Cédric Foellmi (@onekiloparsec) is an astrophysicist and senior software engineer. He is the maker of iObserve: a macOS and iOS app that has been previously featured on Astrobetter. He was also formerly an astronomer at ESO in Chile, where he met Éric Depagne, who was a VLT UVES instrument Fellow and is currently an astronomer [...]
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has recently developed a new policy on reporting harassment. These rules are meant to address the ongoing problem of sexual harassment in academia. For example, one study found that 30% of postdocs have reported being sexually harassed in the workplace. Another crowdsourced spreadsheet has garnered almost 2500 responses since December [...]
I’d like to give everyone a status update on me and the blog. As some of you have noticed, new content has been few and far between the past couple years. That should be changing, starting now! First of all, I’m pleased to announce that Joanna Bridge (University of Louisville) has joined the AstroBetter team [...]
The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) “Anonymizing Proposal Reviews” Working Group (APRWG) has been formed to tackle the ongoing problem of implicit biases affecting the outcomes of Hubble Space Telescope (HST) proposal reviews. For the last two HST cycles, the list of investigators on each proposal has been given to reviewers alphabetized and with no [...]
STARtorialist is an astronomy fashion blog (also on Twitter, Instagram, & Facebook), run by by Emily Rice and Summer Ash, that curates and shares astronomy and science-themed clothing, accessories, decor, and more. This is one of the projects supported by ScienceBetter Consulting, the business venture inspired by the success of AstroBetter. The plan is for [...]
We’ve finally got the Rumor Mill turned over for the new season: Postdoc and Term and Faculty and Staff. The archives from previous years remain available. Thanks to the couple of folks who nudged me about this and a huge thanks to Anže Slosar (Brookhaven National Laboratory) for stepping up, getting this done, and helping maintain this community [...]
This post is from an anonymous professor who has served as the chair of a faculty hiring committee. I recently completed the experience of serving as a hiring committee chair for a research university. I hope you’ll consider advice from this hiring committee chair (to be considered in complement with many other similar pieces of [...]
This post is from an anonymous professor who has served as the chair of a faculty hiring committee. I was recently the chair of the hiring committee for a new faculty position. I am a junior faculty member and, based on my experience on both sides of the table, I wanted to pass along some [...]
It’s that time of year again. The 229th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society is nearly upon us. To make the most of your time at the meeting, we at AstroBetter would like to remind you of some resources available on the Wiki. First, the post that everyone attending a winter AAS meeting should read [...]
Abigail Stevens is an astronomy PhD candidate at the Anton Pannekoek Institute, University of Amsterdam. Her research is on spectral-timing analysis of X-ray binaries. Meg Schwamb is an assistant scientist at Gemini Observatory, Northern Operations Center. Register now for Hack Together Day at AAS 229 on January 7th! Hack Together Day is a day to [...]