I double-majored in physics and human rights at the University of Connecticut. I wasn’t interested in pursuing physics after college until I took my first astrophysics class with my first woman physics professor. She inspired me to pursue a career in astrophysics. /jcr
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In the exciting days after a GRB, I am triggering telescopes, turning their data into a beautiful image of the explosion, and measuring how bright the explosion was. In a typical day, I study our observations of past GRBs to better understand their causes and how they work. /jcr
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I use observations from some of the world’s largest optical telescopes to better understand the universe’s most energetic explosions: gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). We can't predict GRBs, and their optical counterparts can fade in hours, so trying to catch them is quite exciting! /jcr
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Hello! My name is Jillian Rastinejad. I am a fourth-year PhD student studying observational astronomy at Northwestern University. /jcr
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Join us today for a special social takeover with Jillian Rastinejad to celebrate the discovery of a game-changing cosmic explosion! Stay tuned while she introduces herself and the work she does in astrophysics.
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Science is a cycle of questions and answers … and sometimes a discovery shakes up what we know about the universe! #ICYMI, Swift and Fermi recently detected a gamma-ray burst that didn’t fit into established categories for these powerful events: https://go.nasa.gov/3YEaMib
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Our sixth astronomical gift is … an eclipsing six-star system!
Astronomers found a system whose six stars all undergo eclipses, using data from our planet hunter TESS, a supercomputer, and automated eclipse-identifying software. https://go.nasa.gov/3HDSBmu
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#OTD in 2009 our Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) launched!
WISE's all-sky survey led to mind-expanding science including:
⚫ Uncovering millions of black holes
⭐ Discovering the coolest class of stars
💡 Imaging the most luminous galaxy

More: https://go.nasa.gov/3URn6Za
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Our fourth and fifth astronomical gifts are … Stephan’s Quintet!
When looking at this image from @NASAWebb, Stephan’s Quintet seems like five galaxies hanging around each other — but did you know that one of them is much closer than the others? https://go.nasa.gov/3hoan2p
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Four of the galaxies are hanging out together about 290 million light-years away, but the fifth and leftmost galaxy in the image below is actually closer to Earth at just 40 million light-years away! Here’s a labeled view from @chandraxray and a ground-based optical telescope.
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#OTD in 1970, @nasa launched its first Earth-orbiting satellite entirely devoted to the study of cosmic X-ray sources. 🚀 Marjorie Townsend, conducting preflight checks with Bruno Rossi in this image, named the satellite Uhuru, which means "freedom" in Swahili.
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When two galaxies encounter each other, it takes 1-2 billion years for them to merge and settle down. While the stars already in the galaxies don’t change much, the collision can spark lots of new stars to form! ✨ #MondayMotivation
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Our second astronomical gift is … two giant bubbles!
With the Fermi spacecraft, scientists found out that our Milky Way galaxy is blowing bubbles — two of them! Each bubble is about 25,000 light-years tall and glows in gamma rays. https://tmblr.co/Zz_Uqj2dMNkMX
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100 years ago, scientists had limited knowledge about the cosmos. #PretendToBeATimeTraveler with our Cosmic Times educational series, and hop through important moments that defined our understanding of how the universe began and how it changed over time: https://go.nasa.gov/3uGkceV
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Telescopes help us look back in time — the farther the object, the longer its light takes to reach us! You can #PretendToBeATimeTraveler with @NASAWebb as it collects light from 13.5 billion years ago, when the first stars and galaxies were forming: https://go.nasa.gov/32ZCHAv
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Cotton candy … planets? These “super-puffs,” discovered by our @NASAExoplanets Kepler telescope, look as big as Jupiter but are roughly a hundred times lighter in mass. Like real cotton candy, their puffy atmospheres won’t last forever: https://go.nasa.gov/3WhgZi3 #CottonCandyDay
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#OTD in 1968, @nasa launched its first successful cosmic explorer. Orbiting Astronomical Observatory 2, which could point at and track sources in the sky, is the direct ancestor of current telescopes including @NASAHubble, @chandraxray, and Swift. More: https://go.nasa.gov/3Y2cOIv
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Sometimes the stars that grow up together … stay together! This large infrared mosaic captured by our Spitzer telescope is a multigenerational “family portrait” of multiple clusters of stars born from the same dense clumps of gas and dust: https://go.nasa.gov/3VUQZbW #StarrySights
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For decades, astronomers generally divided gamma-ray bursts into two categories based on their duration and origin. Now Swift and Fermi have detected a burst that breaks the rules, shaking up what we knew about the universe’s most powerful events: https://go.nasa.gov/3HiA6DP
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#OTD in 1998, our Submillimeter Wave Astronomy Satellite (SWAS) launched into space to hunt for water and other molecules linked to life as we know it. For nearly seven years, SWAS helped us study water in the Milky Way, star formation, comets, and more: https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/facilities-technology/telescopes-instruments/submillimeter-wave-astronomy-satellite
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