Featured Astrobites
Our latest posts
Holy Cow! Is our journey through the universe the reason for the Hubble Tension?
We move through the universe relative to the Cosmic Microwave Background. Could our movement cause our measurements of the Hubble constant to be biased?
UR: A Getting Started Guide for JWST NIRSpec IFU Data Reduction
In today’s addition to our Undergrad Research series, a collaboration of students presents their guide to reducing JWST NIRSpec IFU data.
How old is that galaxy, really? Constraining the color-redshift relation with DESI
Today’s authors present a dataset that seeks to improve our understanding of the ages of faraway galaxies.
Shock(ing) Emission from a Young Sun
There’s always more to learn about epsilon Eridani– the nearest sun-like star that hosts an exoplanet. These authors work to determine the emission processes and physics associated with radio emission detected from epsilon Eridani in 2020.
Git Started: A guide to using version control in your projects
Are you new to Git and Github? Do you wish to use version control in your projects? Then this guide is just the right thing for you.
A quantitative perspective on the impact of diversity in academia
Today’s authors take a quantitative look at the role of diversity in scientific research!
Beyond astro-ph
Astronomy beyond the research
UR: A Getting Started Guide for JWST NIRSpec IFU Data Reduction
In today’s addition to our Undergrad Research series, a collaboration of students presents their guide to reducing JWST NIRSpec IFU data.
Git Started: A guide to using version control in your projects
Are you new to Git and Github? Do you wish to use version control in your projects? Then this guide is just the right thing for you.
Machine learning, but in space
Can the Kuiper Belt’s mystery be uncovered with machine learning? This astrobrite article explores how researchers use advanced statistical techniques to calculate the dimension of our vast cosmic ring.
Navigating careers in astronomy
Career advice
Advisee to Advising (your first research student)
As graduate students in astronomy progress through their degree-granting programs, they evolve from students into teachers, mentees into collaborators, and occasionally from advisees into advisors. Taking on a younger student to advise them on a research project may seem difficult, stressful, or daunting, and that’s because it can be. But it can also be an incredibly enriching, exciting, and fun experience for you and your student. Advising students, to many, is one of the most rewarding aspects of doing research, but it’s one that many graduate students may not experience over the course of their Ph.D., in part because it can appear so intimidating.I won’t claim to be a great expert on the subject, but this summer I advised my first undergraduate researcher on a project, and my hope is that this Astrobite can serve as an encouragement to others who might be interested in taking on that kind of responsibility during their Ph.D.Your opportunity to advise a research student varies dramatically depending on your employing institution, research group, and funding situation. You might work in a large lab, where older graduate students are expected to supervise younger graduate students; you might be your advisor’s only student; you yourself might be funded through a teaching assistantship, a large grant, a fellowship, or a variety of these; your institution might have money set aside for PIs to take on undergraduate summer students. The point is, most student projects aside from undergraduate theses or unpaid internships require funding in order to compensate the researcher for their work, and often the source of this funding is beyond your capacity to influence.In my...
Meet the AAS Keynote Speakers: Meenakshi Wadhwa
We interviewed @ASU planetary scientist and #MarsSampleReturn principal scientist Meenakshi Wadhwa who will be giving a plenary talk today at #AAS242!
Meet the AAS Keynote Speakers: Joel Kastner
Learn all about beautiful planetary nebulae with Joel Kastner at his plenary talk at #AAS242 this afternoon! We interviewed Kastner about his journey into astronomy here: