Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans

@astroroyalscot.bsky.social

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland, Professor of Astrophysics, Edinburgh University. Director of the German Centre for Cosmological Lensing, RUB. #LongCovid

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Cosmology Plenary talk at the UK National Astronomy Meeting complete! One bonus of making a pre-record is that I can also share it here (target audience professional astronomers but savvy astro-enthusiasts may also enjoy) 🔭👩‍🔬 🍿: media.ed.ac.uk/media/NAM+20...

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

Fab #sciam story on space junk and what to do if it falls on your land. "SpaceX has provisional permission..to launch.. 42,000 Starlink satellites. Assuming each one.. lasts 5 years.. SpaceX will be [de-orbiting] burning up ~1 satellite per hour."😮 🔭🛰️🧪 📖: www.scientificamerican.com/article/spac...

A highly niche post for the handful of fellow Billy Bragg fans on the site: today is St Swithin's Day! Wishing you 40 days of metaphorical sunshine not rain. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bl0c...

Billy Bragg - St Swithin's Daywww.youtube.com 'St Swithin's Day' from Billy Bragg's 1987 compilation album 'Back To Basics', re-released by Cooking Vinyl in 1993. The album collates the releases 'Life's ...

👇A wide-ranging interview, on dark matter, dark energy, @vrubinobs.bsky.social, our Scottish Youth Telescope Network, #scicomm, inequality and Long Covid. “Science not talked about is science not done as far as I'm concerned” 🧪🔭👩‍🔬 By Sarah McArthur: www.edinburghinquirer.co.uk/p/if-you-can...

"If you can't solve a problem, build a bigger telescope..."www.edinburghinquirer.co.uk The Edinburgh science star battling Long Covid to help us understand the universe - and ourselves - a little better

Amazing courage and bravery shown by Dianna Cowern: 3M YouTuber PhysicsGirl. Yesterday she live-streamed her day to show the world what severe LongCovid/MECFS looks like & fundraise for research of this life-changing disease (which I have a milder form of) 🙏🙏Dianne🧪 www.youtube.com/live/v8HWt9g...

Physics Girl LIVE with long Covidwww.youtube.com Dianna is Live streaming a day in her life as someone suffering from long COVID and ME/CFS. The purpose of the Livestream is to raise money and awareness for...

🪼Jellyfish Graveyard 🪼 Portobello beach, Edinburgh 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

🔊Sisters across the UK - it's voting day! Get out and vote. Exercise the right that our great-great-(great) grandmas fought so hard for. #UKElection Suffrage procession, Princes Street, Edinburgh, 1909 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿"A gude cause maks a strong arm" 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿"Better say that it is than it was or it will be"

I have just watched a video of a jumping bloodsucking leech. Not sure that was the best way to start my day 😳 🎥: youtube.com/shorts/wk9iP... ℹ️: www.scientificamerican.com/article/thes...

These Bloodsucking Leeches Jump like Striking Cobraswww.scientificamerican.com Scientists observed leeches jumping like striking snakes, resolving long-standing debate

Has anyone out in BlueSky academia looked into incorporating AI programming assistants in their comp-sci courses? My excellent chum @joezuntz.bsky.social is re-designing the Edinburgh physics computer programming course to do just that (see 🧵👇). All thoughts/advice most welcome! 🧪🔭💻👩‍🔬

I'm in the middle of a fascinating teaching project: designing a second course for physics students in programming and computer modelling, but incorporating and allowing use of AI assistants in their work.

Well I never thought I'd see the day when the Sunday Times (centre-right) endorsed the Labour Party (centre-left). #UKElection In other news our beach is covered in 1000's of see-through baby #jellyfish ....surely a joke in there about the Tory's also being dead in the water....?

Door slams...the 11yo is home from school "Nice day?" "Yeah, cool, played football with the First Minister" 🤔 "He was talking politics on the beach, so we challenged him to a game" "Super nice guy - not great at footy though" 📷: Inverness Courier

The re-entry capsule carrying the lunar sample has successfully separated from the Chang'e-6 orbiter and is falling down to Earth! 🧪🔭🛰️ 🍿: English language live feed from the China Global Television Network: www.youtube.com/live/WLmKmo5...

Excited about the Chang'e-6 lunar probe landing in Inner Mongolia in the coming hours? 🔭🧪🛰️ 👇fab paper on what they hope to learn: age of the largest impact crater on the moon, composition of the lunar mantle (does it match Earth?), evidence of volcanic activity....🤓 www.cell.com/the-innovati...

Geological context of Chang’e-6 landing area and implications for sample analysiswww.cell.com The research on the returned samples can provide ground truth for the study of the geological evolution history of the Moon. However, previous missions all collected samples from the nearside of the M...

Live: Special coverage of Chang'e-6 lunar probe’s returnwww.youtube.com The Chang’e-6 mission has entered the final stretch of its 53-day quest to collect samples from the far side of the moon. Join CGTN’s special live coverage o...

To my clinically vulnerable & LongCovid friends: tighten your masks! About a 1/3rd of my friends/fam have covid right now 😭 And to anyone with "hay fever", who has never had hay fever before: there is a good chance it's not hay fever. Rest and recuperate!

UK Election campaigning hits "silly season" with #Labour stating "the roads have more potholes than the moon has craters" 🧐 I set the record straight on BBC 'More or Less': way, way more craters than potholes. Still great if Labour is going to fix them tho! 🧪🔭 📻 www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Physics in action! Sunlight broken up by the shiny grooves on the rim of my new e-bike wheel 🌈 🥰

🔊Your chance to officially name one of Earth's quasi-moons! Sadly the name has to be a mythological, so "Moony-McMoonface" is already out of the running. Get your thoughts in, deadline: 30th Sept 24. 🧪🔭 ℹ️: woobox.com/wc2qxd

Name a Quasi-Moon Contest!woobox.com Radiolab is partnering with the International Astronomical Union to launch a global naming contest for one of Earth’s quasi-moons! Submit one of your own (now through September). It’s your chance to m...

A local school is recording their own version of this planet rap this week - they wanted to "fact-check" it with me. I love it! Full marks to the StoryBots. #scicomm 🔭👩‍🔬 www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHAq...

Outer Space: "We are the Planets," The Solar System Song by StoryBots | Netflix Jrwww.youtube.com Let the StoryBots DJ "revolve" it with sweet beats as the rapping sun and planets give you their spin on the whole solar system. The StoryBots are curious little creatures who live beneath our screens, offering a world of learning and fun for kids. The Emmy Award-winning “Ask the StoryBots” is now streaming on Netflix! Lyrics: We can see the whole solar system from here. I think we can hear it from here, too. ALL PLANETS (CHORUS) We are the planets of the solar system Different sizes for every one The music never ends We are such good friends And we all orbit the sun SUN Here comes the Sun rapping first on this track, from the beginning I'm the center of the solar system, planets be spinning Around me, so hot, I'm roasting, ya see? Now I pass the mic to the planet closest to me MERCURY Mercury! The smallest planet, small as Earth's Moon I get super hot and cold and I spin very slow VENUS I'm Venus! I've got mountains and volcanoes that spray I'm the same size as Earth but spin the opposite way EARTH Yeah, I'm Earth, I'm the home to every boy and girl (Sung by Stars) Such a beautiful, beautiful world MARS I'm Mars, the red planet, I've got deserts and ice And I've got two moons - nice - that's like one moon, twice! JUPITER I'm Jupiter! The biggest planet, I'm humungous, gargantuan I spin the fastest, rap the fastest, plus I'm handsome, BAM SON! SATURN Oh please, I'm Saturn, check out my beautiful rings Made up of billions of rocks, dust, and other things URANUS I'm Uranus, I say that with pride, okay, I lied I'm embarrassed 'cause I'm the only planet lying on its side NEPTUNE I'm Neptune, I'm cold, dark, windy and mysterious I'm very stormy, so bring an umbrella - I'm serious ALL PLANETS (CHORUS) We're the planets in the solar system Different sizes for every one The music never ends We are such good friends And we all orbit the sun Well, we are done exploring the solar system. I am thirsty. Let's explore the rest of the Milky Way galaxy.

Astro-friends, how did I not know about the Tokyo Atacama Observatory (TAO)? A brand new 6.5m optical/IR telescope just opened at an altitude of 5640 m in the Atacama Desert. It's so high/dry there the IR imaging & spectroscopy becomes super efficient 😮🥳🔭 ℹ️: www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/focus/en/pre...

Analogies for Quantum physics:"wave function collapse". Is this genius or misleading?🤔 "imagine..speaking to a crowd...In the quantum world..as soon as one person [hears], the sound wave would concentrate [in that]..ear, & no one else would hear it"🧪⚛️ www.scientificamerican.com/article/quan...

Quantum Physics Isn't as Weird as You Think. It's Weirderwww.scientificamerican.com Quantum physics’ oddities seem less surprising if you stop thinking of atoms as tennis balls, and instead more like waves pushing through water

For your timeline: the most beautiful bunch of flowers courtesy of the fabulous @astroalexamon.bsky.social who is visiting from Princeton 🥰

Expectation management for the 4am Planetary Parade: Saturn & Mars clear to your eye 🥳 Neptune & Uranus needs a🔭 Good luck for Jupiter & Mercury in the glare of the rising sun. “I’m not going to lie,” Dr Bloomer said. “I’m probably going to be asleep.” 👍🧪 www.theguardian.com/science/arti...

Six planets to appear in alignment next week in rare celestial paradewww.theguardian.com Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus will be visible but viewers may need some equipment to see them clearly

If you want to hear Jasper Wall talking about how his work helped resolve the Big Bang vs Steady State controversy, here is a fab recording of him in 2011 📺: www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJx7... 🔭 There is also a complete obituary for Jasper telescoper.blog/2024/06/01/r... 🙏 @telescoper.bsky.social

Sad news: Prof. Jasper Wall, titan and pioneer of radio astronomy, passed away on the 28th March 2024. He created the 1st large-scale radio surveys to catalogue black hole quasars across the Universe and showed how to statistically analyse them to infer the cosmological model of our Universe. 🔭🧵

Jasper Wall - Eddington, Ryle & Hoyle: How a major discovery was lost in confusion and noisewww.youtube.com Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by the Physics and Astronomy Department. The Steady-State vs Big-Bang controversy of th...

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿Scotland's Shetland Islands: remote rugged scenery peppered with windswept Shetland ponies? Yes! But also so much more👇 In Dec23, SaxaVord on Unst became the 1st licensed vertical launch spaceport in UK and Western Europe. Check out last week's 1st hot fire test 🛰️ 🔭🧪🥳 ℹ️: youtu.be/Jw80qBV7LBc

RFA starts hot fire campaign of its first stageyoutu.be First fire! We have successfully kicked off the hot fire campaign for our first stage at SaxaVord Spaceport. We hot-fired a total of four Helix engines, igniting one by one at four second interval. All engines ran simultaneously for 8 seconds with a total hot-fire duration of 20 seconds. The test ran flawlessly through start-up, steady-state and shutdown. With this hot fire, we were able to demonstrate that we can nominally operate and control our first stage and all its systems, as well as a cluster of Helix engines. RFA and our incredible team are marching steadfastly on towards our first test flight, not only in Scotland but also in Augsburg, Portugal and Sweden. Special thanks to our partners at SaxaVord Spaceport for their support at all levels.

The UK starts the day ear-wormed by the 90's classic dance anthem from Physics Celebrity Brian Cox's boy band. Felt momentarily sorry for the PM as the water dripped down his back, and then thought 'nah.... 🤣 #GeneralElection www.theguardian.com/politics/art...

Things can only get wetter: D:Ream song drowns out Sunak’s damp election announcementwww.theguardian.com PM makes announcement to sound of song synonymous with Labour’s 1997 election landslide

For 22yrs I've been dreaming about this Guinness World Record beating 3200MP camera for the Rubin Observatory. Beyond excited to see it reaching its new Chilean home, the summit on Cerro Pachón @vrubinobs.bsky.social 🧪🔭 ℹ️ rubinobservatory.org/news/camera-... 📺 www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hwyj...

LSST Camera Arrives at Rubin Observatorywww.youtube.com This video documents the journey of the LSST Camera from SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California to Rubin Observatory on the summit of Cerro Pachó...

Sad news: the stay of execution for Dundee's Mills Observatory didn't last long. The council want to save the £40k yearly running costs. What a loss for Scotland's Youth 💔. Will a community collective form to take on this historic public observatory? 🤞 🔭🧪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 ℹ️: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

😮 A cubic mm segment of a still living human brain, neurons coloured by size. Some neurons made up to 50 connections with each other! Not my field, but what a great example of AI doing good (used to line-up the 5000 brain slice images together to form the 3D map).🧪 ℹ️: www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Cubic millimetre of brain mapped in spectacular detailwww.nature.com Google scientists have modelled a fragment of the human brain at nanoscale resolution, revealing cells with previously undiscovered features. Google scientists have modelled a fragment of the human br...