In my Astronomy 2291 class recently we talked about Pluto and why it was demoted to a ‘dwarf planet’ by Resolution 5A of the 26th General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union on August 24, 2006. Hold on, here we go… (1/20)
🧵👇 Pluto was discovered on February 18, 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh (in his early 20s at the time) working at Lowell Observatory. The discovery story of Pluto is fascinating, but a topic for another thread. (2/20)

Excited to share a new paper led by @UCB_Astronomy graduate student Keming Zhang @AstroKeming (along with me and his advisor Josh Bloom @profjsb) that discusses a newly uncovered ubiquitous unifying degeneracy in planetary microlensing events. (1/16)
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arxiv.org/abs/2111.13696 Gravitational microlensing is a weird and wonderful way to find planets orbiting other stars, especially cold, low-mass planets. It works by using gravity as nature’s magnifying glass to detect planets orbiting distant host stars. (2/16)

On this #WorldAIDSDay, I recall the poem "Here" by Paul Monette, a poem he wrote for his partner Roger Horwitz who died of complications of AIDS in 1986. Paul himself died of complications of AIDS in 1995.
hivhereandnow.com/35-years-poems… "war is not all death it turns out war is what little thing you hold on to refugeed and far from home"