Eric Mamajek
Guy interested in (exo)planets and stars, and everything in between. Statements and opinions posted here are my own.
- “Democracy dies… no that’s it” #WaPo #WashingtonPost
- Instead of firing 300 journalists, the Washington Post should fire the executives who approved the endorsement of Bondi. In the meantime, if you want to support the pro-democracy outlet that understood the threat from the start, subscribe to Democracy Docket now. hubs.ly/Q03M8rql0
- Reposted by Eric Mamajek⏰Time to Register for #sagan2026⏰ The hybrid workshop focuses on expected #exoplanet science from the @nasaromantelescope.bsky.social Galactic Bulge Time Domain Survey. Travel support requests for early-career participants are due 3/5. nexsci.caltech.edu/workshop/2026 🔭 #astrocode #instrumentation
- Reposted by Eric MamajekImmigrants have paid more in taxes than they have received in benefits every single year for the past 30 years, according to new analysis from Cato. Remember this the next time Trump and his racist lackeys call immigrants "freeloaders."
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- How many children born will suffer and die preventable deaths due to dropping vaccine mandates? How do these people sleep at night? How do they explain their decisions to their kids? And the “your body, your choice” rheteric is hypocritically rich here considering FL’s near-total abortion ban.
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- Reposted by Eric MamajekTimeline cleanse featuring penguins frolicking in the snow at the Pittsburgh Zoo!
- Feels like it was yesterday. One of those days your mind records a lot of sights and coversations and feelings and they don’t seem to fade over the years. Space is hard. Humans are fallable. Groups of humans especially so. And too often expertise and power are anticorrelated.
- Reposted by Eric MamajekAfter being held in two of them as a boy, I fought for decades urging America to never again build concentration camps and put human beings in them. It breaks my heart to watch this happen twice now in my own lifetime.
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- Reposted by Eric MamajekReminder that, as of the latest reports, Liam Ramos is still in prison in Texas - now for 5 days. His parents are legal asylum seekers with no criminal record.
- I’m sorry to strongly disagree. #DeathbyLightning needs a sequel covering Chester Arthur’s presidency starred by Nick Offerman. #Netflix make it so.
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- Reposted by Eric MamajekI just thought everyone should see this
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- Reposted by Eric MamajekCecilia Payne Gaposchkin’s autobiography is just amazing. Every astronomer should read it. Here she is talking about her memories of Annie Jump Cannon.
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- Reposted by Eric MamajekWe're so excited to share the results of the ALMA large program ARKS that studied the distribution of dust and gas in a sample of 24 exoKuiper belts. With @lucaroundtheworld.bsky.social, Meredith Hughes and a large collaboration, we just published 10 papers presenting our first results arkslp.org
- Reposted by Eric MamajekNot all rings are forged in fantasy, my precious! For astronomers, they are found in space. This image shows debris discs captured by ALMA around stars. The two at the top-right told astronomers something very interesting. Find out what here: eso.org/public/images/potw2… 🔭 🧪
- Well done #StarTrek #StarfleetAcademy
- Reposted by Eric MamajekIPACer @aussiastronomer.bsky.social & team shared the SHERA Mission Concept at #AAS247 🦸♀️ 🔭 Searching for Habitable Exoplanets with Relative Astrometry (SHERA) will look for rocky planets in the habitable zones of Sun-like stars for the 1st time & potentially discover the nearest Earth-like planets!
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- Reposted by Eric MamajekJust spent the day doing a thing: www.science.org/content/arti... Roger Angel and I are Co-PIing the LFAST telescope, which is being built at @stewardobservatory.bsky.social and provides the ground based spectroscopic component of this venture. @schmidtsciences.bsky.social #AAS247 #Arizona #LFAST
- Reposted by Eric MamajekNew paper day! arxiv.org/abs/2601.02556 🔭🧪
- CBS, I guess I’m trying to get the humor? Is it funny because new US foreign policy murdered 80 Venezuelans in an undeclared war of conquest in pursuit of the illegal kidnapping of their president and oil? Or because the US is threatening long time NATO ally Denmark with force over Greenland? Which?
- Reposted by Eric MamajekNASA Discovers Distant Planet With Conditions That Could Sustain Rocks theonion.com/nasa-discovers-dist…
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- Reposted by Eric MamajekCheck out the @caltechipac.bsky.social booth at #AAS247! Also, be sure to ask about our student opportunities! (www.ipac.caltech.edu/page/students) 🔭
- IPAC has landed in the desert 🏜️ Come say hello to your favorite science and data center in the expo hall at #AAS247 in Phoenix, AZ! @aas.org @press.aas.org 🔭
- Reposted by Eric Mamajek“The Habitable Worlds Observatory is exactly the kind of bold, forward-leaning science that only NASA can undertake...” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman... 🔭✨🧪🧵☄️ #exoplanets #extragalactic
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- Day 2 of #ExoPAG33 9am-12:15pm MT Joint PAG meeting (#ExoPAG, #COPAG, #PhysPAG) 2:30pm-6pm both at: Phoenix Convention Center, 100 N 3rd St, Phoenix, AZ 85004, Room: West Building, 301 D science.nasa.gov/astrophysics... #exoplanets #AAS247
- Reposted by Eric MamajekA bit of good news: a new Exoplanet Travel Bureau poster just debuted at NASA ExoPAG 33!
- For astronomers arriving in Phoenix for #ExoPAG33 and #AAS247, if you’re wondering what the heck is going on in the vicinity of the Phoenix Convention Center: Painted Desert Fur Con 2026 at the Sheraton Phoenix Jan 2-4 painteddesertfc.org
- furries #AAS247
- furries #AAS247
- Reposted by Eric MamajekIf you are a resident of California, the state now has a portal where you can demand deletion of your personal data from 500+ registered data brokers with a single request form, for free. consumer.drop.privacy.ca.gov
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- Reposted by Eric MamajekThey're going to *throw out* one-of-a-kind NASA archives?! Not even a year since the Inauguration & we're already at the 2nd-time-as-farce version of the burning of the Library of Alexandria.
- I’ve been wondering for the last year when we’d get to the library destruction phase and here we are. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/31/c...
- An unbelievable loss of #NASA space heritage and information.
- Reposted by Eric MamajekChristmas on the archive! @ericmamajek.bsky.social leads a paper with his usual precision, asking us astronomers (especially exoplanet folks) to clean up their jargon. Introducing the Solirad: the nominal average flux the Earth receives from the Sun = 1361 W/m^2 arxiv.org/abs/2512.20126
- For #Lions fans whinging about the end of the game with #Steelers. If it was a Steelers receiver doing that on a Lions safety, they’d be saying it was OPI…
- Reposted by Eric MamajekThe winter solstice occurs Sunday morning at 10:03am EST — the longest night of the year. Long before modern calendars, people knew this moment in advance. From Newgrange to Chankillo, ancient monuments show how careful skywatching became humanity’s first way of trusting time. 🧪🔭 bit.ly/WhySolstice
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- Reposted by Eric MamajekWe've added a tool to upload your published parameters to the NASA Exoplanet Archive! This tool can help us get your new planets and planet parameters onto the archive, so check it out and consider using for your next #exoplanet paper! 🔭🧪 exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/support/uplo...
- Aniket Sanghi (Caltech) presents results from their JWST survey for giant planets around A component of Alpha Centauri system, discussing the single detection and two non-detections of the exoplanet candidate (and constraints on its nature when combining data with the VLT/NEAR candidate) #ExSoCal
- Jerry Xuan (UCLA) presenting measurements of the elements C,N, O, S in the spectra of the four giant planets orbiting HR 8799, trying to constrain the compositional variations its the disk that spawned the system #ExSoCal
- Nick Choksi (Caltech) presents in the physics of accretion and spectral energy distributions of recently discovered accretion giant protoplanets with circumplanetary disks #ExSoCal
- Vidya Venkatesan (UCI) presented results on measurements of the orbital inclinations of the young star GQ Lupi, its disk, and its two low-mass companions, showing they are with fairly closely aligned #ExSoCal
- Jean-Baptiste Ruffio presented results exploring the detectability of biosignatures as function of spectral resolution for Habitable Worlds Observatory #ExSoCal
- Isaac Malsky (Caltech) on using ML emulation to speed up redaitive transfer calculations for exoplanet atmospheres and spectra #ExSoCal
- Sloane Wiktorowicz shows measurements of significant polarization In the light of hot Jupiter HD 189733, including circular polarization… signs of planet-star interaction? #ExSoCal
- Pable Drake Hernandez (Caltech)presents modeling of JWST infrared spectra of the hot Jupiter WASP-121 showing evidence of TiO depletion in its atmosphere #ExSoCal
- Aurora Kesseli presents spectrocopic evidence for western hotspot offset for ‘hot Jupiter’ CoRoT-2b, the only strong case of winds going opposite direction of expected if it was tidally locked. But planet has slightly non-zero ecc and star is young (~200 Myr), so could be still sychronizing #ExSoCal
- Iam Brunton (Caltech) shows results on exoplanets migrating into resonances, trying to infer properties of inner protoplanetary disks from the distribution of exoplanets in mean-motion resonances #ExSoCal
- Jingwen Zhang (UCSB) shows results on the distributions of the differences in inclinations between transiting exoplanets vs stellar companions. Distribution seems to be bimodal, with closer binaries having smaller differences in inclinations between transiting exoplanets and conpanion stars #ExSoCal
- Greg Gilbert (Caltech) presents on statistical trends on the continuum of companions for nearby Sun-like stars spanning ‘planets’, ‘brown dwarfs’ to ‘low-mass stars’, showing smooth trends in mass vs ecc, but some clustering in metallicity versus mass. 2 or 3(?) formation mechanisms? #ExSoCal
- Judah van Zandt (UCSB) shows statistical results on frequency and mass distribution of conpanions to nearby Sun-like stars in the California Legacy Radial Velocity survey, when combined with orbital constraints from precise ESA Hipparcos+Gaia astrometry. Brown dwarf desert still exists! #ExSoCal
- Ankan Sur (UCLA) shows improved interiors models with ‘fuzzy cores’ (comp. gradients), He rain, that do great job fitting precisely measured physical parameters of Jupiter and Saturn measured by NASA Juno, Cassini, Galileo. New models will update inferred masses of imaged giant exoplanets #ExSoCal
- Susan Terebey starts us off on #ExSoCal day 2 with results on the earliest stages of the evolution of stars and their exoplanets - protostars, protoplanetary disks, envelopes — modeling the shocks of the in-falling envelopes onto the disks (Shock Twist Angle Keplerian disks) #ALMA #Spitzer
- Rebecca Zhang (UCSB) presented results on observations with the near-infrared polarimeter on Keck/NIRC2, which can characterize dust grains in a variety of types of targets (e.g., circumstellar disks) #ExSoCal
- Andrea Lin presenting on issue predicted to affect accuracy of precise radial velocities on single-mode fiber-fed spectrographs on large telescopes - differential limb coupling. Nearby target stars are typically ~1 milliarcsec, but diffrctn limits in large telescopes ~tens of milliarcsec #ExSoCal
- Crystal Kim (UCSB) presented on spectral order sorting with the Multi-Object MKID Optical Spectrometer (MOMOS)
- Ben Sappey (UCSD) presented on the calibration system for the new HISPEC high resolution near-IR spectrograph capable of nulling that will be used on Keck. #ExSoCal
- Jason Williams (Carnegie) presents on the new Henrietta infrared spectrograph for exoplanet spectroscopy #ExSoCal
- Emma Miles (UCR) presents on efforts to model atmosphere and Venus and ‘super-Venus’ exoplanets discovered in big surveys like the NASA Kepler and TESS missions, and providing context for future Venus missions and exoplanet surveys #ExSoCal
- Danica Adams (UCLA) presents results on modeling whether SO2 could have acted to increase the reflectivity of early Venus, providing cooling. However the models that provided plenty of cooling due to sulfuric acid hazes required very high atmospheric water abundances (~10%) #ExSoCal
- Evan Sneed (UCR) presents results of modeling atmospheres and photochemistry of TRAPPIST-1 hab zone exoplanets, predicting strengths of abiotic oxygen featutes #ExSoCal
- Pierre-Alexis Roy (UCLA) presents JWST spwctroscopy results on sub-Neptune exoplanets showing hints of trends by temperature and possibly interior composition, aerosols, etc. #ExSoCal
- Luke Bouma (Carnegie) improves the age estimates of stars observed by the NASA Kepler mission, finding close-in exoplanets are much rarer around young (<1Gyr) stars compared to older ~few Gyr stars. Why? Observed fewer young stars due to kimenatic heating and declining star-formation rate #ExSoCal
- Kevin-Hardegree Ullman (IPAC) duscusses results from improving characterization of Kepler/K2-discovered transiting exoplanets, showing interesting trends in the demographics of rocky and sub-Neptune planets, as functions of stellar mass and age. #ExSoCal
- Josh Simon (Carnegie) presents TESS discovery and followup spectroscopy of a remarkably metal-poor (([Fe/H) ~ -0.7) hot Jupiter exoplanet #ExSoCal
