Episode 25 is live! We went all out this episode with all three of us (me, @payeldas.bsky.social and @nbuckley0810.bsky.social) participating. Check it out! 🔭☄️🧪

Last night I managed to get a few frames of seestar data before bed. Check out the heart nebula and M33 😍🔭

We have a PhD opportunity at the University of Reading focused on analysing Jupiter and Saturn auroral observations! Title: Investigating Earth-like responses to the Solar Wind in Gas Giant Upper Atmospheres Supervisor: me! Full description/application portal: www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Last night was clear and crisp, so I got out Shakira the Seestar and imaged NGC 891 (the silver sliver galaxy), the pacman nebula and the double cluster C14 😍🔭

You know it's snowing in Guildford when your WhatsApp lights up with a million "SNOW!!!!" messages 😍❄️🌨️

Ease into the weekend by catching up on the @starxiv.bsky.social podcast! In our latest episode, we talk about forecasting coronal mass ejections from the Sun ☀️🔭☄️🧪

How do intermediate mass black holes form? I talked about this paper which investigates formation channels by environment using semi analytical models 🧪☄️🔭

Train conductor is great today! He welcomed us to Thursday morning, told us to hang on and that Friday was coming to save us. At the next stop he reminded us that a warm smile can go a long way, so we should try it 😂

More context on one of the papers we discussed this week. #journalclubforyourears 🧪☄️🔭

Loved this paper that @payeldas.bsky.social discussed. Are type 1a supernova the standard candles we think they are? And is the universes expansion accelerating or decelerating?!! Exciting times in cosmology! 🧪☄️🔭

Are some high alpha abundance stars genuinely young? Some of them might be, as @payeldas.bsky.social discusses in our latest episode 🧪☄️🔭

What was the Sun's birth cluster like? I loved reading about this method which uses the Sednoid objects in the outer solar system to investigate this 🧪☄️🔭

Slightly late, but sounding great, episode 24 of @starxiv.bsky.social has dropped! Tune in for gravitational lenses, black holes and forecasting solar flares! 🔭🧪☄️

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I've just subscribed to support Benty Fields, my go to resource for looking at the arxiv and organising journal clubs (including our @starxiv.bsky.social one). Support them if you can! www.benty-fields.com/support

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Is everyone excited about tomorrow? It's the coolest day of the year. Where we all discuss the spooky goings on of DARK MATTER! That's right, it's dark matter day again. What is it? What does it do? And how do we study it, given it's invisible? Get excited! #darkmatterday

Have you heard of the MEGATRON simulations? They're trying to understand the metallicity plateau in the faintest galaxies. Download our latest episode to find out more 🔭🧪☄️

How did the proto galaxy form? Nicole took us through this paper that discussed the importance of compaction events in shaping the early Galaxy 🔭🧪☄️

A second epoch of velocity data on the Ursa Major III/unions 1 system reveals that it is likely a star cluster! A suspected binary turned out to be a binary after all! Listen to the episode to learn more 🔭🧪☄️

Are quasi stars responsible for the mysterious little red dots found by JWST? And do all supermassive black holes pass through this phase? Find out by tuning into our latest episode! 🔭🧪☄️

Feeling like you need to ease into this half-term week? Start your day by listening to us discuss recent astronomy papers! Our latest episode is live, check it out wherever you get your podcasts! 🧪🔭☄️

Episode 23 has dropped! Tune in to hear about faint galaxies, failed galaxies and how binaries are always causing trouble. 🔭☄️ starxiv.com/2025/10/27/e...

New press release about our new paper led by my PhD student Mariana Pouseiro Júlio! 🔭🧪☄️ English version here: www.aip.de/en/news/dark...

Exams are stupid! But if you must do them, it helps to lower the stakes! Very neat results. Because I enjoy being angry I think I’ll bring this up at the next faculty meeting and watch all the middle aged white men get upset!

Seeking PhD candidates that want to do a thesis on exoplanet atmosphere retrieval + machine learning inference. Please apply by 31 October to Dr. Max Dax's and my shared project here: is.mpg.de/news/new-max... . Abstract for the thesis project is attached to this thread below!

Exciting stuff covered in the latest episode of the Starxiv! Have we found true, intermediate age RR Lyrae? Check it out! Links in @starxiv.bsky.social bio 🔭🧪☄️

Episode 22 of the StarXiv is live! As I was away last week, I had to wait to listen until this morning, and it's a great line-up of papers from @payeldas.bsky.social and @nbuckley0810.bsky.social. Check it out on our website or wherever you get podcasts 🔭🧪☄️ starxiv.com/2025/10/13/e...

Yesterday's high Street takeover for world space week was amazing! Satellites, space, telescopes, music, arts and crafts, and some fabulous astronomers to entertain the crowds 🔭🧪👩🏻‍🚀🛸🛰️👽

Tomorrow it is world space week on Guildford high Street! Join us from 10-4 for space, science, planets, galaxies, stars and satellites! I can't wait ☄️🌕👽🌟🛰️🛸👩🏻‍🚀🧪🔭

Paper day! My PhD student Mariana Júlio, with @readdark.bsky.social, @pengfeili.bsky.social and others, studies the internal dynamics of dwarf galaxies and finds they don't agree with the Radial Acceleration Relation, challenging the dark matter alternative MOND. arxiv.org/abs/2510.06905 🔭☄️🧪 1/7

Have you heard last week's episode of the Starxiv yet? It's a great one! Episode 22 will be released next Monday but I won't be in it as this week I'm in Cordoba for a conference on galaxy outskirts ☄️🔭

If anyone from the UN wants to talk, here’s a nice summary. The astronomy community does NOT endorse this proposal, just take it from one of THE EXPERTS on ISOs with Rubin. Meg (and many others) has helped the community plan for +10yrs for these kinds of studies.

Welcome to the party, companies! I've been working in slippers since about 2011. It is comfortable and adds to the slightly mad academic style. www.theguardian.com/money/2025/s...

An exciting and positive read – we're happy to see the piece give a shoutout to rising talent in #astronomy, including Astha whom we interviewed recently about her LSST:UK work too.

Great article featuring some of our Surrey astrophysics students! Unfortunately they seem to have been attributed to the wrong supervisor, but wonderful to see them talking passionately about the work they are doing with @payeldas.bsky.social @derkal.bsky.social and Noelia Noël 🔭☄️🧪

Nicole’s final paper discussed this new take on second-gen (G2) stars in globular clusters: maybe they weren’t born polluted… maybe they merged into it. Mergers of MS + HeWD binaries can produce G2-like stars with He and N enrichment — even in the field. arxiv.org/abs/2509.15337 🔭☄️

Today marks the start of '100 Hours of Astronomy'! 🔭🪐💫 Want to take part in the global stargazing event? Join in any time from now until Sunday by completing four simple challenges to find star patterns and a planet in the night sky. Find out more at: 100hours.online

This episode I learnt about quasi periodic eruptions, mysterious bursts of x rays emanating from near super massive black holes. What causes then? Tune in to hear one theory about this 🔭☄️🧪

4-most are here! Check out this cool spectroscopic survey and follow their progress. The science will be amazing!!! First light coming VERY soon

How much mixing happens at early times in the universe? And will it be a problem when using chemical tagging to investigate galaxy build up? Nicole talked us through it in our latest episode 🧪☄️🔭

I love how much we can learn about galaxies from deep images like these, and incredible coming from amateur telescopes too🤩 🧪☄️🔭

Nicole talked about early metal mixing with Aeos, a sim of Pop III enrichment. Gas is only chemically coherent within 100 pc and 7 Myr after a SN. Beyond that, stars form with distinct abundance patterns. This Mahalanobis distance plot shows this divergence. arxiv.org/abs/2509.13580 🔭☄️

Episode 21 is live! Tune in to here the latest results on Mercury's magnetosphere, population III stars, relic galaxies, quasi-periodic eruptions and more, with your hosts, Michelle and Nicole. Available on our website, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get podcasts 🔭 ☄️

Deadline is a week from now, and I'm hoping to hire to start ASAP - the grant period is officially 1st Oct 2025-2027 (I promise I posted the advert as soon as I could after hearing we got funded; how do the rest of you do this to hire for Academic year cycle?).

I'm hiring at Haverford - a 2 year NASA funded postdoc to work on Galaxy Zoo with Roman Space Telescope Data: www.haverford.edu/human-resour... 👩‍🔬🔭

Bad science communication can be disastrous. But a typo clearly isn't as bad as fraud. Clearly, a scale is needed to resolve this ambiguity. Thus, I here propose the Loeb Scale for scientific PR disasters. It is NOT to be confused with the recently proposed Loeb Scale for interstellar objects. 🔭

I'm glad to read this. About time. Also I don't understand why he was made FRS in the first place. He's not a scientist and he's not an engineer. He's a business leader who pontificates wildly on scientific subjects in which he knows next to nothing and his DOGE has actively damaged US science. 🔭🧪

Love this. LIGO is more likely to detect gravitational waves at night and during weekends. It's also less likely to detect things on Tuesdays. All because the detectors are more likely to be running at certain times/days. 🔭🧪 arxiv.org/abs/2509.11849