling confident about your writing skills, I will happily ghost co-write the piece with you. I’m fast, and I’m pretty good. And we need people making the case for science. 🧪⚛️🔭

Opinion | These scientific advances were ‘Made in the U.S.A.’ Will they continue? America has long led in research. Budget cuts could jeopardize that dominance.

“These scientific advances were ‘Made in the U.S.A.’ Will they continue?
America has long led in research. Budget cuts could jeopardize that dominance”, by Bruce Partridge wapo.st/44CVsWM

Collisions in the sky Over the past six decades, astronomy, space science, and the space industry have seemed to be in a kind of virtuous symbiosis. Astronomy has benefited from improvements in technology and has had the o...

My latest “Expert Voices” piece for Science combines the excitement of the dawn of the Rubin Era with nervousness at the increasing degradation of the Space Environment #astronomy www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

A black and white photograph of Henrietta Swan Leavitt. She is wearing a white blouse with a large lace collar that covers her shoulders, upper chest, and neck. Her hair is pulled up and she is looking directly at the camera. She has dark eyes in tis photo, strong eyebrows, and a long, thin nose.

Astronomer Henrietta Swan Leavitt was born #OTD in 1868. She established the period-luminosity relation for Cepheid variable stars, an essential tool for understanding the scale of our Universe. 🧪 👩‍🔬 🔭

Image: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

American science to soon face its largest brain drain in history Over the first half of 2025, the USA has cut science as never before. This disaster for American science is a gift to the rest of the world.

“American science to soon face its largest brain drain in history” by @startswithabang.bsky.social bigthink.com/starts-with-...

"The loss would inflict disproportionate damage on the observatory’s scientific reach, scientists say. Researchers would find it more difficult to distinguish a black hole collision in the distant cosmos from a nearby seismic tremor or anything else that shakes the remaining interferometer. A real gravitational wave likely produces signals in both U.S. detectors within 10 milliseconds, the time it takes the ripple to cover the cross-country distance. Without the ability to compare data from the two instruments, detections would be less sure and their rate would fall at least 25%, Reitze says, and possibly much more."

Science Magazine discusses the potential impact of proposed budget cuts on our operation

www.science.org/content/arti... by Adrian Cho

☄️⚛️🧪🔭

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