Jennifer Johnson

This often shocks and motivates my students when I teach this part of my course. Last I looked, cost of solving energy poverty in low income countries is ~3-5% of annual energy infrastructure spending. That would electrify ~600-700 million people *and* provide clean cooking to>2 billion.

Check out the newest art exhibit featuring SDSS! “Firmament,” an exhibition at the University of Virginia created by artist William Wylie and astronomer Nitya Kallivayalil, turns retired SDSS plug plates into striking white and blue prints.

Today is International #SaveTheVaquita Day. I know this because the Oobit cares A GREAT DEAL about vaquita porpoises and their plight. For those not in the know, vaquitas: - are the smallest extant cetacean - are native to the Gulf of California - are nearly extinct because of gillnet fishing 🧵

The 2026 Physics Nobel Prize to Francis Halzen is well deserved! I wrote the attached explainer for the public from the perspective of someone who has worked in this field and known Francis for decades. I welcome helping sharing it. Congratulations to Francis and all! medium.com/@beacom.7/ho...

bsky.app/profile/tgag...

Unless Congress reclaims its power, this will just become the new normal. A good first step would be to impeach Vought. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/02/u...

After a long day at the aquarium, the otters help tidy their toys away. Payment is made promptly and entirely in ice cubes.

Using embroidery, yarn, and wool, Peruvian artist Ana Teresa Barboza creates textile art depicting land and seascapes #WomensArt

Thank you to the students and faculty of Carleton College for having me at the opening convocation today. The future of Minnesota is bright.

This is Not Good

Where's the arrow? How am I supposed to find the supernova without the arrow?

Antpittas are the epitome of #borbs This is the Crescent-faced Antpitta that I was able to spend some quality time with at Hacienda el Bosque #Colombia #birds #antpittas #birdoftheday

A perfect day

Vote #Orpiment for its role in global art history! #MinCup26 #arthist Consider this personification of wisdom from Kashmir or western Tibet:

Grant funding plummeting, local institutional support not filling the gap... I know mid-career isn't supposed to be easy, but I wish it seemed at least possible. aas.org/posts/news/2...

The Roman Space Telescope was canceled five times in presidents' budget requests - twice during the Obama era and three times in the first Trump administration. Each time, Congress elected to save the mission.

Roman launch! Holy crap!! So amazing and the sonic booms were incredibly wild. We also saw both boosters land. 🤩🚀🔭🔬🛰️🧪👩‍🔬

Yesssssss! It worked! Amazing Launch!

Have this song running through my head as I think about the #RomanTelescope launch tomorrow morning

Just a head's up - Clue is free on Youtube.

Miller helped carry wounded sailors to safety aboard the West Virginia. He then hopped on a AA gun and despite no training at all shot down at least one plane despite being under constant attack. He was later killed action aboard the USS Liscome Bay during Operation Galvanic

Scoop: For nearly a year, NSF has struggled to make new grants. Now we know that it will not catch up. In fact, NSF will award just 6,100 new grants—a 30% y/o/y decline, itself down from a previous avg. of 11,000+. In fact, the last time NSF awarded so few grants was in the early '80s.

As law enforcement relies more heavily on technology to identify suspects, a key issue will be whether courts and legislatures make law enforcement — not the misidentified suspects — bear the costs of the inevitable mistakes. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/12/u...

It sucks but I’m not done fighting our university administrators on this.

Really excited for #DR20 today from @sdssurveys.bsky.social. Over 50,000 white dwarf spectra, with many new ones from the Southern Hemisphere!

My snake plant has a flower stalk! I didn’t know that was a thing!

A few months ago I gave a public talk about satellites at a local brewery & afterwards one of the attendees asked me if I'd like to collaborate on an OpEd to spread the word about the growing problem of space junk. Long story short, today it's on the front page of the digital WaPo: wapo.st/4yqgbLn

New Horizons Spacecraft Wakes from Hibernation Following its longest hibernation period ever of nearly a year, the spacecraft has emerged in good health and is ready to begin transmitting science data gathered in the distant Kuiper Belt far beyond Pluto. #NewHorizons 🧪🔭

Its back half is still loading, like a jpg in 2003

🦀see a crab, post a crab 🦀

Happy Black Space Week from Tokyo! 🇯🇵. My name is Caprice, I am the current VP for @blackinastro.bsky.social and I am a NASA Sagan Fellow at UCSC! I work on brown dwarf research, like to do artsy things, trying to learn how to play my banjo 🪕, and love frogs 🐸. #BSW2026 #BlackSpaceWeek

From Kaz Gary: As part of Black Space Week 2026, Astrobites is highlighting members of the Black in Astro community who will be presenting at the 248th AAS meeting starting next week! If you’ll be attending, we encourage you to check it out. ⚛️ 🔭 ☄️ 🧪 astrobites.org/2026/06/12/bia-highlights-for-aas/

Wonderful news!

They came at Dolly. We ride at dawn.

Check out Venus and Jupiter in the western sky right after sunset now and for the next few days. Beautiful conjunction. Enjoyable with the unaided eye and even better with a telescope.

Holy cow! Feast your eyes a while, on this gorgeous solar spectrum by the Sol'Ex instrument (assembled by Váradi Nagy Pál). It extends to UV and IR as well as the visible band. Marvel at the F lines, the fine structure, the IR doublets and repeating lines, and the molecular bands. Wonderful! ☀️🧪⚛️🔭

Mood

Goddamn ninjas cutting onions…

People died for the Voting Rights Act.