Author | Lightnews

Luca Di Mascolo 🟥 @lucadimascolo.bsky.social · Mar 19

Groningen, yesterday.
🟥 #OrganizeTheRUG

March from the Zernike campus to Groningen city center, part of the university strike against the proposed budget cuts to higher education.
The photo depicts the front line of the march, with people holding a red banner saying “Kabinet sloopt hoger onderwijs”, that means “Cabinet demolishes higher education”

Reposted by Luca Di Mascolo 🟥

Simons Observatory @simonsobservatory.org · Mar 17

We have first light on our Large Aperture Telescope! www.simonsfoundation.org/2025/03/17/s...
After installing our mirrors over the last few weeks, we have started looking at the sky. We are still tuning the telescope, but we can already make maps of objects in the sky, like Mars. ☄️🔭🧪

A green dot (Mars) surrounded by a white ring on a purple background. A faint white x pattern is visible

One of the mirrors being lowered by crane inside the white box that constitutes the LAT housing. Behind it is the barren landscape of the Atacama desert

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Luca Di Mascolo 🟥 @lucadimascolo.bsky.social · Mar 17

🧪 Zernike program

=====================

10:00-11:00
Coffee and banner making in front of Foodcourt

11:00-12:30
March towards the city center

12:30-16:00
Lunch, speeches, and a strike fair at Grote Markt

=====================

Spread the word and bring your colleagues!

🟥 #OrganizeTheRUG

Luca Di Mascolo 🟥 @lucadimascolo.bsky.social · Mar 17

Join us tomorrow, March 18th, for the strike of @unigroningen.bsky.social and Hanze University of Applied Sciences against the annually increasing budget cuts on higher education!

Check the full program here: organizetherug.wordpress.com/strikes/

🟥 #OrganizeTheRUG

🧪

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Luca Di Mascolo 🟥 @lucadimascolo.bsky.social · Mar 12

If you are in Groningen, the protest action will take place next Tuesday March 18th.
More info here: organizetherug.wordpress.com/strikes/
🟥 #OrganizeTheRUG
🧪

Strikes! / Stakingen!

We gaan staken! / We’re going on strike! (ENG version below) Om ons te verzetten tegen de voorgenomen bezuinigingen op de universiteiten hebben vakbonden AOb en FNV officieel een stakingstraject go…

organizetherug.wordpress.com

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Luca Di Mascolo 🟥 @lucadimascolo.bsky.social · Mar 12

Budget cuts are not "just" a US issue.
The Dutch government has planned budget cuts for over half a billion euros from higher education. This will lead to a disastrous deterioration of the quality of education and research.

And that's why we are striking! 🟥

🧪

flyer saying:
Stop the cuts in higher education. Join the Strike!
Leiden March 10th 2025
Utrecht March 11th 2025
Nijmegen March 13th 2025
Amsterdam March 17th 2025
Groningen March 18th 2025
More cities will follow

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Luca Di Mascolo 🟥 @lucadimascolo.bsky.social · Mar 10

A small experiment for making #herakoi more accessible.

And now you can take your blip-blop sonification machine everywhere!

🐡

Michele Ginolfi @micginolfi.bsky.social · Mar 10

🎶 SonicWeb – An herakoi spin-off! 🎨✨

Turn any image into music! No real-time hand tracking with AI this time, just an easy and fun way to explore colors and sounds using your mouse (on your pc) or touch (on your phone). Enjoy, and create your melodies! 🔊

Link to try it in the comment..

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Luca Di Mascolo 🟥 @lucadimascolo.bsky.social · Mar 6

Another round of AtLAST Forum is happening today @ 14UTC.
If you don't know what to do during your lunch break and are curious about last month's Forum, go check the Forum playlist on the @atlastdesign.bsky.social YouTube channel: tinyurl.com/atlast-forum

📡 ☄️ 🔭 🧪

Atacama Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope @atlastdesign.bsky.social · Mar 3

The next AtLAST forum is planned for this coming Thursday March 6th at 14 UTC. Talks: 1) telescope design, 2) the science shaping the design, followed by an open discussion. For details and zoom link check www.atlast.uio.no/news-and-eve...

AtLAST Forum - March 2025 - AtLAST

Welcome to the AtLAST Forum, a platform for the community to exchange ideas and opinions about the AtLAST project and anything related to it.

www.atlast.uio.no

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Luca Di Mascolo 🟥 @lucadimascolo.bsky.social · Feb 27

Kudos to Gabriella Di Gennaro for this.
Finding radio haloes in distant galaxy clusters is a tricky, but not impossible business. And indeed, these are galaxy clusters observed when the Universe was only around half of its age!

#extragalactic
🧪🔭

Andrea Botteon @andreabotteon.bsky.social · Feb 27

Hunting for radio halos at high-z, by DiGennaro+
Diffuse emission is searched in a sample of 56 MaDCoWS galaxy clusters at 0.78 < z < 1.53. Possible halo-like diffuse emission is reported at 144 MHz in 5 of them
arxiv.org/abs/2502.19273

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Luca Di Mascolo 🟥 @lucadimascolo.bsky.social · Feb 27

@bot.astronomy.blue signup

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Reposted by Luca Di Mascolo 🟥

ESO @eso.org · Jan 10

The skies above Paranal are at risk from a proposed industrial megaproject.

This would be located in the vicinity of ESO's Observatory. If constructed, it would irreparably impact astronomical observations.

Read more: https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso2501/
🔭

📷 ESO/P. Horálek

World's darkest and clearest skies at risk from industrial megaproject

On December 24th, AES Andes, a subsidiary of the US power company AES Corporation, submitted a project for a massive industrial complex for environmental impact assessment. This complex threatens the pristine skies above ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile’s Atacama Desert, the darkest and clearest of any astronomical observatory in the world [1]. The industrial megaproject is planned to be located just 5 to 11 kilometres from telescopes at Paranal, which would cause irreparable damage to astronomical observations, in particular due to light pollution emitted throughout the project’s operational life. Relocating the complex would save one of Earth's last truly pristine dark skies.

www.eso.org

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Luca Di Mascolo 🟥 @lucadimascolo.bsky.social · Feb 6

Happening now!
🔭🧪

Atacama Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope @atlastdesign.bsky.social · Feb 5

Do not miss the first AtLAST Forum tomorrow 6 Feb at 8 UTC. This is a platform for the community to exchange ideas and opinions about AtLAST and anything related to it. There will be two talks followed by a plenary discussion session, see: www.atlast.uio.no/news-and-eve... 🔭🧪

AtLAST Forum - February 2025 - AtLAST

Welcome to the AtLAST Forum, a platform for the community to exchange ideas and opinions about the AtLAST project and anything related to it.

www.atlast.uio.no

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Luca Di Mascolo 🟥 @lucadimascolo.bsky.social · Jan 30

blue (da ba dee da ba di)

Luca Di Mascolo 🟥 @lucadimascolo.bsky.social · Jan 17

Maybe it's just time to start rethinking the way we publish papers?
Journals like @ojastro.bsky.social and Open Research Europe are free and open access – and the latter uses an open (imo, very interesting) approach to peer review.

🔭🧪

Emily Hunt @emily.space · Jan 17

Astronomy & Astrophysics have almost halved their page cap from 20 pages to 12 pages - you have to pay 150€ per extra page.

The reasoning is that they're getting too many submissions. But surely this just encourages authors to submit *more* short papers? 🔭

www.aanda.org/2025-press-r...

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Luca Di Mascolo 🟥 @lucadimascolo.bsky.social · Jan 8

And we built a public tool for allowing anyone to run statistical tests on their own ALMA measurement sets:

github.com/Joshiwavm/ja...

GitHub - Joshiwavm/jackknify: A tool to jack knife ALMA observations

A tool to jack knife ALMA observations. Contribute to Joshiwavm/jackknify development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

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Luca Di Mascolo 🟥 @lucadimascolo.bsky.social · Jan 8

One day late, but yet another work by Joshiwa van Marrewijk 🚀

Characterizing the statistical properties of noise in interferometric images is a tricky game. And, indeed, many past high-z lines might actually be just false detections of spurious noise features

arxiv.org/abs/2501.03150

📡🔭🧪

Four panel image showing, from the top left and in clockwise order: a postage stamp of noisy image-space data (looking like red-blue pattern, denoting respectively positive and negative noise fluctuations), and three noise-only realizations. The noise-only image on the top right shows a peak that would appear more significant than any features in the real data case, which would potentially lead to a false detection.

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Luca Di Mascolo 🟥 @lucadimascolo.bsky.social · Dec 23

In case you would like to give it a try (or listen to the accurately selected soundtrack):
thomaswmorris.com/maria/

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Luca Di Mascolo 🟥 @lucadimascolo.bsky.social · Dec 23

An amazing piece of work led by (my brother in science) Joshiwa van Marrewijk and Thomas Morris.

Are you building a single-dish telescope (not not talking about you, @atlastdesign.bsky.social) and want to test for mapping and filtering strategies, atmospheric mitigation, etc?

Just ask maria.

📡🔭🧪

The image depicts a simulated observation by a single-dish millimeter telescope. The background shows a representation of an astrophysical target (in this case, a galaxy cluster), with intersecting loops indicating the scanning path (a Lissajous daisy scanning pattern). Layered red and blue streaks represent the simulated evolving atmosphere, and at the bottom there is a sketch representation of a (sub)millimeter antenna. An arrow passes through the atmosphere layers and connects the telescope to the observed galaxy cluster, indicating the telescope pointing direction.

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Reposted by Luca Di Mascolo 🟥

Matteo Bordone @matteobordone.bsky.social · Dec 20

La risposta è fare un bonifico a Open Arms.

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Luca Di Mascolo 🟥 @lucadimascolo.bsky.social · Dec 14

If only there was anyone interested in astro applications of LLMs. If only...
😏

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Luca Di Mascolo 🟥 @lucadimascolo.bsky.social · Dec 13

And if you understand italian and want to learn about more about this project, you can check the VITEII talk recording here: doi.org/10.36116/vid...

doi.org

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Luca Di Mascolo 🟥 @lucadimascolo.bsky.social · Dec 13

See and hear #herakoi in action (JWST alert!)

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Luca Di Mascolo 🟥 @lucadimascolo.bsky.social · Dec 13

#herakoi is a sonification tool uses machine learning to track the allow for a real-time exploration of images using sound. Want to give it a try? Just 'pip install herakoi', pick your favorite astro-image and turn your speakers on:

github.com/herakoi/hera...

GitHub - herakoi/herakoi: A sonification experiment

A sonification experiment. Contribute to herakoi/herakoi development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

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Luca Di Mascolo 🟥 @lucadimascolo.bsky.social · Dec 13

Tiny, but significant milestone for #herakoi!

Earlier this year, the SAIt invited me and @micginolfi.bsky.social to present our "motion-sensing sonification experiment" at the VITEII workshop.

And today, we got a short proceeding out on #arxiv:
arxiv.org/abs/2412.09152

🌌🔭🐡🧪

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Luca Di Mascolo 🟥 @lucadimascolo.bsky.social · Dec 3

Hi, @atlastdesign.bsky.social!
How blue is the sky in the submm?

Atacama Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope @atlastdesign.bsky.social · Dec 3

This is the official account of the #AtLAST study funded by @ec.europa.eu. AtLAST is a next-generation sub-millimeter 50m single dish #astronomical 🔭 facility, with #Science 🧪, #Technology, #Sustainability and #Community engagement at its core. More on atlast.uio.no

Diagram showing a sketch of an astronomical telescope with text labels describing the different parts of the study

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