Big news! We published the results from the Dark Energy Survey Supernova (SN) Program! We relied on a special type of Supernovae 🎇-the Type 1a– to better understand what is causing our Universe to expand faster and faster🏎.. arxiv.org/abs/2401.02929 arxiv.org/abs/2401.02945 🧵1/8

La estampilla del día

What goes into preparing Rubin's 8.4-meter mirror glass to get its reflective coating? Quite a lot, it turns out! Learn about the preparation process in Part 4 of the "Making of Rubin 's 8.4-meter Mirror" ✨

When you finally get that shiny coating you wanted.... 🤩 Rubin Observatory's 8.4-meter mirror is officially, finally, a mirror! In a 4.5-hour process, the glass got its protected silver coating—and one step closer to being able to #CaptureTheCosmos 🔗: rubinobservatory.org/news/coating-p…

Check out my wife's newest creations @ etsy.com/shop/OlgaHandm… !! A lot of love and dedication is poured in every single one of them!

Really proud of the Dark Energy Survey supernova group with a second batch of papers including full data release (former Duke Physics postdoc Bruno Sánchez et al.), new studies on weak lensing of supernovae (Shah et al.), an inverse distance ladder measurement (Camilleri, Tamara Davis

Next we have the light curves and data release paper led by Bruno Sánchez Bruno Sánchez. All the data are public and we'd love other people to use it! (Image from key paper showing the light curves!) arxiv.org/abs/2406.05046

T-33 days until first light with the NSF-DOE Rubin Observatory commissioning camera.

Busy week - new paper by George Efstathiou pointing out potential systematic uncertainties in the DES-5yr supernova analysis and its constraints on evolving dark energy. I have some thoughts, but wanted to start with a genuine appreciation of George. arxiv.org/abs/2408.07175

Welcome to the grid, Franco Colapinto Make Argentina proud 🇦🇷🇦🇷🇦🇷 #F1

New paper by awesome Duke Physics grad student Erik Peterson (Erik Peterson) showing how we can improve measurements with the Hubble diagram at low-redshift by finding the 'groups' of galaxies that a supernova host galaxy is in 🧵arxiv.org/abs/2408.14560

Just submitted a paper attempting to answer these questions: How many SN host galaxies are in galaxy groups? How much does accounting for galaxy groups improve Hubble residuals? Comments welcome! arxiv.org/abs/2408.14560

We have a telescope!🤩 Last week, summit staff successfully installed Rubin Observatory's combined primary/tertiary mirror. With all three mirrors & the commissioning camera in place, we officially—for the first time in 15 years of construction—have a complete telescope!🥳 🧵

Yes!!! The first public image from NSF-DOE Rubin Observatory Simonyi Survey Telescope (just the fun pixels 😉). Now ponder getting 21x this, every ~40 seconds, ~8hrs/night, for 10 years. That's what's coming by the end of this year.

Thanks to American Astronomical Society (AAS) for the nice chat about some of the details on the DES SN 5YR data release paper! It's a nice tour of the many pieces that make the release, with contributions from many people in DES-SN group! Come hear about it at youtu.be/m_feBn8xJLY?si…

NEW AAS Journal Author Series Video! Bruno Sánchez (Aix Marseille University, Duke University) chats with Frank Timmes about his article on supernovae: youtu.be/m_feBn8xJLY The series connects authors w/their article, their human story & the larger #astronomy community. #TheGoodStuff

When working in a collaboration, in an environment with people from diverse backgrounds, neglecting their human side hurts everything. There's no way we can succeed on science, or in any other large or complex project, by dissecting part of the community, on any basis.

Scrub a dub 🫧 ...except no scrubbing the delicate observatory optics! We don't use cloths or lens cleaner to clean the giant camera lenses. Instead, our summit staff use a high-speed stream of carbon dioxide "snow" to push debris off of the glass surface.

The world's "First Look" at imagery from Rubin Observatory is coming in mid-2025 — and we want the whole world to join in the celebration! 🥳 Join the global excitement by signing up to host a #RubinWatchParty! 🔗: rubinobservatory.org/news/rubin-fir…

Extending the kudos to the TDCOSMO team, this stepped up confidence in their results. I am also really excited for the future, hopefully Vera Rubin Observatory's LSST will find more of these systems + new lensed SNIa, even in galaxy-scale lenses!