Stephanie Deppe, PhD
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spacescisteph.bsky.social
Stephanie Deppe, PhD
@spacescisteph.bsky.social
2K followers 240 following 85 posts
Content Strategist at Vera. C. Rubin Observatory and lover of icy asteroids in the outer Solar System. ADHD brain in a neurotypical world. Sci-fi/fantasy nerd.

Probably hiking a mountain somewhere. she/her
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Stephanie Deppe, PhD
vrubinobs.bsky.social
Making waves in the cosmos, galaxy style 😎🌊

Shell galaxies preserve the memory of a cosmic splash, like ripples in a pond 🌌✨

These elliptical galaxies are surrounded by faint, layered arcs that form when a large galaxy absorbs a smaller one.

🔭 🧪
At the center is a shell galaxy, its faint arcs of starlight draped around it concentrically like layers of folded fabric. Background stars and galaxies of varying shapes, sizes, and colors scatter the dark sky.
September 5, 2025 at 5:05 PM
Reposted by Stephanie Deppe, PhD
astrokatie.com
"PhD-level experts in your back pocket" is a completely nonsensical description of AI but a pretty good description of social media if you follow the right people
August 9, 2025 at 11:07 PM
Reposted by Stephanie Deppe, PhD
vrubinobs.bsky.social
Happy birthday, Vera Rubin! 🥳✨

What better way to celebrate than with NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory's view of galaxies SHE studied?

NGC 4343, 4526, 4535, and 4378 are just a few gems from our Cosmic Treasure Chest. Explore them and more at skyviewer.app 🔭🧪
Edge-on spiral galaxy angled pointing lower left to upper right. It's glowing with a bright core that's cut with the dark veins of dust clouds. The background is peppered with a myriad of colorful stars and distant galaxies in black space. A smooth, cigar-shaped galaxy angled pointing lower left to upper right glowing with a bright core. Two bright stars beam just to the upper left and lower right of the galaxy. The background is peppered with a myriad of colorful stars and distant galaxies in black space. A face-on spiral with a bright core and sweeping arms knotted with blue clusters of star-forming regions. The background is peppered with a myriad of colorful stars and distant galaxies in black space. A face-on spiral with a bright core and a single thin arm wrapping all the way around, almost looking like a ring. Two bright blue stars beam above and to the lower left of the galaxy, with a third yellow star to the lower right. The background is peppered with a myriad of colorful stars and distant galaxies in black space.
July 23, 2025 at 9:14 PM
spacescisteph.bsky.social
Me: ok brain, we gotta do this application due tonight that we've barely started.

ADHD brain: no worries, I got this. 3 hours, no problem.

Me: we're behind, better double check the requirements.

*Deadline extended by three days*

ADHD brain: niiiiice, got two more days to relax 😎

Me: 😑😑😑
July 16, 2025 at 2:51 AM
spacescisteph.bsky.social
Hi, it's me, a solar system scientist turned science communicator asking journalists for the thousandth time to stop giving a certain Harvard professor airtime about objects from outside our solar system.

I know you know the one.
July 3, 2025 at 6:41 PM
Reposted by Stephanie Deppe, PhD
astromikemerri.bsky.social
I could play with the Rubin Skyviewer for hours. Off in one corner of the first image released is this rather lovely little galaxy car crash, which are always my favourites. 🔭

skyviewer.app/explorer
June 24, 2025 at 10:03 AM
Reposted by Stephanie Deppe, PhD
rami.spaceaustralia.com
I just had a look around ... and ....

look at them twinsies.

LOOK AT THEM 😍

#RubinFirstLook #CaptureTheCosmos 🔭🧪
two spiral galaxies in a rich star field. They are both spiral galaxies and are face on. The one on the right is larger is size and has clearer spiral arm structures.
June 24, 2025 at 5:56 AM
spacescisteph.bsky.social
Holyyyyyy....I am a tired exhausted puddle on the floor. What a day for @vrubinobs.bsky.social! This observatory is incredible.

Highly, HIGHLY recommend joyscolling around Rubin's Skyviewer. I quite like this galaxy - which is your favorite? 🔭🧪

skyviewer.app
A large face-on galaxy in a cosmic tapestry of glittering galaxy jewels. The galaxy nearly looks like a ring surrounding a bright core. A few bright stars pepper the scene, and the background is filled with the smudges of distant galaxies of various colors against the black of space.
June 24, 2025 at 5:40 AM
spacescisteph.bsky.social
Officially tackling full reveal day with 4 hours of sleep, which is more than I expected to be honest.

JOIN US AT 11AM EDT!!!!
vrubinobs.bsky.social NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory @vrubinobs.bsky.social · Jun 23
Introducing...your sneak peek at the cosmos captured by NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory!

Can you guess these regions of sky?

This is just a small peek...join us at 11am US EDT for your full First Look at how Rubin will #CaptureTheCosmos! 🔭🧪

#RubinFirstLook
ls.st/rubin-first-look-livestream
A sprawling, textured field of galaxies scattered across the deep black of space. It is filled with the delicate smudges and glowing cores of galaxies of many shapes, sizes and colors, as well as the bright multi-colored points of stars. The image focuses on a collection of interacting galaxies connected by delicate streams of stars. At top center lies a large elliptical galaxy that is dense and smooth, like a polished stone glowing with golden light. Like delicate spider silk or stretched taffy, these stellar bridges link the large elliptical to the few larger galaxies beneath, evidence of past collisions. All throughout the image, thousands of galaxies gather in clusters or are spread throughout, like glittering gems strewn on a table. Some are sharp-edged and spiral, like coiled ribbons; others round and diffuse, like polished pebbles. Still others are just smudges of various colors against the black of space. The background is peppered with pinpoint stars in reds, yellows, and blues, crisp against the velvet black. A cosmic tapestry of glowing tan and pink gas clouds with dark dust lanes. In the upper right, the Trifid Nebula resembles a small flower in space. Its soft, pinkish gas petals are surrounded by blue gas, and streaked with dark, finger-like veins of dust that divide it into three parts. It radiates a gentle, misty glow, diffuse and soft like the warmth of breath on a cold hand. To the lower left, the much larger Lagoon Nebula stretches wide like a churning sea of magenta gas, with bright blue, knotted clumps sprinkled throughout where new stars are born. Both nebulae are embedded in a soft tan backdrop of gas that is brighter on the left than on the right, etched with dark tendrils of dust and sprinkled with the pinpricks of millions of stars. A sprawling, textured field of galaxies scattered across the deep black of space. It is filled with the delicate smudges and glowing cores of galaxies of many shapes, sizes and colors, as well as the bright multi-colored points of stars. To the lower left is a region filled with the hundreds of golden glittering gems of a distant galaxy cluster. In the foreground, below and right of center, two blue spiral galaxies look like eyes beneath the entangled mass of a triple galaxy merger in the upper right. A few bright blue points of foreground stars pierce the glittering tapestry. All throughout the image, thousands of galaxies gather in clusters or are spread throughout, like glittering gems strewn on a table. Some are sharp-edged and spiral, like coiled ribbons; others round and diffuse, like polished pebbles. Still others are just smudges of various colors against the black of space. The background is peppered with pinpoint stars in reds, yellows, and blues, crisp against the velvet black.
June 23, 2025 at 12:01 PM
spacescisteph.bsky.social
I cannot express to you the hours, days, YEARS that went into these images across Rubin. They are spectacular. And truly just a peek. It has been the wildest few months of my life getting my small piece, the social media, ready for this.

You're not ready for 11am.

ls.st/rubin-first-look-livestream
June 23, 2025 at 6:49 AM
Reposted by Stephanie Deppe, PhD
marinakoren.bsky.social
My first story for National Geographic is out, and it's about the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which will spend the next decade scanning the night sky in the Southern Hemisphere, revealing all kinds of cosmic wonders: www.nationalgeographic.com/science/arti...
The 4 biggest mysteries the new Vera Rubin Observatory could solve
No telescope has basked in the night sky quite like this before. Here's what it could reveal about the universe.
www.nationalgeographic.com
June 20, 2025 at 5:39 PM
Reposted by Stephanie Deppe, PhD
astrokatie.com
Chatbots — LLMs — do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they’re “right” it’s because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That’s all.
June 19, 2025 at 11:21 AM
Reposted by Stephanie Deppe, PhD
vrubinobs.bsky.social
We're getting SO CLOSE to the reveal of NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory's first images on June 23! So let's take a walk down memory lane 🎞️

Come with us through 10 memorable moments from the past 10+ years of building Rubin 🔭

🧵

📷: H. Stockebrand
June 13, 2025 at 1:01 AM
Reposted by Stephanie Deppe, PhD
leahfromsd.bsky.social
I never, ever want to hear again that women are too emotional to be leaders.
June 5, 2025 at 7:32 PM
Reposted by Stephanie Deppe, PhD
bencollins.bsky.social
Elon threatening to just leave people on the ISS is making a pretty good case for why you nationalize your space program!
June 6, 2025 at 12:53 AM
Reposted by Stephanie Deppe, PhD
vrubinobs.bsky.social
You're gonna need a bigger data management system... 🚤🦈

In 10 years, NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory data processing will generate around 500 petabytes. Managing all of this data is an international job. 🔭🧪

📷: RubinObs/NSF/DOE/NOIRLab/SLAC/AURA/W. O'Mullane

🧵
Rubin Observatory's massive 8.4-meter telescope beneath the night sky through the observatory's open dome slit. THe night sky is visible through the slit in the upper half of the image. The teal telescope structure is at bottom right and fills much of the image. It is tilted left of vertical by about 45 degrees. The denser glowing band of the Milky Way is visible through the open dome oriented from upper left toward lower right.
June 5, 2025 at 5:19 PM
Reposted by Stephanie Deppe, PhD
vrubinobs.bsky.social
Bend it like gravity! ⚽️

Gravitational lensing is a powerful tool for mapping the invisible "dark" Universe.

With NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory's 10-year survey, scientists will have their best dataset yet for studying the nature of dark matter. 🔭🧪

🔗: rubinobservatory.org/news/rubin-g...
Illustration with a woman with long dark hair and blue shirt holding a book. She is surrounded by a suspended circle of film strips like from a film camera. Each frame in the film has a different gravitationally lensed galaxy or object, with one or more arcs around a central circular galaxy or other object.
June 5, 2025 at 10:23 PM
spacescisteph.bsky.social
So glad this country's being run by toddlers. This is super fun.
June 5, 2025 at 8:57 PM
Reposted by Stephanie Deppe, PhD
vrubinobs.bsky.social
The sky doesn’t wait—and neither will we!💨

NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory has an automated scheduler that takes into account current weather conditions, moon phases, and observatory capabilities to determine the best next place to point the telescope. 🌙 #CaptureTheCosmos

🔭🧪
📷: P. Assunção Lago (Rubin)
The glowing, dense band of stars of our home Milky Way galaxy appears to spill across the image from the open dome slit of Rubin Observatory at bottom right.
June 4, 2025 at 8:40 PM
Reposted by Stephanie Deppe, PhD
seanmcarroll.bsky.social
No money was actually saved, but at the same time we had truly devastating cuts to scientific research, medicine, and foreign aid. Just reinforces what a tiny fraction of spending those areas always were, with an outsized positive impact.
billybinion.bsky.social Billy Binion @billybinion.bsky.social · May 31
Of course it was.

DOGE fired a bunch of people while managing to save almost no money at all because Musk et al were primarily interested in performative cuts to fight the culture war. So taxpayers got a less efficient govt for the same price. But at least the libs were owned.
May 31, 2025 at 5:36 PM
Reposted by Stephanie Deppe, PhD
petergleick.bsky.social
There are 2 previous historical cases of countries destroying their science and universities, crippling them for decades: Lysenkoism in the USSR and Nazi Germany. The Trump administration will be the 3rd.
It's not just budgets but research, institutions, expertise, and training the next generation.
Graphs showing 25 years of budgets for the National Institute of Health, NASA, and the NSF. In all cases, the proposed budget for next year is far, far below any year of the previous quarter century.
May 31, 2025 at 4:43 AM
Reposted by Stephanie Deppe, PhD
kajunut.bsky.social
Why does LIGO need two detectors anyway?

Here’s why. 1/n 🧵⚛️
May 31, 2025 at 10:05 PM
Reposted by Stephanie Deppe, PhD
theplanetaryguy.bsky.social
Inspired by @jtuttlekeane.bsky.social and @ohdearz.bsky.social, here's what the White House proposed budget cuts to NASA would do to the entirety of the agency's Science Mission Directorate.

Bloodbath is right.
May 31, 2025 at 3:00 AM
Reposted by Stephanie Deppe, PhD
thirstygecko.bsky.social
Trump administration cuts to NSF will result in more than 200,000 FEWER people per year involved in basic science, training, and education - what should have been the next generation of US scientists. This isn't even eating your seed corn, it is setting your seed corn on fire and salting the earth.
May 30, 2025 at 9:32 PM
Reposted by Stephanie Deppe, PhD
vrubinobs.bsky.social
Rubin #CommissioningNotes ✍️: The data deluge from NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory is coming!

Rubin captured over 500 exposures per night across 3 nights this week, using its automated observation scheduler — that’s 20x more than during the 7 week period with the engineering camera last year!🔭 🧪

🧵
View of Rubin Observatory's massive telescope structure inside the observatory dome. The telescope is a teal steel structure shaped like a squat vase with a round bottom. To the left, a large white donut-shaped screen is mounted on the dome wall, about two-thirds the size of the telescope structure. Just above the telescope, the vertical dome slit is slightly open, showing a blue-purple night sky outside. The interior of the dome is silver metal above and black light-blocking screen s on the sides, all criss-crossed by teal support beams.
May 12, 2025 at 11:00 PM