A triple system with a nonaccreting black hole in the inner binary: A naked-eye analog of LB-1? By Rivinius et al., 2020.

I will give a "historical" introduction to our discovery of the Galactic haze/bubbles towards the center of the Milky Way. These bubbles are one of the largest structures in the Galaxy (~17 kpc across), but remained hidden until the advent of all-sky satellite observations in the microwaves (WMAP, Planck) and gamma-rays (Fermi). This structure has several unique characteristics that are difficult to model with conventional astrophysical processes and I will discuss current efforts to do so from Mertsch & Petrosian (2019).

Increasing national interest in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) domains has led to the largest STEM workforce of men and women. However, despite current interest, women remain underrepresented. Studies examining the gender gap typically rely on behavioral measures, indexing the thoughts, feelings, and performance of stigmatized individuals in identity threatening STEM contexts.

EXPRES (the Extreme PREcision Spectrograph) is a R~137,000, fiber-fed, optical spectrograph installed at the 4.3-m Lowell Discovery Telescope near Flagstaff, Arizona. I will give an overview of the optical design, commissioning, and software development that has gone into EXPRES. The instrument itself has demonstrated a stability of 4-7 cm/s. We have constructed a new, optimal-extraction based pipeline that returns on-sky, single-measurement precision of ~30 cm/s for observations with S/N of 250. I will present EXPRES data of known planetary systems that show sub-m/s residual RMS.

The technological challenges involved in discovering earthlike planets orbiting sunlike stars have nearly all been solved. A new generation of instruments will be able to achieve the required radial velocity measurement precision of 10 cm/s. Yet searches for earthlike, habitable planets are plagued by false positives: discoveries of "planets" that later turn out to be parasitic signals from magnetically active regions or dynamo cycles.