Huei Sears, PhD 🌟
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starlights.bsky.social
Huei Sears, PhD 🌟
@starlights.bsky.social
✨ she/her ✨ astrophysicist studying supernovae + GRBs ✨ @ Rutgers U
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I am so elated to share with you the NASA press release on the mysterious GRB 250702B! It features comments from me about our JWST/NIRCam imaging, which Alyssa Pagan at @stsci.edu made a beautiful compilation of for you to see. Please read to learn more !!!

🧪🔭☄️👩‍🔬🦖

science.nasa.gov/science-rese...
Black Hole Eats Star: NASA Missions Discover Record-Setting Blast - NASA Science
Astronomers have been poring over a flood of data from NASA satellites and other facilities as they try to work out what was responsible for an extraordinary
science.nasa.gov
working on a transient host galaxy paper and every time I mis-type "hsot" i get flashbacks to the HSLOT of 2021/22/23
February 17, 2026 at 5:19 AM
Reposted by Huei Sears, PhD 🌟
Spot the cosmic imposters! 🔍

Help fine-tune NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory’s alert system and figure out which detected changes in the sky are cosmic events vs. imposters with Rubin Difference Detectives on @zooniverse.bsky.social!🧐

Join now: zooniverse.org/rubin
February 16, 2026 at 9:45 PM
Reposted by Huei Sears, PhD 🌟
Let me just make a few little adjustments to that title…

“How a scientist with a PhD in Geology and 25 years of experience is helping lead California’s earthquake work”

Way to devalue my experience.
February 15, 2026 at 3:08 PM
Reposted by Huei Sears, PhD 🌟
“She is dead,” Officer Auderer told Officer Solan, before bursting out laughing. “No, it’s a regular person,” Officer Auderer said, adding: “Yeah, just write a check — $11,000. She was 26, anyway. She had limited value.”
The officer was traveling 74 miles per hour in a 25-m.p.h. zone when he hit Jaahnavi Kandula in a crosswalk while responding to a call. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/u...
Seattle to Pay $29 Million to Family of Woman Fatally Struck by Police S.U.V.
www.nytimes.com
February 13, 2026 at 3:52 AM
like... idk if u missed ur turn lane + the lane is full now .... in michigan they teach u to loop around the block and try again. but i guess here they teach u to hold-up traffic + zipper in ala merging @ construction on a highway
and also i guess in new jersey driving school they teach you to:

1. not go when the light is green but instead wait 3-5 s ... at every light : )
2. merge in an intersection
3. when u want to get in the other lane [normal]... u come to a complete stop and put ur turn signal on... traffic be damned
February 13, 2026 at 1:41 AM
driving in new jersey is so quirky cute fun
February 13, 2026 at 1:39 AM
Reposted by Huei Sears, PhD 🌟
China's Chang'e-6 lunar lander may have solved one of the great Moon mysteries: Why does its far side look totally different than the side that faces us?

A huge impact 4.3 billion years ago partially melted the Moon's mantle & made it lopsided, according to a new study. 🧪🔭

eos.org/articles/pri...
February 12, 2026 at 8:12 PM
Reposted by Huei Sears, PhD 🌟
Lot of great astronomers on the list this year! Congrats @yymao.bsky.social, among others!
February 12, 2026 at 4:07 PM
Reposted by Huei Sears, PhD 🌟
🔭🧪 Are you interested in having a night sky? (Like at all?)

File comments with the FCC telling them to deny permission to Starlink for “a million satellites” and to Reflect Orbital for their giant sunlight mirror in space.

The American Astronomical Society has info on how 👇
How to Submit Comments on Satellite Applications to the FCC
Step-by-step guide for submitting comments on satellite applications to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
aas.org
February 11, 2026 at 11:47 PM
Reposted by Huei Sears, PhD 🌟
Get to know some of our staff and scientists through Rubin Voices!

Each feature introduces you to someone helping make NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory a reality.

Bonus: each one includes a trading card, so you can start your Rubin collection. Can you collect them all? 🔭🧪

🔗: https://bit.ly/3ZvDHXm
February 11, 2026 at 7:45 PM
happy international day of women and girls in science 🧪🔭👩‍🔬🦖✨🦎 How are you supporting #womeninSTEM today? some ideas below:

www.unesco.org/en/days/wome...
International Day of Women and Girls in Science
11 February
www.unesco.org
February 11, 2026 at 7:29 PM
Reposted by Huei Sears, PhD 🌟
Power! At The Fish Disco
February 10, 2026 at 7:19 PM
Reposted by Huei Sears, PhD 🌟
These are long term drugs, you can't simply go off them, like any diet, the weight comes back.

So this isn't a simply solution: It's a life long treatment.
February 9, 2026 at 4:12 PM
Reposted by Huei Sears, PhD 🌟
If doctors can determine what weight a person "should" be at...what are the factors involved in that?

Because we as a society really really stigmatize weight. And doctors are involved in that stigma just as much as anyone else.
February 9, 2026 at 4:11 PM
Reposted by Huei Sears, PhD 🌟
Hi everyone! I am trying to look into demographics + potential recruitment/retention initiatives for minorities in astrophysics, particularly in the EU, and have no idea where to start. Any advice, papers, and academics would be super helpful!
February 9, 2026 at 3:19 PM
2 more minutes of daylight tomorrow < 3
The sun will rise in #Baltimore #Maryland tomorrow at 7:05, 65 seconds earlier than the day before.
It will set at 17:35, 70 seconds later than the day before.
February 8, 2026 at 10:53 PM
Reposted by Huei Sears, PhD 🌟
I'd watch a muppet show movie where the muppets infiltrate an academic conference.
February 7, 2026 at 2:45 PM
wait this is the first explanation of this to actually make sense to me; thank u dr katie mack 🙏
This galaxy is VERY tiny—much much smaller than our own Milky Way—& incredibly distant. But we can see it AND distinguish its shape!

How?

The light we see from it is from SO LONG AGO that the Universe was MUCH smaller at the time: we see it as it was when it was close enough to us to look big!! 🤯
This is what the most distant confirmed galaxy looks like. The light we're receiving was emitted when the Universe was ~15x smaller in linear size than today, and right now it's ~30 billion light-years away from us. The light was emitted when the Universe was <300 million years old. Pretty amazing!
February 7, 2026 at 2:43 AM
Reposted by Huei Sears, PhD 🌟
6/ The Post has lost over 375,000 subscribers in just over a year. If 10% of those readers subscribed to The 51st instead, we could hire 10 reporters and five editors, dramatically scaling our coverage of the city at this critical time. 51st.news/signup
Join The 51st
The 51st is a worker-led nonprofit news source for D.C. Our reporting is rooted in our conviction that local journalism is meant to make people’s lives better — no paywalls, ever. But that's only…
51st.news
February 4, 2026 at 7:21 PM
Reposted by Huei Sears, PhD 🌟
Galaxy Slam! Meet Marcia Rieke, Regents Professor of Astronomy at the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory. As principal investigator for NIRCam on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, she helps reveal the universe’s earliest galaxies using infrared light. www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhxf...
February 4, 2026 at 7:13 PM
42 kilonovae per year !!! we've only ever seen 8 !!! wow
February 4, 2026 at 6:51 PM
Reposted by Huei Sears, PhD 🌟
The Winter Olympics start this week and you can step into Italy and out into space through our AstrOlympics project. Compare the amazing feats of the athletes with the spectacular phenomena across the cosmos.
chandra.si.edu/astrolympics...
February 4, 2026 at 3:19 PM
'reputation' is still that album btw
February 3, 2026 at 10:48 PM
Reposted by Huei Sears, PhD 🌟
This is what taxpayer-funded open science plus decades of hard-won investment and expertise looks like
New JWST 🔭 data is available for Uranus, here is just a brief look, manual color stretching with DS9.
Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI.
February 2, 2026 at 10:44 PM
mmhmm mmhmm 'quadruple profits' i see i see
Southwest Airlines expects to quadruple profits this year after making changes including charging for checked bags, adding fees for extra-legroom seats, and eliminating open seating, WSJ reports.
February 2, 2026 at 8:00 PM