🔊 Calling UK early career researches in astro, particle & nuclear physics. Please sign this open response to the proposed cuts at STFC ⚛️🧪🔭 "Protecting the UK's reputation as a science superpower requires not only investment, but continuity, confidence, and people" ✍️ ecr-openletter-stfc.github.io

Me, on astronomy funding crisis, on the @ox.ac.uk website: www.ox.ac.uk/news/2026-02... 🔭🧪

I'm currently learning C++ and I keep coming across defined and codified things in C++ that I've been doing for years in Python by accident The latest one of these is using `del` in python to free up memory

That they bang on about affordability is utter insanity. In Scotland, under 22s get free bus travel. There's discussion in about extending to under 30s. To not provide free bus travel to young people, and fair concessionary travel to disabled people, is an entirely political decision.

OK we're back baby. I'm not exactly well, but well *enough* to attempt a quiz stream tonight. I'll be joined by some creator friends playing quiz games from games.city... who are offering a donation match up to £2000 during the stream! Tonight, 7:30PM GMT www.twitch.tv/drsimonclark

Delighted to announce that the first paper of my PhD - "The role of magnetic fields in ram pressure stripping of satellite galaxies in the circumgalactic medium around massive galaxies" - has been published by MNRAS! Check out the paper here: academic.oup.com/mnras/articl... 🧪🔭

What are the biggest pains with trying to make an introduction to astronomy video series is I know the things but I can't just be like "Trust me bro", I need references 😔 🔭🧪

Were I the president or chancellor of any institution subject to these demands, my response would be "make me, you fascist fuck." And then I would sic university counsel on them and seek the support of the rest of the institutions in my university system to form a unified front against this shit.

Today I pause my PhD to start an industry placement working with High Performance Computing in Bristol. Video coming on my channel soon talking about it!

I'm less than 2 weeks out from going on a placement and pausing my PhD research - I've got a lot to do but there's nothing more terrifyingly motivating than a deadline! 🔭🌌

For once, I haven't done a very simple silly error this morning. I'm reaping the benefits of past Thomas' effort. I set up my plot layouts in python in a very flexible way that's made making changes based on referee paper comments so much easier!

In today's episode of even allegedly smart people make very stupid errors... I spent an hour trying to work out why my plots were well below the expected values... I had forgotten to change the units. 🔭🌌

Some days I think I've really grown as a scientist and what I do now is really cutting edge and interesting... then there are days where I'm triple checking every parameter in the simulations I need to re-run... again... 🔭

Does the apprehension around waiting for the reviewer report on a paper ever go away? Asking for a friend... 🔭

This week I presented my research on the "Role of magnetic fields in simulations of ram pressure stripping of satellite galaxies" at @nam25-durham.bsky.social I also chaired a session at the conference which was a great experience to take on that responsibility as a PhD student! #NAM2025 🔭🌌🧪

🌌🔭 Excited to announce my first paper is out now! We use simulations to explore the effect of magnetic fields on satellite galaxies in the circumgalactic medium (CGM) - the reservoir of gas around galaxies. Read the paper here: arxiv.org/abs/2506.18983 See thread for remaining images.

"Why should my tax dollars go to fund your astrophysics research?" A thread. 🔭🧪 Brushing aside how absurdly little of the federal budget goes to science (according to the Planetary Society NASA accounts for only 0.3% of federal spending), the benefits of funding astronomy fall into two camps. (1/n)

Reading more about this, I'm disappointed in the authors of this study & how they've turned a very marginal result into worldwide press releases. In this climate, we as scientists have a responsibility to lead by example and represent our work accurately to the press. This is not that. ☄️🔭🧪

Yesterday went great! Today's off to a less great start... Went to go work on a project on my laptop in the office, to discover I had not uploaded the latest version to github from my desktop at home... Guess I'll do that tonight and do this work tomorrow!

Something I'm really enjoying in my PhD in Astrophysics is that my actual work is presenting me all these opportunities to learn new skills for coding/software/data science/etc. Today, my work has weaved its way to the point that I think it makes sense to learn CUDA so I can run my code on GPUs 🔭🧪

April Fools papers on ArXiV are always a good bit of fun, but this one from @sophienewman.bsky.social and Ana Sainz de Murieta on the Astrophysical implications of the Eras Tour is one of the best I've seen. arxiv.org/abs/2503.24188 🔭

Working on a video about light pollution and dark skies, anyone know of any public datasets of light pollution maps? Ideally worldwide but would settle for UK, Continental Europe and North America (ideally not just the US) 🔭🧪

Goodbye Gaia. Thanks for everything. Gaia might never have been as flashy as Hubble or JWST, but it was one of the most amazing and most accessible missions. I worked with Gaia data in my undergrad and I hope we see more missions like it. 🔭🧪

TODAY IS THE DAY! 🧪☀️⬇️ Join us at the Lincoln Memorial or your local site to Stand Up for Science!

I criticised the "echo-chamber" aspect of the BlueSky feeds initially. But right now when the world is just a bit too much to be constantly reminded of it all, it is nice to be able to filter down to just astronomy for a bit

Hear that UK Labour? Huge potential here

My first science video of 2025 is now available to my patrons over on Patreon. General release tomorrow! www.patreon.com/posts/my-top...

Big win today in PhD land - I got my code to run in parallel (using more cores so it goes faster)! I spent all day yesterday fighting with this trying to get it to work. Came back to it today with a slightly different approach and it worked so much better! 🔭🧪

Ahhhhh!!! So much research to do... so little time...🔭

Having that strange out of body experience this morning of coming back from an astronomy conference with loads of ideas, no idea what I'm supposed to be doing, and far too many impending deadlines... 🔭🧪

SHARE WIDELY. KNOW YOUR RIGHTS. With mass deportations starting today across the country, it is vitally important - for both citizens and non-citizens - to know your rights. You have the right to remain silent. Assert it. You have the right to a lawyer. Ask for one. (1/3)

My first video of 2025 setting out my goals for the year just went live for my patrons on Patreon. Sign up at the link below for early access, or wait for general release tomorrow! www.patreon.com/posts/2025-w...

Last year I was too ambitious with my #StoryGraph reading challenge. This year I'm being more realistic: 12 books in 12 months. However, I'm reading a lot of long fantasy books so I've also added a page target of 3600 pages. Really enjoying getting back into reading!

Many problems in mathematics and physics can be simplified by assuming that any solid body is approximately a sphere, but this approach is likely to lead to a rounding error.

Been doing a bit of an audit of the many many analysis functions I've written over the first year or so of my #Astrophysics #PhD. 2 main takeaways: 1) I wrote A LOT of functions - thousands of lines on top of all the scripts using them. 2) I have got SO MUCH BETTER at coding in the last year! 🧪🔭

Okay I'm pretty new to TikTok, but I'd just like to say that it's dumb that when uploading on desktop I have to type in hashtags and then click from a list of suggestions - rather than what EVERY OTHER PLATFORM DOES and just accept that going #tiktok would trigger the hashtag!!!

I'm constantly amazed at how different fields (particularly subfields of #astronomy) can interact. I firmly work in large scale galaxy evolution, but today I'm reading a solar physics paper of all things to try and understand a process important on large scales 🔭🧪

Ever wondered why Venus is so hellish while Earth is a sanctuary of life - I look at answer as part of my #AdventOfAstronomy series - 24 #astronomy shorts on YT, IG and TikTok over 24 days! youtube.com/shorts/mkcda... 🧪🔭

I honestly believe all LLM results should come with a disclaimer reminding people that the thing doesn’t (and absolutely cannot) know any facts or do any reasoning; it is simply designed to *sound* like it knows facts and frequently sweeps some up accidentally in the process.

Had a great time tonight playing some tunes in aid of the Jingle Jam. If you didn't catch the stream but want to hear the tunes, then here's the video: www.twitch.tv/videos/23175...

This month, @katdoesmaths.bsky.social and I (+some friends) are raising money for the Jingle Jam! For the next two weeks, we'll have a mix of streams on Twitch. Donations are greatly appreciated and over £35 will get you a brilliant collection of games! tiltify.com/+the-sci-com...

It's true! I'm posting 24 short videos in 24 days for #AdventOfAstronomy on YouTube! Also available on Instagram and TikTok

Has anyone figured out how to organically get the fun side of BlueSky yet? Almost everything I've ended up following is about Astronomy - which I love, but it feels like work sometimes?

I posted my latest video last night asking a rather odd question given I do astronomy as a day job... Given how much money and effort is spent on #astronomy - along with a few other factors, should we even bother with it anymore? 🔭🧪 youtu.be/uujwvF0vkv0 (Thumbnail background from www.ig.space)

Quite possibly one of the most inspiring people in #astronomy, #science and life more generally - certainly a big inspiration to me 🔭🧪

Loving this trend! Let's give it a go! 1 like = 1 piece of Thomas lore

I'm giving a talk to our galaxies group next week on the research I've spent the first year of my #Astrophysics #PhD doing. Not much has changed since I gave a high level talk to the department in Sept, but having more time and a specialised audience let's me go into more detail! Very excited!!! 🔭

We strongly suggest that academic publishers and other platforms that host research rapidly implement a Share to Bluesky button for their articles. Here's how: docs.bsky.app/docs/advance... #AcademicSky #HigherEd #Altmetrics

Last year I made 24 YT shorts/IG Reels in the first 24 days of December for Advent of Astronomy. 24 videos about #space! I'm bringing it back this year and I want to know - what do you want to see in Advent of #Astronomy this year? Let me know by replying to this post! 🔭

Completely forgot this site existed.... got very wrapped up in posting on threads since the site that shall not be named became a hellscape. Hello to anyone new around here - particularly of the academic/astronomy/science communication persuasion (or any subset of those). I'll try to be here more