Michele Bannister

@astrokiwi.bsky.social

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Planetary astronomer @UCNZ: envisioning worlds from here and elsewhere, in a dark & glorious sky. Asteroid (10463). Pākehā; she

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Here is an adorable project: all these 🧪 PhD acknowledgements, lovingly reviewed. Rather touched that the Shoemaker-Levy 9 reference in mine made it in here; & just in time for the SL9 anniversary 🔭

The unexpected poetry of PhD acknowledgementsscience.anu.edu.au After reading hundreds and hundreds of PhD theses, we accidentally discovered how to write the perfect PhD acknowledgement: it's a kind of poetry.

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Michele Bannister

So Trinity exploded, Apollo 11 launched, and the first Shoemaker-Levy 9 fragment hit, all on the same date of the calendar. Happy 16 July, everyone, and may you enjoy many more.

Seeing this at Sydney Observatory is one of the key reasons I ended up in astronomy 😍🔭

30 years ago today, we waited for the crash of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 into the planet Jupiter. I was on the front lines as the leader of the Hubble Space Telescope 🔭 team to watch Jupiter's spectacular response. It was a life-altering experience for me. www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGm7...

Shoemaker-Levy 9: Interplanetary Impactwww.youtube.com Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 left an indelible mark on our understanding of the cosmos when it collided with Jupiter. Discover the significance of this event and t...

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Michele Bannister

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My Birdverse novella YOKE OF STARS is officially out today!! tachyonpublications.com/product/yoke... Please spread the word if you are so moved.

Yoke of Stars - Tachyon Publicationstachyonpublications.com “Haunting, nuanced, and hopeful, Yoke of Stars is essential reading.” —Izzy Wasserstein, author of These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart In the School of Assassins, Stone Orphan waits for a first ...

Been in Oxford three days and completely serendipitously have run into both one of my PhD supervisors and a friend from grad school. All of us live on different continents.

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Michele Bannister

Secretarybird vs lappet-faced vulture!!! I just got back from a reporting trip to the Masai Mara. These were two of the birds I most wanted to see and never did I imagine I’d see one kicking the other in its lappety face. (Also, hello. Get ready for a month of Kenyan wildlife pics.)

Ok, after 36 hours of travel I am in a pub with an elderflower IPA. As per requests from folks, this invokes the Rant About Hedges. 🧵

Enjoying reacquainting myself with the English countryside. Happy memories of exploring this part of the world a few years ago. Such a summer place

The strangeness of the green lush UK railway verges in summer is how everything looks weed-covered to my eyes. All those plants are weeds in NZ.

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Michele Bannister

In writing my plenary* for next week's UK National Astronomy Meeting, I checked for the latest image of @vrubinobs.bsky.social - a breathtaking sunset! And the primary mirror installation is scheduled for next month 🥳 🔭🧪 *talk will feature a snazzy pre-recorded virtual-me - blame the LongCovid

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Have some night cosmos #flowerreport

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Michele Bannister

The REBOUND workshop was great! There's a party goin' on right here An integration to last throughout the years So bring your good times and your laughter too We gonna integrate and party with you rebound.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

Welcome to REBOUND - REBOUNDrebound.readthedocs.io

Started day with brain not working (goldfish memory is a pain) and ended with cheerful optimism about three ongoing papers. Research is fun

"it is incumbent on universities to proactively take steps to support or protect their academic staff engaged in public debate." 🧪

It took me a while to find legal opinion on the importance of Siouxsie’s case against the UoA VC but this one seems rather useful for us all to absorb, given current discourse: www.sciencemediacentre.co.nz/2024/07/08/w...

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Michele Bannister

My thoughts on @siouxsiew.bsky.social v the University of Auckland. The judgment, which finds in favour of Siouxsie, strengthens academic freedom in New Zealand, but highlights problems with Auckland's management that its VC seems reluctant to accept. thespinoff.co.nz/society/10-0...

The Siouxsie Wiles judgment should be a wake-up call for New Zealand’s universitiesthespinoff.co.nz 'The fact she had to take her university to court to force it to take her concerns seriously should trigger some serious soul-searching.'

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Michele Bannister

📚 #NZ Hot dammit – I may now put in some holds 😊 Christchurch/Ōtautahi city council libraries have removed fees on holds. (And, yes, of course I zoomed in to see what books were in that pile…… 😀) newsline.ccc.govt.nz/news/story/l...

Library holds now freenewsline.ccc.govt.nz Library customers with adult membership can now access holds free of charge.

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Michele Bannister

Really grateful to the @smcnz.bsky.social for pulling together links to the Employment Court judgement on my case and commentary from various experts. Check it out! www.sciencemediacentre.co.nz/2024/07/08/w...

Wiles v. University of Auckland Employment Court judgment released - Expert Reactionwww.sciencemediacentre.co.nz Associate Professor Siouxsie Wiles' employer breached its contractual obligations to protect her health and safety in the wake of harassment she experienced as a result of her work, an Employment Cour...

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Michele Bannister

Mōrena whanau, we're having a run of great days here at the moment, really good for the soul.

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Oh hey y’all guess what I have a new book coming out in March 2025 & you can pre-order it if you want! You can do so from anywhere, I recommend your local indie, but meanwhile here’s Macmillan’s link us.macmillan.com/books/978125...

Honoured the labour of Siouxsie & others in the court case the way I can: an scour of uni website for relevant pages/policies of how support would be enacted. Wrote email. May things be better

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Michele Bannister

In the early Twitter days science types would show up and post when they had a new paper. Wonderful! But real talk y'all: papers take ages to write. So, post about other people's stuff! You read a paper and it was cool! Or you had a question! Or it tied to this other thing! Tag the authors!

Science folks, one thing about bluesky is there's way less 2 way interaction between people, especially on science posts, than there was on old Twitter. I'm not sure why that is, but it's something I'm keen to encourage. I'd love to hear your thoughts 🧪

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After 4 gruelling years, my dear friend Siouxsie is vindicated: her Covid-19 commentary was essential & her employer should have protected her. These particular parts of the ruling has deep meaning for me:

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What a day! Statement from me about today’s outcome of my employment court case: drive.google.com/file/d/1hR_n...

Siouxsie Wiles statement.pdfdrive.google.com

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Michele Bannister

You had me at “exceedingly dry in-jokes for recherché subcultures”

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The Wiles v University of Auckland judgement is out. Wiles was successful on the key issues. In particular, the Court finds that her commentary *was* part of her job and that the University's H&S response was "problematic" www.employmentcourt.govt.nz/assets/Docum...

www.employmentcourt.govt.nz

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Michele Bannister

This is important news. It clearly sets an expectation that employers will care for staff who face threats as part of their jobs, and it explicitly calls out how cruel it was for Auckland University to effectively punish Wiles for her own harassment. www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/3503...

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Michele Bannister

🇳🇿 The Save Science Coalition is holding an event tonight at 6PM in Wellington. See details and link to live stream below. Read the first report "Science under threat - Cuts to public science finding and jobs in Aotearoa New Zealand" also at the link below. Please boost the signal on this! 💯

Save Science Coalition publishes report discussing the impact of cuts in the science sectorte-ara-paerangi.community Genomics for Aotearoa New Zealand is a member of the Save Science Coalition, which is a group of 23 unions and scientific societies who have a collective interest in a well-funded and well-functioning...

Spent first day back at work decompressing, checking in with students on how they found big intense conference and Ideas/Next Steps, and getting ready to host a visiting TNO colleague. The TNO party continues!

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Michele Bannister

Dress like a chief scientist.