Peter Gao
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planetarygao.bsky.social
Peter Gao
@planetarygao.bsky.social
Staff Scientist @ Carnegie EPL. Planetary and exoplanet atmospheres. He/Him/His. Black Lives Matter. Trekkie. Opinions are my own.
November 10, 2025 at 2:40 PM
heard an interview with Hakeem Jefferies and I’m sorry to report that he sounded exactly like chatGPT trained on Democratic talking points

is it too much to ask for the Dem leadership to sound like actual humans
November 9, 2025 at 6:36 PM
November 5, 2025 at 3:47 PM
it’s unfortunate that gen z had to touch the stove but I’m glad they’ve come around
A moment of silence, please, for the "young men are all MAGA now" narrative.

(Source: www.nbcnews.com/politics/202...)
November 5, 2025 at 5:09 AM
You just know he’s had this clip saved in a gif folder for MONTHS
November 5, 2025 at 4:58 AM
the great thing about democracy is that no matter how much power and wealth gets concentrated in the top 0.1%, when it’s voting time every billionaire still gets only one vote

congrats NYC
November 5, 2025 at 4:47 AM
pendulum is swinging back
November 5, 2025 at 4:19 AM
it’s a reading-proposals-in-bed sort of day
October 22, 2025 at 3:10 PM
<candidate> is the most common type of postdoc in the galaxy and yet their origins remain uncertain
going from writing JWST proposals to writing reference letters is interesting because the hype train doesn’t stop I’m just hyping up people instead of ideas
October 18, 2025 at 3:55 PM
going from writing JWST proposals to writing reference letters is interesting because the hype train doesn’t stop I’m just hyping up people instead of ideas
October 18, 2025 at 3:00 PM
Reposted by Peter Gao
In Cycle 2, I was co-PI of the largest volume limited survey of nearby white dwarfs with #JWST. Our first result is out! Out of 56 white dwarfs, one showed a possible candidate companion between projected separations of 0.5"-2" or roughly 10-40 au. 🔭 #astrosci
ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2025arXi...
The MIRI Excesses around Degenerates (MEAD) Survey I: A candidate cold brown dwarf in orbit around the nearby white dwarf 2MASS J09424023-4637176
The MIRI Excesses Around Degenerates Survey is a Cycle 2 James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Survey program designed to image nearby white dwarfs in the mid-IR with the MIRI imaging mode. Only a handful...
ui.adsabs.harvard.edu
October 15, 2025 at 11:45 AM
a man wearing a shirt with the word super on it
Alt: Closing laptop meme
media.tenor.com
October 16, 2025 at 12:34 AM
30 HOURS TO GO
a close up of a cat 's face with its mouth open and eyes closed .
Alt: screaming cat meme
media.tenor.com
October 14, 2025 at 5:59 PM
fun with cropping
October 10, 2025 at 8:42 PM
everyone in my family is sick right now except me and I’m pretty sure it’s because my body knows that it needs to stay healthy until after the JWST deadline
October 10, 2025 at 6:09 AM
I don’t like how moist it looks
Jasper: If melted crayons were a rock
October 7, 2025 at 3:07 AM
I’m not panicking you’re panicking
October 6, 2025 at 3:22 PM
Costco knows How It’s Done
October 5, 2025 at 9:01 PM
it’s such a shame that our top minds are wasted working on AI slop instead of a much more worthy calling: eliminating all mosquitos
October 5, 2025 at 7:01 PM
they should redo super size me but with Costco hot dogs
October 5, 2025 at 5:02 PM
Netflix absolutely missed the boat by not investing in kpop demon hunters halloween costumes
October 5, 2025 at 4:32 PM
fun with phonics
October 5, 2025 at 2:26 PM
it’s crazy how we just accepted scam phone calls as a fact of life now like yeah please ruin one of our main modes communication we don’t mind
October 1, 2025 at 2:44 PM
Reposted by Peter Gao
✨✨✨Another Virga advert✨✨✨

Introducing V2.0, with fractal aggregate clouds! Restricted to spheres no more! We handle the dynamics and the optics self consistently.

Led by me and PhD candidate extraordinaire Matt Lodge (who is looking for a postdoc 👀 and is amazing).

arxiv.org/abs/2509.06708
Fractal Aggregate Aerosols in the Virga Cloud Code I: Model Description and Application to a Benchmark Cloudy Exoplanet
We introduce new functionality to treat fractal aggregate aerosol particles within the Virga cloud modeling framework. Previously, the open source cloud modeling code Virga (Batalha et al. 2025), the ...
arxiv.org
September 9, 2025 at 11:27 AM
Reposted by Peter Gao
I have a line at the beginning of my Research Statement about how many exoplanets we've discovered so far.

Every year I write faculty applications, I have to update that number.

I swear, whatever that number is the year I finally get a job will become my new favorite number.
September 10, 2025 at 2:59 AM