Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Dr. Heloise Stevance @sydonahi.bsky.social · 2d

Ice Crystals in the atmosphere!

Reposted by Dr. Heloise Stevance

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 9d

Today is the release day of Gazan physics student Wasim Said's memoir of life under the genocide. 🧪

You should grab a copy. #BookSky

1804books.com/products/wit...

Witness to the Hellfire of Genocide

I didn’t write this to make you cry.Not for you to tell me: “Poor you.”I write this so I can hang these words around your neck—to make you bear the responsibility of my perspective,the responsibility ...

1804books.com

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Reposted by Dr. Heloise Stevance

janice @janiceleeastro.bsky.social · Sep 8

"no evidence supporting a statistically significant trend of [O star] multiplicity properties with metallicity" still high (~70%) in the SMC - interesting! 🔭🧪 #AstroSci #extragalactic

A high fraction of close massive binary stars at low metallicity - Nature Astronomy

The analysis of radial velocity variations of O-type stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud reveals a large fraction of close binaries, suggesting that binary physics also plays a prominent role in the l...

www.nature.com

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Dr. Heloise Stevance @sydonahi.bsky.social · 16d

How long do we give the techno-bros to start weaponising DEI by saying their fave AI is conscious and has feelings and saying otherwise is "dehumanizing" and cruel?

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Reposted by Dr. Heloise Stevance

GruntyThrst @gruntythrst.bsky.social · 29d

That’s a much better title yeah

Dr. Heloise Stevance @sydonahi.bsky.social · Sep 11

My preferred title "Bot does Astronomers' Cosmic Laundry"

But I guess it didn't sound serious enough.

Fun fact the tool still works even though we added a whole new telescope in the stream this summer and without retraining 🤣🫶

www.ox.ac.uk/news/2025-09...

AI tool developed at Oxford helps astronomers find supernovae in a

A new AI-powered tool has reduced astronomers’ workload by 85% - filtering through thousands of data alerts to identify the few genuine signals caused by supernovae (powerful explosions from dying

www.ox.ac.uk

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Dr. Heloise Stevance @sydonahi.bsky.social · Sep 11

My preferred title "Bot does Astronomers' Cosmic Laundry"

But I guess it didn't sound serious enough.

Fun fact the tool still works even though we added a whole new telescope in the stream this summer and without retraining 🤣🫶

www.ox.ac.uk/news/2025-09...

AI tool developed at Oxford helps astronomers find supernovae in a

A new AI-powered tool has reduced astronomers’ workload by 85% - filtering through thousands of data alerts to identify the few genuine signals caused by supernovae (powerful explosions from dying

www.ox.ac.uk

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Dr. Heloise Stevance @sydonahi.bsky.social · Sep 11

Design.

The hardest part of applied ML is asking the right question and choosing the right metrics.

Once you've done that you can pick the right model and in science it's often not the biggest newest thing!

ML is not a dick measuring contest but I'll leave this for another rant later today 💅

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Dr. Heloise Stevance @sydonahi.bsky.social · Sep 11

"AI-powered" is obviously a marketing term.

My models use a nifty little trick called Histogram Based Gradient Boosted Decision trees.

TL;DR it approximates complex probability distributions by adding loads of small functions (here trees).

Why is it smart if it's so simple?

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Yvan Dutil @yvandutil.bsky.social · Sep 10

Nice work by @sydonahi.bsky.social
phys.org/news/2025-09...

AI tool helps astronomers find supernovae in a sky full of noise

A new AI-powered tool has reduced astronomers' workload by 85%—filtering through thousands of data alerts to identify the few genuine signals caused by supernovae (powerful explosions from dying stars...

phys.org

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Reposted by Dr. Heloise Stevance

Yvan Dutil @yvandutil.bsky.social · Sep 10

Nice work by @sydonahi.bsky.social
phys.org/news/2025-09...

AI tool helps astronomers find supernovae in a sky full of noise

A new AI-powered tool has reduced astronomers' workload by 85%—filtering through thousands of data alerts to identify the few genuine signals caused by supernovae (powerful explosions from dying stars...

phys.org

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Dr. Heloise Stevance @sydonahi.bsky.social · Sep 10

Reminder that you can take your science seriously without taking yourself too seriously.

#AstroSci 🧪

Diagram showing 3 cartoon "monsters" all with straight tails to illustrate that if you only have the tail you can't do classification properly.

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Reposted by Dr. Heloise Stevance

Emily Hunt @emily.space · Sep 8

For the last two years, I've been paying for the Astronomy feeds hosting myself.

It has been a privilege to grow our community here, but I also shouldn't keep doing it for free 😅

That's why I'm delighted to announce that we now have a donations page on Open Collective! 🔭☄️ #astrophotography

The Astrosky Ecosystem - Open Collective

We're building an open-source ecosystem of social media tools for the space science & astronomy communities.

opencollective.com

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Reposted by Dr. Heloise Stevance

Huei, PhD 🌟 @starlights.bsky.social · Aug 19

New from Wynn Jacobson-Galán ! it’s so cool to see such an expansive spectral energy distribution (SED) of such an extraordinary event.

arxiv.org/abs/2508.11747

🧪🔭☄️

A full late-time (t > 150d) multi-wavelength (radio - X-ray) SED of SN 2023ixf.

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Reposted by Dr. Heloise Stevance

James Davenport @jradavenport.com · Aug 15

Well... the discussion around 3I/ATLAS continues to... evolve. This object is super exciting, fascinating, worthy of a LOT of study and press! ALSO so far as I have seen, & from every solar system expert I've talked to (and I know a lot of 'em!), it looks like a comet, not a spaceship.
🔭🧪☄️

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Dr. Heloise Stevance @sydonahi.bsky.social · Aug 11

But everyone goes for viridis (hahaha cuz it's the default)

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Dr. Heloise Stevance @sydonahi.bsky.social · Aug 11

Happy to deliver

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Dr. Heloise Stevance @sydonahi.bsky.social · Aug 11

Aimed for plasma, got magma. Winning

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Dr. Heloise Stevance @sydonahi.bsky.social · Aug 11

Aimed for plasma, got magma

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Dr. Heloise Stevance @sydonahi.bsky.social · Aug 11

Guess which matplotlib colour map this was inspired by.

🧪🔭 #AstroSci

My face and hair (white, yellow, orange, purple, black)

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Dr. Heloise Stevance @sydonahi.bsky.social · Aug 10

Sidereal time is the time in which the moon looks the same relative to background stars my bad I got the two confused 😅

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Reposted by Dr. Heloise Stevance

Chris Lintott @chrislintott.bsky.social · Aug 8

PS if you’re a member of the press: I and my colleagues will happily talk about 3I/ATLAS until the (interstellar) cows come home. But my only comment on whether it’s an alien spacecraft is: Avi is talking nonsense on stilts, and doesn’t understand comets.

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Reposted by Dr. Heloise Stevance

Chris Lintott @chrislintott.bsky.social · Aug 8

I see the first articles in the UK press giving space to the claim that 3I/ATLAS is an alien spacecraft. Briefly:

It’s a comet that formed billions of years ago, passing through our Solar System.

It’s behaving like a comet.

There is no evidence it’s artificial.

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Dr. Heloise Stevance @sydonahi.bsky.social · Aug 10

Thanks! I knew bluesky woulD come through

Dr. Heloise Stevance @sydonahi.bsky.social · Aug 10

I am looking for proper scientific literature, SOME anthropologist SOMEWHERE must have written about it but I can't find it on the hell the internet has become

❤️🙏

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Dr. Heloise Stevance @sydonahi.bsky.social · Aug 10

I know the synodic period is 29.5 days but ti doesn't fucking matter, the point is how many days does it take for an earth observer to see the same phase

I am NOT talking about period synchronization nonsense. Just having regular cycles on same period as a visible heavenly body being practicle

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Dr. Heloise Stevance @sydonahi.bsky.social · Aug 10

Hey bluesky! Please help me reach the right scientists 🧪

The moon **sidereal** period is ~27 days and menstruation is ~27 to 28 days on average.

I am wondering if it is due to an evolutionary advantage in early humans with calendars being able to predict period and do family planning

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