Ward Howard

1/ It's press day!🔭🧪 We apply a grid of time-dependent physical models to explain TRAPPIST-1 flares, predicting the X-ray & UV flux driving escape and photochemistry in planetary atmospheres, and correcting flare contamination in transit spectroscopy down to ~60 ppm: www.colorado.edu/today/2025/1...

Congratulations @mmacgreg.bsky.social — excited for some far-IR science coming down the pipeline 🔭

So excited to see even these first test images from the Wide Field Instrument knowing our surveys are only months away — go #NASARoman 🔭 💫

It was such a fun privilege getting to work with Jaime et al. exploring the roles of repeated flaring and flare temperatures in young terrestrial atmospheres!

Excited to be back on the Caltech campus this morning to share about infrared observations of stellar flares at the Shifting Landscapes in Astrophysics: New Frontiers to Explore with Roman” science conference! 🔭🧪 #Roman2026

Check out this amazing result by @distantworlds.space! 🔭🧪

To be clear, this isn’t an AI tool, it’s a form with prompts that breaks the process of composing a comment into smaller pieces with specific guidance on each piece on how to make it an effective comment. Useful!

No one informed me when our 10 month old started talking she’d sound exactly like Donald Duck

Important find! Will be seeing how this impacts our flare spectral extractions.

Now seems like a great moment to share this awesome new paper explaining how the Early eVolution Explorer (EVE) - a NASA SMEX mission concept - will transform our understanding of young planets (<50 Myr old): arxiv.org/pdf/2606.04283

Excellent thread on multiple levels of absurdity impacting ECRs without citizenship. @gmduvvuri.bsky.social and others like him deserve better:

I am so excited to get started on wide field time domain astronomy in the near-infrared. Just like TESS did in the optical, we’ll launch to find planets in the bulge and learn so much about stellar astrophysics along the way 🪐🔭💫

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🚨🚨🚨 Now accepting 2026/2027 applications🔭 🪐🚨🚨🚨 AMP-UP provides mentorship to senior grad students/postdocs: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F... Please forward to anyone who might be interested/share with institution listservs. The application deadline is *June 26*. -On behalf of the 2026 AMP-UP leads

Whoa. The alleged fireball shock wave registered on seismometers!

Summary of Key Changes in OMB’s Proposed Federal Financial Assistance Rule. Russell Vought is going destroy American Science. elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/summary-of...

The final version of our Dawes Review on the Dynamic Radio Sky is now published! doi.org/10.1017/pasa... Everything you need to know about what causes radio transients: how we detect them, the history of radio transient surveys, and what new widefield radio telescopes will do. #RadioAstronomy 🔭☄️🧪

Two things have happened: the community hasn't reassembled to the same degree here, and that lots of astro groups are now internally using Slack and Discord for discussions instead of social media. That's pretty much killed it off, IMHO.

www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-... Excellent coverage of a major result from our team! 🧪🔭 @sciam.bsky.social

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. And that light is true life 🎄✨

Voyager needs to avoid Vidiian space? Problematic phage gap.

✨ Exoplanet Atmospheres 2026 registration & abstract submission are officially open! Join us in Denver (16-20 March 2026) for an unforgettable AAS Topical Conference Series! 👉 Abstracts due 19 December: aas.org/meetings/exo... 👉 Early registration ends 13 January: aas.org/meetings/exo...

Nature published a research highlight on our RZ PSc exocomet paper: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

An attempt to stitch together my images of the aurorae above Longs Peak last night to show their dynamic and changing nature. Images are spaced about 10 seconds apart 🔭🧪

So uh, the sky above Boulder got better. A lot better, including some beautiful columnar structure 🧪🔭

Just took these of the sky above Boulder right now. Longs Peak in the foreground🧪🔭

And it's a wrap: one PI and six co-I proposals submitted (and then a nice Boulder autumn run!) #JWSTCycle5

Gibson et al. “TESS Discovers a Second System of Transiting Exocomets in the Extreme Debris Disk of RZ Psc” showing 24 exocomet transits and the existence of a broken power law for the sizes of these exocomets, unlike Beta Pic’s exocomet distribution #exoplanet #astrodon #astrosci

The GRFP announcement from NSF cuts out an entire cohort of 2nd year students from consideration, without warning. This is so deeply unfair that it warrants a formal protest from the scientific community. If someone wants to work with me to craft an open letter and solicit signatures, LMK.

Great breakdown of the new T1e results:

Paper #1 led by @jhuartssciences.bsky.social graduate student Jay Chittidi here: arxiv.org/abs/2509.02825

Neat! @flarelord.bsky.social used ground-based photometry to measure the flare temperature on an M7 dwarf. How do you measure temperature without spectroscopy? Trick question! You use the Earth's atmosphere as a prism and watch the star appear to jump across the sky. 🔭🧪 arxiv.org/abs/2507.19584

summer project presentations from Ryan and @adalyngibson.bsky.social at the @michiganstateu.bsky.social MidSURE conference today!

Sixty-four House members have signed a letter to NASA's acting administrator, Sean Duffy, asking him to "ensure no actions are taken at NASA to implement the proposed funding cuts" to science in the FY26 proposal until Congress passes a spending bill. foushee.house.gov/imo/media/do...

Is the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS alien technology? No, but it is an exciting addition to the population of exocomets that come to us, enabling a better understanding of these objects usually observed from afar. We should focus our efforts on what these objects really are, not what they aren't.

ROSES 2025 is out!

Here once again for all your exoplanet host star emission spectrum needs.

Enjoyed the “Let Freedom Run” 10k in Louisville, CO this morning! Too hot for PRs, but lots of fun.

STScI just sent out approvals for NHFP budgets. I hope this means the likelihood of continued funding for STScI guest observer programs on JWST and HST just went up.