Dr Becky Smethurst
@drbecky_
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Astrophysicist researching how supermassive black holes affect galaxies (s/h). I get overly enthusiastic about space on YouTube:
Oxford, England
Joined March 2009
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It’s publication day 🥳 my new book “A Brief History of Black Holes” is now out in the world!
It covers many common misconceptions around black holes by using the history of our understanding. Here’s a sneak peek!
Grab a copy (hardback, audio, ebook):
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I can't stop flipping back and forth between the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescope images of the Carina Nebula. In the Hubble image the dust is just this wall that looks solid, and JWST has revealed the structure in that dust that has remained hidden for so long.
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An astrophysicist’s nervous live reaction to the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope from a kitchen cooking a Christmas turkey in Lancashire, England - we like the word NOMINAL! 🥳
#JWST
#JamesWebbSpaceTelescope
#UnfoldTheUniverse
@NASAWebb
@ESA_Webb
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My favourite fact about the BIG gravitational wave news, is that it was only made possible because we finally know the precise position of Jupiter! 🤯
Thanks to
@chrislintott
for flagging this cool fact
#pulsartimingarray
#nanograv
#GravitationalWaves
@NASAJuno
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On the NASA live stream, they just said that the resolution achieved with JWST was 0.0000194° (i.e. the smallest thing they can spot spans 0.0000194° of 360° round the sky). 28 TIMES BETTER THAN Spitzer (also an infrared space telescope) which had a resolution of 0.00056°
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An astrophysicist’s live reaction to the reveal of the image of the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy, the Milky Way 😍🥳😱
@ehtelescope
#EventHorizonTelescope
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BIG NEWS IN PHYSICS! The first ever evidence for light year long gravitational waves that *might* be due to merging supermassive black holes. All possible thanks to pulsar timing arrays, explained in this video 👇
#GravitationalWaves
#NANOGrav
#pulsars
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🤯🤯🤯 It’s like the Hubble Ultra Deep Field turned up to 11!
The sheer number of galaxies in this image is astounding (image size is same as a grain of sand at arms length!) - PLUS LENSES!
No doubt the most distant galaxy ever found is in there
I bet 100+ new papers just here
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For everyone like me who's excited for JWST to observe the 7 planet system TRAPPIST-1 - it did so yesterday morning for over 5 hours 👀
From the published JWST observing schedule here:
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I am absolutely THRILLED that I have been awarded the
@RoyalAstroSoc
's Winton Award for research by a post-doctoral fellow in astronomy whose career has shown the most promising development
The 2022 Winton Award for Astronomy is awarded to Dr Rebecca Smethurst (
@drbecky_
) of
@OxfordPhysics
for making major advances in the field of galaxy formation and evolution.
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I cannot stress how incredible this is. They detected the tiniest bit of starlight that came from the star and then passed through the planet’s atmosphere on its way to us; then managed to detect the tiny bit in the light that was absorbed by the water in that atmosphere🤯
#k218b
So we found water vapor in the atmosphere of a 9 Earth-mass exoplanet in the habitable zone! After observing 8 transits of K2-18b with HST/WFC3, we (led by Björn Benneke) find a significant water feature:
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There's a pseudo-science article that's gone viral recently claiming that JWST images are showing the Big Bang "didn't happen".
It’s all complete tosh. More on this in Thursday's Night Sky News video about what JWST data is actually showing and what it means 👍
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Did you hear the big news from
@CERN
?! The
@LHCbExperiment
has found evidence for something that might completely change our model for what the Universe is made of 😱 could there be a whole new physics force we didn't know existed?!
#LHCb
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Huge congratulations to
@ISRO
for their successful soft landing on the South Pole of the Moon with Chandrayaan-3 🥳 roll on all the new science results!
Chandrayaan-3 Mission:
'India🇮🇳,
I reached my destination
and you too!'
: Chandrayaan-3
Chandrayaan-3 has successfully
soft-landed on the moon 🌖!.
Congratulations, India🇮🇳!
#Chandrayaan_3
#Ch3
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I am absolutely thrilled to announce that I’ve been awarded the 2022 RAS Research Fellowship! In my 3 year term I’ll be continuing my work studying the growth of supermassive black holes in the absence of mergers (and the resultant AGN feedback). I can’t wait to get stuck in 💪
The Royal Astronomical Society is pleased to announce that Dr Rebecca Smethurst has been awarded the 2022 RAS Research Fellowship! Congratulations,
@drbecky_
🌌
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I’ve given up for the day trying to do science. I’m too angry. Too busy thinking about how women don’t have the right to their own body autonomy in a country that preaches freedom.
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"I want to show people that you can be a serious academic scientist but you can also love nail polish and Taylor Swift and still want to chat about how cool black holes are..."
Frontpage of BBC News 😱💪
#scicomm
#womeninSTEM
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The first test images from the Euclid Space Telescope are here!
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An astrophysicist’s live reaction to the
#EHTBlackHole
image reveal.
That’s the most beautiful collection of pixels I have ever seen.
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My new book 'Space: 10 things you should know' is out NOW! 🎉😱💃🏻
It covers what I reckon are the 10 biggest ideas in astronomy right now, written so that anyone, whether a complete newbie or long-time enthusiast can enjoy.
Get it in-store or online:
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The main take aways:
1️⃣ first direct evidence of central black hole in Milky Way (dark shadow in centre)
2️⃣ it’s an average image because material around black hole very variable
3️⃣ image agrees with predictions of Einstein’s theory of General Relativity
#EventHorizonTelescope
We finally have the first look at our Milky Way black hole, Sagittarius A*. It’s the dawn of a new era of black hole physics. Credit: EHT Collaboration.
#OurBlackHole
#SgrABlackHole
Link:
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Jupiter is particularly beautiful in the night sky right now; it’s extra bright as it reaches what’s known as opposition. Here’s what that means and how to spot it 👇
#stargazing
#nightsky
#jupiter
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I have woken up to many comments on my YouTube channel this morning similar to: "I subscribed for the science, leave out the politics" after stating
#BlackLivesMatter
It's not politics. It's basic human rights. Last I checked it's humans doing the science.
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The fact that I’ve had to add this to the FAQ page on my website should give you an idea of the state of my PROFESSIONAL WORK email inbox.
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Have you ever seen such beautiful diffraction spikes 😍 that star is so faint and yet for JWST, the amount of light it detects is so much that the light bleeds into neighbouring pixels to give you that 6-pointed "star" shape
#jameswebbspacetelescope
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Still grinning from ear to ear after last night’s award ceremony 😁 thanks again
@royalastrosoc
!
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Holy shit. Phosphine on
#Venus
!
Phosphine on Earth is made industrially, and by microbes that don’t need Oxygen to survive.
We’re pretty sure there’s no industry on Venus... so does that mean life on Venus? A lot more work still to do - but VERY cool result!
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The James Webb Space Telescope’s main mirror has been hit by a micrometeorite - what’s the damage and how will this affect the science it can do? 👇
#UnfoldTheUniverse
#JWST
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So Dan Walker on
@BBCBreakfast
referred to me as one of their “regular space experts”this morning and I wasn’t prepared to feel such joy so early. It’s half an hour later and I’m still not over it 😅🥳💫
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Absolutely delighted to have been awarded the
@PhysicsNews
Mary Somerville Medal & Prize for my efforts engaging the public with science on YouTube!
Congrats to all the other winners but especially my fellow astronomers
@zemogle
& Maggie Aderin-Pocock 🎉
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SO many of you have sent me news coverage of this new research paper that has claimed the Universe is 26.7 billion years old (rather than the accepted value of 13.8 billion years old) to explain JWST data. I promise you a deep dive is coming on my YouTube channel next Thursday!
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Tonight I won an award from the
@RoyalAstroSoc
for my research into supermassive black hole growth. I’ve been smiling from ear to ear ever since 🤗
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No. It's not. Because astrology is not a science. Inanimate planets have NO impact on our lives.
I'm so disappointed in
@BBCWomansHour
for this.
Mercury retrograde- is it a time to repair, renew and revamp your life. We hear from
@yasminboland
and Wendy Stacey, Chair of the Astrological Association of Great Britain
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In case anyone was wondering, my trip to Iceland is going great 😍
P.S. This was two nights ago, tonight we’re Aurora hunting and rain dodging 🙃🤫
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🎶Cause I don’t dress for women, I don’t dress for men, lately I’ve been dressing for…
RAIN. LOTS OF RAIN
#VigilanteShit
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FINALLY 😍😍😍 I can’t stop staring at it! This was the one I was waiting for
1/ 📢🆕Webb has captured a landscape familiar to many: the iconic Pillars of Creation. These extraordinary pillars are made of cool interstellar gas and dust that appear – at times – semi-transparent in near-infrared light.
Full story: Details 👇
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When I was 14 physics was my least favourite subject b/c all we got taught was forces & "light goes in straight lines".
By 17 it was my favourite subject b/c of radioactivity & astronomy. Now I have a PhD in astrophysics.
TEACH KIDS INTERESTING SCIENCE NOT JUST WHAT'S "EASY"
i’m an astrophysicist figuring out when stars will explode, & i dropped my first college physics class because I was so lost and felt too stupid.
4 years later, I looked my teacher in the eye as I walked across the stage at graduation to give the commencement address. 💁🏽♀️
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Absolutely thrilled to have been awarded the Caroline Herschel Prize Lecture 2020 from the William Herschel Society & the
@RoyalAstroSoc
- awarded to promising early-career female astronomers
Lecture will be given in November (COVID permitting) and I’m already so excited for it!
Congratulations to
@drbecky_
- announced as winner of the Caroline Herschel Prize Lectureship 2020 from the William Herschel Society & RAS. We look forward to hearing her lecture entitled "Supermassive Black Holes: The Ultimate Galaxy Killers"
#womeninSTEM
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What will I be looking for first in the James Webb Space Telescope image of the Carina Nebula set to be released tomorrow you ask?
THIS two light year long dusty nebula that looks like the Universe is flipping us off 🙃
#UnfoldTheUniverse
📸 Hubble Space Telescope
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One proud supervisor here as my PhD student Tobias Géron passes his viva 🥂 the tradition
@OxfordPhysics
is to pop a champagne cork into the ceiling and initial the dint you leave behind
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Having just hit 503,000 subscribers on YouTube 😳🥳 I *think* (but please correct me if I'm wrong) I am now the most followed practicing astrophysicist on social media (since
@BadAstronomer
,
@DrBrianMay
&
@neiltyson
have PhDs but no longer do research)
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🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️kids only think physics and maths are hard if you keep TELLING THEM they’re hard because YOU found them hard
Can we just please stop perpetuating these myths?! Everyone is good at something, just let kids make up their own minds which subject they enjoy or find difficult
“Physics isn’t something that girls tend to fancy. They don’t want to do it. They don’t like it… There’s a lot of hard maths in there that they don’t want to do.” 🤦🏻♀️
@Miss_Snuffy
, UK Government Social Mobility Commission Chair
#WomenInSTEM
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1 MILLION VIEWS!!! 🥳🥳🥳🥳
This is incredible 🤯 I made this video to show people what life as a scientist was really like and never dreamed this many people would see it.
I’m off to toast all 1 million of you 🥃🍻🥂
#whyistherumalwaysgone
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I’m very smug today after predicting who would win the Nobel Prize in Physics in a YouTube short this weekend 🥳
#NobelPrize
#NobelPrize2023
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The paperback version of my book “A Brief History of Black Holes” is now out in the UK 🥳 if you see it out in the wild in a book shop send me the photo!
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Holy. Mother. Forking. Shirt. Balls. 🤯
The reaction to this image at
#NAM2022
with 100 galaxy astronomers watching the livestream together was incredible
✋🏼 Galactic high five!
In Webb’s image of Stephan’s Quintet, we see 5 galaxies, 4 of which interact. (The left galaxy is in the foreground!) Webb will revolutionize our knowledge of star formation & gas interactions in these galaxies:
#UnfoldTheUniverse
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I’ve recorded my live reaction to all the James Webb Space Telescope image reveals today and they’ll be edited together on my channel shortly. A more in depth video going through the science of each image will come in my usual Thursday video slot 👍 eek!
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Second COVID jab done 🥳 I get a plaster because I bleed more than normal apparently 😂 I got the Pfizer again because that’s the one given to all under 40s in the UK 👍 get your vaccines everyone!
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I just went live on YouTube to share my excitement about the first image from the James Webb Space Telescope!!! And explain why it looks a bit naff (it’s supposed to😅)
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The Hubble Space Telescope has spotted the light from an individual star 12.8 billion light years away - thanks to a neat trick of gravity causing the magnification of light! It could be one of the first stars to ever have formed in the Universe 🤯
@NASAHubble
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Just take my money already
Don't mind me, just over here setting the standard in my office for coolest earrings
#JamesWebbSpaceTelescope
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This weekend I had a lovely trip to Bath and had to stop by the
@HerschelMuseum
!
This is the house where William and Caroline Herschel lived when they discovered the planet Uranus in 1781. So much wonderful history, a must visit!
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Incredible images of the Jupiter system from JWST 😱
Check out the bright waves, swirls, and vortices in Jupiter’s atmosphere — as well as the dark ring system, one million times fainter than the planet! Two moons of Jupiter, including one that’s only about 12 miles (20 km) across, are on the left.
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One of my favourite photos from Apollo 11, taken by Michael Collins from the command module as Neil and Buzz headed to the surface in the lunar lander.
The entirety of humanity alive in 1969 are in this photo - except for Michael Collins himself
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It’s
#WorldQuantumDay
! Even though I think astrophysics >>> quantum physics 😜 our knowledge of the quantum structure of a hydrogen atom does allow us to work out how much the light from a galaxy has been redshifted & so how far away that galaxy is. I guess I should be grateful!
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The James Webb Space Telescope is currently cross eyed, seeing 18 stars for every 1. Today kicks off the planned tweaking of the mirror positions to pull everything into perfect alignment
#NASAWebb
’s mirrors are warming up their moves! 💃🏾
Its 18 primary mirror segments have motors to align them to perform as one big mirror. Today we confirmed that all motors (including those on Webb's other mirrors) are in working order:
#UnfoldTheUniverse
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Just over here drooling at JWST spectra of distant galaxies that confirm they are at redshift ~ 13 🤯 i.e. the light took 13.4 billion years to get to us and left when the Universe was just 0.3 million years old
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Another great comparison of HST vs JWST
I had to make a before and after to really appreciate how good the James Webb Telescope really is.
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Took a trip to
@KICC_official
to collaborate with a colleague last week. Turns out they have a LIFE SIZE model of the JWST mirrors and I’m in love 😍 I want one in my house. It won’t fit, but that’s all in the details!
@ESA_Webb
@NASAWebb
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My YouTube channel just passed 30,000 subscribers!🥳
And over the weekend my video on how we know the Milky Way is a spiral was my first video to get over 100,000 views💪
Thank you everybody - I’m blown away by how many people want to chat about space with me 🥰
#WomenInScience
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😱😱😱 will this FINALLY be the image of the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way we’ve all been waiting for?!
The image of M87’s black hole was released in 2019 and we’ve all impatiently been waiting for Sag A* ever since…
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I LOVE IT WHEN A PLAN COMES TOGETHER
✅ Secondary mirror deployed! But there's little time to pause and reflect.
Teams will ensure
@NASAWebb
's tripod structure is latched before beginning its final major milestone this week: full deployment of the space telescope's honeycomb-shaped primary mirror.
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ALL the instruments on JWST are now fully aligned and in focus! 🥳 look at that detail 😍😍😍 especially with MIRI
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🥳🥳🥳🥳 this is something to celebrate! 🥂🍾
Due to the precision of our launch and our first two mid-course corrections, our team has determined that Webb should have enough fuel to allow support of science operations for significantly more than a 10-year science lifetime! 💫
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Don't forget to look out for the final supermoon of the year tonight - it will be rising in the East just after sunset 👍🌕
Which room in your house gets sun in the morning? Look out of that window this evening to spot it!
Tomorrow we have the final
#supermoon
of 2020 🌕
It will be 224,429 miles (361,184 km) from Earth - about 2,500 miles further away than the April supermoon was.
Look out of the window in your house that gets the morning Sun and you should see it rise tomorrow night.
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Given the sad news that Her Majesty the Queen has passed away peacefully this afternoon, out of respect this week’s video on what it’s like to control the James Webb Space Telescope (that was scheduled for 8pm UK time today) will be postponed.
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I am delighted to announce that my new book: “A Brief History of Black Holes” will be out as hardback, audio and e-book on the 1st September 2022! 🥳
I am so excited to share this with you all. You can pre-order now here:
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The Milky Way from the Maldives is incredible. The view from
@soneva
Jani’s overwater observatory is particularly spectacular.
#sonevajani
📷 by Shifaz Photography with an iPhone 12 Pro Max (a staff member who snapped this while I was chatting all things Saturn to guests)
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I could stare at this all day
Used the opportunity of being away from the office to write fresh code, for the first time in a long while. Made a prototype real-time 3D viewer for cosmological simulations (here showing dark matter around a galaxy, then zooms out to the broader simulated volume).
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A room full of astronomers who study galaxies all reacting live to this brand new image of 4 galaxies colliding from the James Webb Space Telescope at
#NAM2022
✋🏼 Galactic high five!
In Webb’s image of Stephan’s Quintet, we see 5 galaxies, 4 of which interact. (The left galaxy is in the foreground!) Webb will revolutionize our knowledge of star formation & gas interactions in these galaxies:
#UnfoldTheUniverse
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I know we’ve waited 6 months since launch, and decades for it to be built but this one hour delay is killing me 😫
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End on era for the little Ingenuity helicopter on Mars 😢🥺
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Are we FINALLY getting an image of the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way?! 🥳
@ehtelescope
@ESO
#eventhorizontelescope
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The
@NASAHubble
team are announcing what's been described as a "record-breaking" discovery today (11am EDT) which is supposedly important for JWST too.
No idea what, but my money is on a the most distant (highest redshift) galaxy found yet
More info:
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The James Webb Space Telescope is now at finished its journey and is at its home for the next 20 years of science observations 🥳
#UnfoldTheUniverse
Roll on first light!
🏠 Home, home on Lagrange! We successfully completed our burn to start
#NASAWebb
on its orbit of the 2nd Lagrange point (L2), about a million miles (1.5 million km) from Earth. It will orbit the Sun, in line with Earth, as it orbits L2.
#UnfoldTheUniverse
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I’m going to be on this month’s episode of the Sky at Night! It airs tonight, Mon 14th August 10pm on BBC4. The episode is all about black holes and the techniques used to study them. Tune in live if you can, or catch up here:
@BBCStargazing
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My new video explains everything about the image of the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole from
@ehtelescope
From why is it orange? Or blurry? What are the 3 blobs? To what angle are we seeing this? And will JWST look at it too?
#EventHorizonTelescope
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Here it is. My video on the recent claim of evidence for black holes coupling to dark energy. It officially takes the top spot for the most times I have been sent a research paper/news article to explain - so enjoy!
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FULLY UNFOLDED!!! 🥳🤯🥰
#NASAWebb
is fully deployed! 🎉
With the successful deployment & latching of our last mirror wing, that's:
50 major deployments, complete.
178 pins, released.
20+ years of work, realized.
Next to
#UnfoldTheUniverse
: traveling out to our orbital destination of Lagrange point 2!
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I tip my hat to all the engineers on the ground troubleshooting and trying to solve the problems that cropped up in the run up to today’s eventually scrubbed
#Artemis1
launch. It literally is rocket science
"This has never been tested before"
The launch of Artemis I has been cancelled by Nasa after an engine bleed that couldn't be rectified
Follow the latest
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Meet newly dubbed asteroid 35419 Beckysmethurst! 😱🤩 It is a main-belt asteroid between Mars & Jupiter. Watch it move against the background stars in the gif
Thanks
@nrco0e
for submitting my name to
@IAU_org
, it came through in time to celebrate on
#AsteroidDay
!
📷
@PanSTARRS1
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Could just about spot the partial solar eclipse in Oxford this morning through the cloud (don’t look directly at the Sun!)
The Moon is just taking a little bite out of the Sun. Did anyone else manage to spot it?
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Brilliant talk by
@matt_mountain
last night here at
@OxfordPhysics
all about his experience developing JWST since 1989!
In particular I enjoyed this quote: “without engineering, science is just philosophy”
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Flight attendant: Is there a doctor on board?
Dad: *nudging me* that could’ve been you
Me: Not now
Dad: Not asking for an astrophysicist to help, are they?
Me: Dad, there's a medical emergency happening
Dad: Go see if asking “have you thought about magnetic fields” helps
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So turns out something I said in a YouTube video has been jumped on by UFO enthusiasts & then bizarrely the
@spectator
I said that in 2024 we could see a claim of a biosignature found in the atmosphere of an exoplanet with JWST. This was just an enthusiastic and hopeful guess.
This is an... interesting article suggesting there is an upcoming JWST paper that will make a claim of alien life, quoting several people.
That is unlikely for a number of reasons 🧵 (1/X)
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