Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Sylvain Breton

@sy-brt.bsky.social

56 followers 250 following 55 posts

French astronomer in Sicily 🌋☀️ Osservatorio Astrofisico di Catania | Asteroseismology of solar-type stars ⭐🔭 | I like all types of waves 🌊🔊 Little too much of a railway enthusiast for someone living on an island 🚂 Occasionally under water 🤿🐟 (He/him)

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

Sylvain Breton @sy-brt.bsky.social · Jul 21

Finally back somewhere after a few years and the Fall of Twitter !

Here to talk about a little bit of everything, especially researcher life in Southern Italy, astronomy and journeys on the train 🚂

Sylvain Breton @sy-brt.bsky.social · 5d

J'avais participé au crowdfunding d'Acadamia je suis vraiment dég

Reposted by Sylvain Breton

Julien Gossa @juliengossa.cpesr.fr · 5d

[ #VeilleESR ] Voilà.

Soazig Le Nevé @soazigleneve.bsky.social · 7d

Secret des affaires vs transparence des affaires publiques : une décision du Conseil d'Etat qui fera jurisprudence dans l'enseignement supérieur et la recherche #VeilleESR

Entre Polytechnique et ses mécènes, le secret des affaires s’applique, juge le Conseil d’Etat

Dans une décision rendue le 3 octobre, la haute juridiction estime que la communication d’une convention de mécénat passée avec une école publique peut porter atteinte au secret des affaires dont béné...

www.lemonde.fr

2 13 16

Sylvain Breton @sy-brt.bsky.social · 11d

A super interesting results (even if a little bit frustrating) is that the population of low-activity ultra-fast rotators of Gaia remains elusive in K2: the stars seem to be located further away from the regions that the Kepler satellite was able to probe !

The K2 stars of our sample versus the Gaia ultra fast rotators in an activity versus apparent magnitude diagram.

Sylvain Breton @sy-brt.bsky.social · 11d

We used the targets that K2 and Gaia have in common to perform an extensive comparison of the Kepler and Gaia characteristics. In brief, Kepler rotating stars are globally older (rotationally speaking) than Gaia's (remembering that Gaia has a strong observational bias towards fast rotators).

Diagrams Prot versus GBP-GRP for our K2 stars and the Gaia and Kepler samples of reference.

1 1

Sylvain Breton @sy-brt.bsky.social · 11d

It is paper time ! If you wondered how the Gaia catalogue of solar-like rotators compared with the stars observed by the Kepler/K2 missions here are some elements of answers !
Here is the link to the article we published in A&A:
www.aanda.org/articles/aa/...

#stellarastro

The location in the sky of the K2 stars of the study together with the full sample of Gaia (orange) and Kepler (grey) solar-like rotators

1 3 9

Sylvain Breton @sy-brt.bsky.social · 11d

It was a great pleasure to give the lecture on Stellar rotation and activity last week at the Evry Schatzman School ! ✨ For those interested the slides should be soon available on Zenodo ! (and I hope to be able to write a digest of the lecture if I find the time to do it !)

Sylvain Breton @sy-brt.bsky.social · 18d

Start of the Evry Schatzman school on Stellar Physics in the PLATO era !

Sylvain Breton @sy-brt.bsky.social · 19d

Final step: Milan-Modane, to be welcome in Aussois by fog and rain 🌧️🌧️🌧️

Sylvain Breton @sy-brt.bsky.social · 19d

Second step, the Rome-Milan high speed train, followed by a few hours of break in Milan

1 1

Sylvain Breton @sy-brt.bsky.social · 19d

For those who don't know, when the train arrives in Messina, it embarks on a ferryboat that brings it to Villa San Giovanni on the other side of the strait, in Calabria, the crossing is just about 20 minutes but the full maneuver lasts about two hours !

1 1

Sylvain Breton @sy-brt.bsky.social · 19d

This week I am going to Aussois to give a lecture at the Évry Schatzman school of stellar physics ! ✨
I am travelling by train from Catania, first step the Catania-Rome night train with the Messina's strait crossing ! 🚂

1 2

Sylvain Breton @sy-brt.bsky.social · 22d

(J'ai recroisé le premier camarade complètement par hasard il y a un an et demi avant une audition CNAP, du coup il fait de la physique théorique et il va bien a priori 😅)

Sylvain Breton @sy-brt.bsky.social · 22d

Un de mes camarades avait voulu diffuser Merci Patron ! en amont dudit amphi, et un autre (qui aujourd'hui de ce que j'en sais gravite autour de certains milieux de """centre-gauche""" souverainistes...) l'avait par conséquent menacé de "le blacklister du monde du travail" 🤡

Sylvain Breton @sy-brt.bsky.social · 22d

J'aurais toujours en tête (c'était quelques années avant le début de la mobilisation contre LVMH) cet amphi obligatoire complètement lunaire où un Bernard Arnault apathique était venu nous raconter des anecdotes sur sa fière jeunesse à l'École.

Reporterre 🌍 | Le média de l'écologie @reporterre.net · 23d

Financements privés, cours orientés, discours sur l’écologie censurés... L’école d’ingénieurs Polytechnique est sous l’influence des multinationales, dénonce l’Observatoire des multinationales. Quitte à museler ses étudiants.

Lire l'article ➡️ https://l.reporterre.net/bNT

1 2

Reposted by Sylvain Breton

Luke Dones @lukemeister.bsky.social · 24d

Gargantuan Gaia review by Michael Perryman

"271 pages, 126 figures, accepted for publication in Physics Reports"

arxiv.org/abs/2509.10883

Figure 16: Sky projections, in Galactic coordinates, showing various properties of the Gaia DR3 data release (see text for details).

1 16 53

Reposted by Sylvain Breton

Laura Kreidberg @lkreidberg.bsky.social · 25d

We have job opportunities in the APEx department at MPIA - please spread the word!

Postdocs: aas.org/jobregister/...
Tenure-track staff: aas.org/jobregister/...
Max Planck Research Group Leaders: aas.org/jobregister/...

+ happy to host ERC, Humboldt, and other third-party funds.

1 15 31

Reposted by Sylvain Breton

Jean Abbiateci @jeanabbiateci.bsky.social · 28d

J'arrête (vraiment) le recensement des plagiats d'Etienne Klein. Ça ne fait plus vraiment sens.

Tout est là : plus de 70 auteurs plagiés par l’une des figures scientifiques les plus médiatisées.

Soit une pratique frauduleuse ancrée, massive, systématique.

⏩ Le doc docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Les plagiats d'Etienne Klein

Les plagiats d'Etienne Klein Publication : 25 juin 2025 Mise à jour : 23 août 2025 Je liste ici les plagiats nouvellement identifiés depuis quelques semaines chez Etienne Klein dans ses livres, art...

docs.google.com

16 340 610

Sylvain Breton @sy-brt.bsky.social · 29d

Awesome photos ! We are getting closer ! 🤩

ESA Space Science @science.esa.int · 29d

Welcome, Plato! 🤗

On 1 September, the spacecraft arrived in the Netherlands by boat from Germany via the Rhine River.

In the coming weeks, engineers will add the sunshield & solar arrays and carry out tests to confirm Plato is ready for launch 🚀
www.esa.int/Science_Expl...

🔭 #Exoplanets

A large cargo ship named VAARWEL, painted in blue and white, is sailing through a canal. The ship has a flag at its front and is passing under an open drawbridge in the background. The canal is lined with trees on both sides, and the sky above is bright blue with scattered white clouds. A few people are visible on the bridge and near the water’s edge. In the foreground, at the bottom right, a small boat with a single person inside floats near the ship.

In a cleanroom environment, two individuals wearing blue lab coats and hairnets are working around a large spacecraft. The spacecraft is covered in protective plastic sheeting and mounted on a white transport platform labelled with technical instructions.

In a cleanroom environment, a group of engineers wearing protective coats, gloves, and face masks are working on a large spacecraft component. The component is mounted on a white wheeled platform. The top of the spacecraft carries 26 cylindrical cameras. The workspace is surrounded by structural supports and white fabric walls, creating a clean and controlled environment.

Sylvain Breton @sy-brt.bsky.social · Sep 9

Ça ressemble encore à une superbe idée tout ça 🤦‍♂️

SF2A @sf2a.bsky.social · Sep 8

La start-up américaine Reflect Orbital prévoit de refléter la lumière du Soleil la nuit en construisant une constellation de réflecteurs en orbite terrestre basse.
L'AAS sollicite l'avis des astronomes, des observatoires et des utilisateurs du ciel nocturne concernant l'impact :
buff.ly/iDtROYb

Assessing Astronomical Impacts of Reflect Orbital’s Proposed Satellite System

This survey is being conducted by the American Astronomical Society (AAS) to gather input from astronomers, observatories, and night sky users worldwide regarding the potential impacts of Reflect…

docs.google.com

Sylvain Breton @sy-brt.bsky.social · Sep 9

Realising that Italian is slowly beginning to contaminate my English as I wrote (several times) "confrontation" instead of "comparison"...

Reposted by Sylvain Breton

Dr. Jessie Christiansen @aussiastronomer.bsky.social · Sep 8

After nearly a decade of saying which JWST result I was most excited about, it's here:

JWST SPECTRA OF THE HABITABLE TRAPPIST-1 PLANETS!

TRAPPIST-1 E!!!

IT'S ... A FLAT LINE!

BUT NOT AS FLAT AS IT COULD BE!?

IS THERE AN ATMOSPHERE?!?!?

WE STILL DON'T KNOWWWWW.

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/08/s...

Hopeful Hint of an Earthlike Atmosphere on a Distant Planet

www.nytimes.com

12 42 240

Sylvain Breton @sy-brt.bsky.social · Sep 9

Standard Catania observatory morning routine when the coffee machines of the building are down because the company that manages them decided for some reason not to pay their electricity bill ☕

Sylvain Breton @sy-brt.bsky.social · Sep 9

Yes I totally agree with this, but in the end, not being the corresponding author it was still the simplest thing for me to do to edit the figure... Editors should make it clear to referees beforehand that they should discuss only the scientific content of manuscripts.

Sylvain Breton @sy-brt.bsky.social · Sep 8

So, for a manuscript on which I am co-author, I just spent too much time redoing a matplotlib figure so it looks like it is IDL-made because the referee wanted all figures to have similar styles...

(Referees, please don't do this 🙏)

1 1

Sylvain Breton @sy-brt.bsky.social · Sep 8

Attends qu'il reste jusqu'en novembre avec un gouvernement démissionnaire parce que Macron va inventer une "trêve de la rentrée littéraire" ou un truc du genre