#spaceaustralia — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #spaceaustralia, aggregated by home.social.
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Tomorrow morning, Australia will play a vital role in supporting #ArtemisII through the @canberradsn - the CDSCC (and as part of Australia's national science agency, CSIRO)
I spoke with folks at CDSCC, along with Associated Prof. Alice Gorman (Dr Space Junk), folks at NASA and more about this historical mission.
The CDSCC is not the only Aussie team that is working with the Artemis II mission - researchers from the Australian National University are also testing emerging technology that allows data to be transmitted via lasers, instead of radio waves at Mount Stromlo.
Importantly, Artemis II is going to set some new records that have not been attempted for 54 years.
And for the first time, the first woman, the first person of colour and the first non-American will travel to lunar space.
Godspeed, humans! Ad Astra!
https://www.spaceaustralia.com/feature/australias-key-role-artemis-lunar-return-missions
📸 R.Mandow / Nic Vevers / ANU / ULA
#SpaceAustralia #SpaceExploration #Moon #MoonLanding #NASA #Astrodon
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Could a powerful geomagnetic storm be the reason 8,000 Victorian homes suddenly lost power in January this year?
I had a chat with Dr Richard Marshall from Australian Bureau of Meteorology Space Weather about the origin of solar storms and the risks they present to our communities and critical infrastructure.
So great to be able to have such fantastic and professional insights about these important events and how we, as a society, need to mitigate against them.
https://www.spaceaustralia.com/feature/earthly-impacts-solar-storms
📸 NASA SVS
#SpaceAustralia #SolarStorm #geomagneticstorm #Astrodon #heliophysics
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Excited to share my first #SpaceAustralia feature article for 2026 about an exciting and ambitious project that is unfolding 1km below the surface in regional Victoria.
Last year, I had the incredible opportunity to visit the Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory (SUPL) with Dr Katie Mack and explore the ambitious efforts of the SABRE South experiment. Shielded from cosmic rays by a kilometre of rock, this lab offers the ideal conditions to search for the faint whispers of dark matter, which still accounts for 25% of all matter in the Universe—and yet remains completely undetected.
Check out the article (and yes, check out our funky boots in the clean room!) and keep a lookout for exciting news of the detectors switching on later in 2026.
https://www.spaceaustralia.com/feature/australias-dark-matter-quest
📸 F. Morrison / SUPL
#DarkMatter #ParticlePhysics #Astronomy #Astrodon #CosmicRays
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Excited to now share this story; papers have been accepted!
Apep is an awesome system, unlike any other we know about. It is named after the Egyptian God of Chaos - because, well, it is chaos!
Two Wolf-Rayet systems orbited by a third supergiant. As all their winds collide, they form these beautiful structures that have now been observed with #JWST and ESO's VLT.
I had a chat with fellow student from Macquarie Uni. Ryan White who has led one of the two papers that are released about this.
My latest for #SpaceAustralia
https://www.spaceaustralia.com/news/order-amongst-chaos-apep
📸 NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Simulation: Yinuo Han (Caltech), Ryan White (Macquarie University); Visualization: Christian Nieves (STScI); Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)
#Astronomy #Astrophysics #Astrodon #Apep #Science #WolfRayet
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Well, here's some very exciting news!
I've been wanting to share this for a few months, but had to await the pre-print to drop.
A NEW GLITCH EVENT ON A MILLISECOND PULSAR HAS BEEN OBSERVED!
These events are extremely rare - only two others since MSPs were discovered.
Glitches are more commonly observed in the younger, canonical pulsar population as MSPs are much older and should have sorted out these types of disruptive events over their evolution.
That's what makes them so stable!
OR ... maybe they're not as stable as we once thought ...
This new paper predicts that we should see a glitch per MSP once every 400 years or so.
Glitches, profile changes .... as our instruments become more sensitive and datasets expand in time, we're starting to see that MSPs might not be as stable as we once thought ...
That's really important!
https://www.spaceaustralia.com/news/new-glitch-millisecond-pulsar
📸 NASA SVS
#SpaceAustralia #RadioAstronomy #Astrodon #Astrophysics #Science #Pulsars
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I am so very excited to share this story. Def. a career highlight!
Having the opportunity to sit down and have a one-on-one candid chat with the woman who discovered pulsars and changed the course of astrophysics, leading to me being extremely passionate about this topic and eventually moving into a career of pulsar astronomy. Yeah, this was big.
I hope you enjoy this interview, where Prof. Bell Burnell offers some personal insight into the history of the big discovery as well as the legacy of one of astronomy’s most iconic and influential figures.
What an honour it is to tell this story!
https://www.spaceaustralia.com/feature/interview-dame-professor-jocelyn-bell-burnell
📸 University of Cambridge
#SpaceAustralia #RadioAstronomy #Pulsars #JocelynBellBurnell #Astrophysics #Science #Astrodon
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Today was a good day. I got to meet one of my heroes.
Got to spend one-on-one time with the woman who discovered pulsars, Dame Prof. Jocelyn Bell Burnell, and interview her for a #SpaceAustralia article 🥺🥺🥺
And she signed a copy of my first-ever PhD paper which I will now have framed and remember forever! 😭😭😭
She is the most humble, nicest person. Just kindness, personified. And such an extremely interesting life - as you can imagine.
I'll publish my article and interview with her in about 12 hours from now (around 8:30am Sydney time) - so keep an eye out for it.
Thanks to Manisha Caleb who took this photo of us.
#Pulsars #RadioAstronomy #JocelynBellBurnell #Astrodon #Science #Astrophysics
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*** EXCITING NEWS ****
Dame Prof. Jocelyn Bell Burnell is coming to Sydney!
A few of us early-career scientists will be sharing our science and the stage with her.
BUT BUT BUT ... I've been granted a one-on-one interview with her for a #SpaceAustralia article!
What an honour!
I get to spend time / have a chat with the woman who discovered pulsars (the objects that I research) - and then be able to share that story with everyone.
It's a huge thing for me!
To be able to write the story, from first-hand account, of that of a Titan in my field of research / astronomy!
JBB will be in Sydney from next week and is also giving a public lecture at the University of Sydney.
Sadly, it looks like the event has already sold out for those who couldn't grab tickets, but keep an eye out for my SpaceAustralia article - will be released on 21st October!
#Pulsars #Science #RadioAstronomy #Astrophysics #JocelynBellBurnell #Astrodon
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A personal milestone ✅
I’m incredibly proud to share that my first-ever, first-author paper has been accepted for publication in the Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia (PASA)!
Last week I got to share this work with the pulsar community at the Sardinia Pulsar Conference too.
This project has been at the very heart of my PhD journey so far - a deep, four-year analysis into an unusual and still-mysterious profile change event in one of the most stable and widely used pulsars, PSR J1713+0747. It first appeared on my radar in early 2021 and, since then, it’s been a fascinating and humbling experience trying to unravel what really happened.
In pulsar timing, we rely on the long-term stability of millisecond pulsars to search for phenomena like nanohertz gravitational waves using pulsar timing arrays. But what happens when that stability falters?
This paper explores that very question - examining what changed on this millisecond pulsar, how the polarisation evolved, and what it might mean for the future of precision timing efforts as we prepare for a new generation of ultra-sensitive telescopes.
Seeing this work now out in the world - contributing to the scientific conversation is something I’ve dreamt of for a long time (the last notch to feel like I have fully moved into my science career!). I hope it helps our community better understand the complex and wild behaviour of these exotic stellar clocks.
Read my feature article on SpaceAustralia.com below - and if you have questions about the research, I’d love to chat!
https://www.spaceaustralia.com/feature/pulsar-threw-tantrum
📸 R. Mandow et al. 2025
#Pulsars #RadioAstronomy #Astrophysics #SpaceAustralia #Astrodon
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👀👀👀👀
Super neat preprint! 📡
A rare, hot-Jupiter exoplanet orbits the pulsar PSR J2322-2650.
Astronomers used #JWST to observe it across the full orbit, and found its atmosphere rich in carbon AND it having a strong westward wind! 🤯
So glad that people are using JWST to look at the pulsar planets, esp. since the pulsar is not going to be visible at the JWST wavelengths.
These things are orbiting so close to the pulsar that they are being ablated (spider pulsar!), and one side of them is gonna glow more than the other side.
The first exoplanets discovered were pulsar planets!
They are, however, extremely rare because to form a pulsar you need a supernova, and so things get messy.
Here's an article I wrote about them a little while back on #SpaceAustralia
https://www.spaceaustralia.com/news/science-talk-what-are-pulsar-planets
#Pulsars #Astrophysics #Science #Astrodon #RadioAstronomy #JWST
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So excited for this!
Over last few months I've been planning a special visit from Dr Katie Mack to #Sydney and #Melbourne!
Katie is a fantastic science communicator, renowned cosmologist and of course, author of her internationally acclaimed book, 'The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking)'.
We've got loads of events planned from public talks, science panels, and a queers in science event too.
Check out my article on #SpaceAustralia which lists them all, incl. ticket links. Many are already booking out fast!
https://www.spaceaustralia.com/news/dr-katie-mack-sydney-and-melbourne-july-2025
Big thanks to: University of Sydney, Sydney Ideas, OzGrav, Swinburne University, The Wheeler Centre, and Queers in Science who we've partnered with to make this all happen.
Hope to see you there, and def. bring the kids along to these!
Pass it on!
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An Emerging Risk To #RadioAstronomy 📡
Using a prototype SKA-Low instrument, a new analysis from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) has detected Starlink signals leaking into protected radio bands.Radio frequency interference from Starlink not only spans the narrowband intended emissions, but also broadband unintended emissions too, coming from propulsion and avionics.
This RFI is unregulated and affects key science goals.
Starlink appears in ~30% of all sky images.
This new study, from Dylan Grigg at Curtin University, is not the first to study the impacts of Starlink on #RadioAstronomy, but is the largest of its kind, and quantifies how this type of radio frequency interference - that comes from above - will impact the mega-science SKA project.
My latest piece for #SpaceAustralia
https://www.spaceaustralia.com/news/emerging-risk-radio-astronomy
📸 Astro_Work 🔭 (supplied) / Griggs et al. 2025
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Who Thought It Was a Good Idea to Let Me Drive a Lunar Rover?
They actually let me drive Australia’s Lunar Rover… I still don’t know why.
This all happened at AusSpace 2025 — Australia’s biggest space tech event — where I somehow found myself behind the controls of ROO-VER, the lunar rover being built to drive on the Moon.
Not only did I get to drive the thing, but I also sat down with one of the engineers building it... and then, somehow, ended up interviewing former Prime Minister Scott Morrison (?!). That’s not a sentence I ever thought I’d write.
This trip was insane, full of space tech, mad energy, a few surprises — and, of course, one very confused engineer trying to explain to me how to drive a robot made for the Moon.
So… did I crash it? Did Scott Morrison talk about space chickens? Did I get kicked out of AusSpace?
There’s only one way to find out 👇
#LunarRover #AusSpace2025 #SpaceAustralia #ROOVER #Engineering #MoonMission #SpaceExploration #Astroworx #ScottMorrison #Science #Tech #STEM #Innovation #FutureTech #Robotics #NASA #SpaceX #Australia #BehindTheScenes #Trending #YouTubeShorts #Vlog #CrazyIdeas #WildRide
YouTube: https://youtu.be/hrkSaIBE7dY
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Who Thought It Was a Good Idea to Let Me Drive a Lunar Rover?
They actually let me drive Australia’s Lunar Rover… I still don’t know why.
This all happened at AusSpace 2025 — Australia’s biggest space tech event — where I somehow found myself behind the controls of ROO-VER, the lunar rover being built to drive on the Moon.
Not only did I get to drive the thing, but I also sat down with one of the engineers building it... and then, somehow, ended up interviewing former Prime Minister Scott Morrison (?!). That’s not a sentence I ever thought I’d write.
This trip was insane, full of space tech, mad energy, a few surprises — and, of course, one very confused engineer trying to explain to me how to drive a robot made for the Moon.
So… did I crash it? Did Scott Morrison talk about space chickens? Did I get kicked out of AusSpace?
There’s only one way to find out 👇
#LunarRover #AusSpace2025 #SpaceAustralia #ROOVER #Engineering #MoonMission #SpaceExploration #Astroworx #ScottMorrison #Science #Tech #STEM #Innovation #FutureTech #Robotics #NASA #SpaceX #Australia #BehindTheScenes #Trending #YouTubeShorts #Vlog #CrazyIdeas #WildRide
YouTube: https://youtu.be/hrkSaIBE7dY
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Who Thought It Was a Good Idea to Let Me Drive a Lunar Rover?
They actually let me drive Australia’s Lunar Rover… I still don’t know why.
This all happened at AusSpace 2025 — Australia’s biggest space tech event — where I somehow found myself behind the controls of ROO-VER, the lunar rover being built to drive on the Moon.
Not only did I get to drive the thing, but I also sat down with one of the engineers building it... and then, somehow, ended up interviewing former Prime Minister Scott Morrison (?!). That’s not a sentence I ever thought I’d write.
This trip was insane, full of space tech, mad energy, a few surprises — and, of course, one very confused engineer trying to explain to me how to drive a robot made for the Moon.
So… did I crash it? Did Scott Morrison talk about space chickens? Did I get kicked out of AusSpace?
There’s only one way to find out 👇
#LunarRover #AusSpace2025 #SpaceAustralia #ROOVER #Engineering #MoonMission #SpaceExploration #Astroworx #ScottMorrison #Science #Tech #STEM #Innovation #FutureTech #Robotics #NASA #SpaceX #Australia #BehindTheScenes #Trending #YouTubeShorts #Vlog #CrazyIdeas #WildRide
YouTube: https://youtu.be/hrkSaIBE7dY
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Who Thought It Was a Good Idea to Let Me Drive a Lunar Rover?
They actually let me drive Australia’s Lunar Rover… I still don’t know why.
This all happened at AusSpace 2025 — Australia’s biggest space tech event — where I somehow found myself behind the controls of ROO-VER, the lunar rover being built to drive on the Moon.
Not only did I get to drive the thing, but I also sat down with one of the engineers building it... and then, somehow, ended up interviewing former Prime Minister Scott Morrison (?!). That’s not a sentence I ever thought I’d write.
This trip was insane, full of space tech, mad energy, a few surprises — and, of course, one very confused engineer trying to explain to me how to drive a robot made for the Moon.
So… did I crash it? Did Scott Morrison talk about space chickens? Did I get kicked out of AusSpace?
There’s only one way to find out 👇
#LunarRover #AusSpace2025 #SpaceAustralia #ROOVER #Engineering #MoonMission #SpaceExploration #Astroworx #ScottMorrison #Science #Tech #STEM #Innovation #FutureTech #Robotics #NASA #SpaceX #Australia #BehindTheScenes #Trending #YouTubeShorts #Vlog #CrazyIdeas #WildRide
YouTube: https://youtu.be/hrkSaIBE7dY
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Who Thought It Was a Good Idea to Let Me Drive a Lunar Rover?
They actually let me drive Australia’s Lunar Rover… I still don’t know why.
This all happened at AusSpace 2025 — Australia’s biggest space tech event — where I somehow found myself behind the controls of ROO-VER, the lunar rover being built to drive on the Moon.
Not only did I get to drive the thing, but I also sat down with one of the engineers building it... and then, somehow, ended up interviewing former Prime Minister Scott Morrison (?!). That’s not a sentence I ever thought I’d write.
This trip was insane, full of space tech, mad energy, a few surprises — and, of course, one very confused engineer trying to explain to me how to drive a robot made for the Moon.
So… did I crash it? Did Scott Morrison talk about space chickens? Did I get kicked out of AusSpace?
There’s only one way to find out 👇
#LunarRover #AusSpace2025 #SpaceAustralia #ROOVER #Engineering #MoonMission #SpaceExploration #Astroworx #ScottMorrison #Science #Tech #STEM #Innovation #FutureTech #Robotics #NASA #SpaceX #Australia #BehindTheScenes #Trending #YouTubeShorts #Vlog #CrazyIdeas #WildRide
YouTube: https://youtu.be/hrkSaIBE7dY
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A multiwavelength glimpse at a space oddity!
Astronomers from ICRAR have led a global team to reveal new insights into the growing population of Long-Period Transients.
What makes ASKAP J1832-0911 stand out from the rest of the Long-Period Transients is that, for the first time, coincident X-ray emission, along with radio emissions, have also been detected from such an object, thanks to the Chandra X-ray Observatory.
Check out my new article on #SpaceAustralia here:
https://www.spaceaustralia.com/feature/askap-and-chandra-catch-pulses-long-period-transient
📸 ICRAR
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Exciting Aussie Space Industry news! 🚀
Regulatory bodies have given permission for Gilmore Space Technologies to launch their orbital class Eris rocket from the Bowen spaceport this week!
Window: 0730-1730, 15 May
Eris will be our first orbital rocket for ~50 years, designed/built in Australia.
Eris is a 25m, three-stage rocket and these first flights will be test flights.
The Gilmore team have been working really hard for years and it’s exciting to see this all come together.
We’ve covered their progress on #SpaceAustralia: https://www.spaceaustralia.com/search?search_api_fulltext=GilmourLaunch won’t be streamed and no visitors but we’ll get a debrief on how it went once the test is completed from Gilmour Space.
📸 Gilmour Space Technologies
#SpaceExploration #Rockets #Australia #SpaceIndustry #Astrodon
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Your Smartphone Can Measure Solar Storms! ☀️🧲
Industry researchers found a way to provide better global coverage of what dynamics are occurring in the turbulent ionosphere - a region of Earth's atmosphere that is affected by the Sun's activity. They did this by tapping into GPS signals transmitted between smartphones and satellites.
Check out my latest #SpaceAustralia article here: https://www.spaceaustralia.com/news/your-smartphone-can-tell-us-about-solar-storms
📸 Kast, Smith, Google Research Software Engineers
#Geomagneticstorms #ionosphere #GPS #Astrodon #Science #Smartphones
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EVERYONE 🚨
The SKAO has released some short video of one of the SKA-Low stations (located in Australia) making a pulsar detection.
The SKA won’t be finished until around 2030s but stations will switch on so we’re heading into the early data collection stages.
If you’ve never heard of the SKA, it’s a new instrument being built in Australia and South Africa — and will be the most powerful radio telescope on our planet.
It’s going to change our view of the Universe, and has been decades in the making.
Read more: https://www.spaceaustralia.com/feature/road-leads-square-kilometre-array
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More exciting, unexplained science!
An emerging class of objects in #RadioAstronomy, mostly discovered in the last few years, still can't be explained.
Now, two new multi-wavelength studies might have answers.
Wrote about both these Aussie astronomy cases, and how they might be giving us those additional clues, to narrow in on what we are seeing.
Are these an entirely new object all together? OR, do we need to re-think our physics? Both scenarios are fascinating.
My next piece for #SpaceAustralia:
https://www.spaceaustralia.com/feature/multi-wavelength-views-new-galactic-radio-astronomy-mysteries
📸 N. Hurley-Walker /MWA / Curtin / ICRAR
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Some exciting results!
Using MeerKAT (super sensitive telescope array) the MeerKAT Pulsar Timing Array (MPTA) team have also found supporting evidence (with their assumptions and models) of the gravitational wave background (GWB) that other Pulsar Timing Arrays (PTAs) announced last year. This is further independent verification!
The Universe rattles!
I had a chat with Dr. Matt Miles from Swinburne Uni / OzGrav about his lead-author paper and results: https://www.spaceaustralia.com/feature/mpta-finds-evidence-gravitational-wave-background
But the fun doesn't stop there! An additional paper, co-authored by Rowina Nathan, used the MPTA data to make the most detailed map of the GWB, and found an intriguing anisotropy (though, statistically, could be insignificant). If it turns out to be true it shows the GWB is not isotropic, and we could be seeing a unique system or some unknown cosmology. Rowina wrote a piece in #SpaceAustralia about this too: https://www.spaceaustralia.com/feature/mapping-gravitational-wave-universe
Very cool science that take pulsars and turn the Galaxy into a detector.
📸 C. Knox/Swinburne/OzGrav/SARAO
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1 in 100 billion! (well, so far ....)
There is one, and ONLY one of these systems we know about. It features two neutron stars, both pulsars. In even better news, both of these pulsar beams shine in our direction - so we can study the light of one as it passes through the powerful magnetic field of the other.
That's what Dr Marcus Lower from Swinburne University of Technology and his team did - they used the extremely sensitive MeerKAT telescope in South Africa to study the light, and polarization of one pulsar's beam as it passed through the magnetic field of the other.
This is extreme astrophysics at its best.
There is very much likely more double pulsars out there, but maybe only one beams at us, or none beam at us.
So, this is the only one we have so far ....
My latest for #SpaceAustralia
https://www.spaceaustralia.com/feature/unveiling-extreme-physics-galaxys-only-double-pulsar-system
📸M. Kramer/MPIfR
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NASA’s latest audacious planetary mission, Europa Clipper, has launched and started its five-and-a-half-year journey to the Jovian system. The target of this mission is the small, icy moon Europa, a world that offers a tantalising possibility that it may be habitable.
Dr. Helen Maynard-Casely examines the path that led to the agency’s largest interplanetary spacecraft to date, and how insights from four historical missions built the case for studying this moon in particular.
https://www.spaceaustralia.com/news/europa-clipper-sailing-new-discoveries-habitability
#SpaceAustralia #EuropaClipper #Astrodon #SpaceExploration #Europa
📸 New Horizons/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute
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Very excited to see a southern hemisphere photographer and photo take out this win!
Also, we really need to appreciate our magnetic field more IMO. Not only does it protect us, it plays a role in us seeing these beautiful curtains of light!
Nice write-up here from Helen Manyard-Casely for #SpaceAustralia about Larryn Rae’s spectacular shot of the red aurora which took out the best in category at the Astronomy Photography of the Year awards - first for Aurora Australis.
https://www.spaceaustralia.com/news/aurora-australis-has-its-moment
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One of the most common questions I get is "What's the best entry-level telescope I should buy?"
People often see the beautiful images we share online from the cosmos, but traditionally, #astrophotography has been expensive, complex and requires a commitment to a steep learning curve.
Now, smart telescopes are breaking down these barriers, making the sky more accessible to wider audiences.
I've got both the Seestar S50 and the traditional setup and did an astrophotography comparison, so wrote up my thoughts in this #SpaceAustralia article: https://www.spaceaustralia.com/news/democratising-astrophotograpy-seestar-s50
With Christmas around the corner - don't waste your money on cheaper alternatives, the Seestar S50 is the best entry-level telescope for any person - esp. those with zero prior knowledge of astrophotography or astronomy.
Check out my compared pics below.
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👀👀👀
A new long-period radio transient! The population grows!
GLEAM-X J 0704−37 has a period of 2.9 hours (longest period yet detected!) and is linearly polarized ... and ... it likely has an identified companion (an M3 Dwarf).
Discovered in the archival low-frequency data from
the MWA.https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.15757
The reason I am excited about these is because we don't know what they are as yet! Pulsars have periods that are much smaller (faster rotators) than these things.
So we are seeing a new population of slower rotators emerging. Read more about it here: https://www.spaceaustralia.com/index.php/feature/population-strange-slow-rotating-astrophysical-objects-grows
Also chatted with @stilgherrian about this in the recent pod if you prefer to listen: https://stilgherrian.com/edict/00228/
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*** SCIENCE GOODIE*** 📡
A few weeks back wrote an article about the news of the Intermediate-Mass Black Hole inferred at the centre of Omega Cent. and wrote how we can use millisecond pulsars to really zone in on it.
https://www.spaceaustralia.com/news/omega-centurais-monster-black-hole
Well, a team did this & say it might NOT be an IMBH!
https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.00939
This is very cool and I hope it evolves into a fun, science battle!
📷 ESO
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I think it is 'bout time we declared today (Aug 6) International Pulsars Day since today was the day that Dame Prof. Jocelyn Bell Burnell (aka Queen JBB) discovered them!
I write about #Pulsars a lot (as it is my field of study) so here are a few #SpaceAustralia links if you wish to read more about them:
https://www.spaceaustralia.com/feature/55-years-pulsar-science
https://www.spaceaustralia.com/index.php/feature/closing-earths-closest-millisecond-pulsar
https://www.spaceaustralia.com/index.php/news/science-talk-what-are-pulsar-planets
https://www.spaceaustralia.com/index.php/news/catching-spider-pulsar-act
I've also included a couple of graphics to celebrate (and in the next post too) that you are more than welcome to use with creditation.
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Astronomers: Omega Centauri - a massive globular cluster orbiting our Galaxy - likely has a 20,000 solar mass black hole in its core.
The globular cluster, which contains approx. 10 million stars is thought to be the remnant core of a former dwarf galaxy, now cannibalised by the Milky Way.
These new findings might provide the 'missing link' between stellar-mass black holes and supermassive black holes.
I had a chat with The University of Queensland Dr Holger Baumgardt who played a direct role in providing the theoretical modelling and investigations into the stellar velocities around the monster black hole. My latest for #SpaceAustralia
https://www.spaceaustralia.com/news/omega-centurais-monster-black-hole
📷 ESO / ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. Häberle (MPIA)
#GlobularClusters #BlackHoles #Astronomy #Astrodon #Astrophysics
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New Reads! 👀
Australian astronomers have used Murriyang (Parkes radio telescope) data to make the most precise measurements of the nearest millisecond pulsar to Earth.
This new data was then used by researchers using the NICER telescope aboard the International Space Station to help further constrain the mass, radius and equations of state of matter of the brightest millisecond pulsar in the sky.
Wrote a little article outlining these new results on #SpaceAustralia
https://www.spaceaustralia.com/feature/closing-earths-closest-millisecond-pulsar
📷 C. Knox/OzGrav/SwinburneUni
#RadioAstronomy #XRayAstronomy #Astrophysics #Astrodon #Pulsars
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Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are millisecond duration bursts of radio waves that travel across the Universe - and to date, we still are unsure what causes them (though, we have theories).
They were discovered in 2007 when looking for archival data collected by Parkes 📡
The three senior science authors who led the discovery, Duncan Lorima, Maura McLaughlin and Matthew Bailes have now published an overview of FRBs, and its great!
So nice to see undergrad student Ash Narkevic credited with their role in this huge discovery in science too!
Whilst we don't know what causes FRBs, we can use them as probes to 'weigh' the Universe with them! Wrote about this here: https://www.spaceaustralia.com/index.php/feature/we-found-it-fast-radio-bursts-shed-light-missing-matter
Read the FRB review article (Lorimer, McLaughlin, Bailes) here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10509-024-04322-6
📸 Lorimer et al. 2024 / J-P Macquart
#SpaceAustralia #FastRadioBursts #RadioAstronomy #Astrophysics #Astrodon
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Are astronomers on the brink of discovering a new celestial object?
Recently, astronomers have been discovering an emerging population of astrophysical objects that resemble neutron stars, but with longer rotation periods. This unique population is challenging our understanding of how these objects form and how they emit radiation.
I got to speak with this exciting new paper’s lead author, Dr Manisha Caleb from The University of Sydney, about this remarkable discovery, which was first found by CSIRO's #ASKAP telescope located in WA.
What if we are on the precipice of something big here? These are def. very exciting times for geeks like me!
https://www.spaceaustralia.com/feature/population-strange-slow-rotating-astrophysical-objects-grows
#SpaceAustralia #Astrophysics #NeutronStars #Astrodon #RadioAstronomy
📸 Carl Knowx/OzGrav
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It's been a few months since I've done some proper science writing for #SpaceAustralia (Phd Lyfe) but thought this new paper drop was interesting to write about!
Australian astronomers have used radio waves to look deep into the heart of the Globular Cluster 47 Tucanae & found an undiscovered radio source.
The newly found radio source could potentially be the first evidence of an intermediate-mass black hole in the core of a Globular Cluster, or a pulsar that is real close to the centre.
Both cases = good science labs for us!!!
https://www.spaceaustralia.com/news/radio-source-heart-47-tuc
📸 Paduano et al & NASA/ESA Hubble
#Astrophysics #Astrodon #Science #RadioAstronomy #GlobularClusters #Pulsars #BlackHoles
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DYK that the general public, you and I, have access to JWST images (within days of their release)?!
And you can download and process them?
I just colour processed the Ring Nebula, and holy hell, how is this a real image?! 🤯🤯🤯
Will write a blog on #SpaceAustralia this weekend on how YOU can also do this - super easy and no tech skills required.
📸 JWST/STScI/ESA/NASA/MJ Barlow et al.
🎛️ NIRCAM (F300M/F335M)
#JWST #Nebula #InfraredAstronomy #space #Astrodon #RingNebula