Beyond excited to share that I’ll be joining uwastronomy University of Washington as an Assistant Professor in Fall 2024!!!

I’m still in a lot of shock. All I can muster rn is: I couldn’t have made it here w/o my peers + mentors who supported me and cheered me on. #BlackinAstro #ActuallyAutistic

Very excited to share that I will move to University of Chicago as one of the #51PegasibFellows later this year! I'm really looking forward to collaborating with Diana Powell.

Super happy that our press release highlighting our JWST spectrum of a planetary mass companion is now live. A great work led by Brittany Miles on our Early Release Science Team.

Congrats to Maggie Thompson, PhD! Bridging the gap between exoplanets and meteoritics! UC Santa Cruz Science UC Santa Cruz UC Santa Cruz_astrobio

I am now observing WASP-39 using MIRI Low Resolution Spectroscopy for 20 minutes. Keywords: Exoplanet Systems, Exoplanets, G dwarfs. Proposal: stsci.edu/jwst/phase2-pu… 2:1

So excited about this observation!!!!!! An interplanetary love note to kick off Valentine’s Day ✨🪐💕💞🤩

I had a wonderful week at Ringberg Castle solving exoplanetary clouds and writing JWST proposals at Cloud Zwei Con ☁️🪐 Big thanks to Paul Mollière!

We found proof, for the first time, photochemistry happening in an exoplanet. That means UV light triggering chemical reactions.
Photochemistry is fundamental to life on Earth: it makes ozone, which protects us from harsh UVs.

So rare to have a real-time breakthrough discovery moment as a theorist! A highlight of my time doing science thus far!

#photochemistry #JWST #wasp39b

Words cannot express the excitement of the first detection of sulfur in an exoplanet atmosphere. What makes it even more interesting is it exists in an oxidized form SO2 (sulfur dioxide) in a reducing, H2-atmosphere of the hot Jupiter #WASP39b seen by #JWST .

The #JWST Transiting Exoplanet Early Release Science Team is excited to share the latest science results from observations of the exoplanet #WASP39b , described in 5 papers released this morning. 🧵
webbtelescope.org/contents/news-…
📷Melissa Weiss/CfA

Also massive congratulations to the early career first authors of the 5 papers - Lili Alderson, Evie Ahrer, 🎃Adina💀Feinstein💀PhD🎃, Shang-Min (Shami), Tsai and Zafar Rustamkolov. Such a privilege to be part of this incredible team!

Data with destiny🖤
NASA Webb Telescope's unprecedented observations of the exoplanet WASP-39 b read fingerprints of atoms and molecules, as well as signs of active chemistry and clouds! This Saturn-size giant orbits its star closer than Mercury is to our Sun. go.nasa.gov/3OqkAaI

What else does the data tell us?

🥇 First detection of sulfur dioxide in an exoplanet atmosphere
💡 Concrete evidence of photochemistry (fundamental for life on Earth)
☁️ Its clouds may be broken up, not one uniform blanket
🔎 Clues to how the planet formed

Webb’s latest data gives us the first molecular and chemical profile of a distant world, gas giant WASP-39 b. This bodes well for its ability to probe the atmospheres of small, rocky planets like in the TRAPPIST-1 system: go.nasa.gov/3i3Tlql

With the wonderful discovery of SO2 in the atmosphere of WASP-39 b I want to highlight that this was predicted by Kevin Zahnle way back in the 2000s.

Happy JWST Paper Day!

The next batch of papers from the JWST Transiting Exoplanet Early Release Science Team are here and I lead one of them!!(?!)

🧵 1/14

Also check out the other papers:
PRISM: the panchromatic view
NIRCam: where's the methane?
NIRISS: clouds aren't always uniform...
Photochemistry: for all the theorists out there 12/14
webbtelescope.org/contents/news-…