iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Anshuman Acharya @anshumanastro.bsky.social · 30/06/2025

The pub folks have excellent taste in music! 🥳

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Jonathan Pritchard @pritchardjr.bsky.social · 20/06/2025

The German SKA community! I’m delighted to be joining it in a month or so. #SKAO2025

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Anshuman Acharya @anshumanastro.bsky.social · 13/05/2025

Was swapping my dish scrub for a new one, and had this thought pop up:

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Jessica Gephart @jagephart.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

Another funding opportunity is gone. NSF archived the the Career-Life Balance program which provided supplemental funding when researchers are on family leave. The small strides we had made toward improving representation in science are being undone so fast. new.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...

new.nsf.gov

Career-Life Balance (CLB) Supplemental Funding Requests

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Anshuman Acharya @anshumanastro.bsky.social · 26/01/2025

Definitely thankful to my supervisor for doing this though. It helped build the courage to eventually approach people myself. 😁

Caption reading as from the supervisor, who's saying "I'll introduce you to this potential collaborator, make a good impression!", and they few minutes later, the scene is of a derpy orange kitten lifted up in one hand, with it's tongue sticking out. The kitten is the PhD student!

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Anshuman Acharya @anshumanastro.bsky.social · 18/01/2025

Sometimes you need to respond with a bang 😁

The caption says "What's an effective way to respond to a harsh referee report?", and the attached picture is of Captain Holt from Brooklyn 99 showing and declaring, "Grenades!", which is what my response is to the question in the caption.

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Anshuman Acharya @anshumanastro.bsky.social · 17/12/2024

Some scientists do have superpowers after all! 😁

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Anshuman Acharya @anshumanastro.bsky.social · 17/12/2024

Found an old meme of mine from Twitter, and realised that the alt text was a little Easter egg of its own. Proud of past me for this!

Old dude in flamboyant clothing represents my plots in the paper which were made ages ago. Tiger Woods dressed in black and white represents the text in my paper that seems to worsen with each iteration. Two golf balls near the flamboyant old dude are labelled as "underfull hbox" and "overfull hbox". Why are they labelled so? Nobody knows. It's a mystery of LaTeX that scientists have just accepted as a part of life.

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Jasmine 🌌🔭 @astrojaz.bsky.social · 16/12/2024

i think about this a lot

Calvin and Hobbes: “If people sat outside and looked at the stars each night, I’ll be they’d live a lot differently.”

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Anshuman Acharya @anshumanastro.bsky.social · 16/12/2024

But that's possibly an idea for something I can do beyond my PhD, as the time has come to tie together all these projects into my PhD thesis. 😄

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Anshuman Acharya @anshumanastro.bsky.social · 16/12/2024

This leads to the need of finding ways to run high-resolution, large box simulations without having insane computational (and energy!) costs. At the very least, we want dark matter halo resolution (masses and positions) along with their merger trees. For this, we look towards super-resolution!

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Anshuman Acharya @anshumanastro.bsky.social · 16/12/2024

Lastly, we tested the new Polar sims which allows us to vary astrophysics in our sims along with varying cosmologies. We find that we can have multiple viable models that explain multiwavelength EoR observables, indicating the need for broad parameter spaces: ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2024arXi...

ui.adsabs.harvard.edu

Exploring the effect of different cosmologies on the Epoch of Reionization 21-cm signal with POLAR

A detection of the 21-cm signal power spectrum from the Epoch of Reionization is imminent, thanks to consistent advancements from telescopes such as LOFAR, MWA, and HERA, along with the development of...

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Anshuman Acharya @anshumanastro.bsky.social · 16/12/2024

We also wanted to improve the measure of the 21-cm signal power spectrum at large scales, without running large volume simulations. For this, we ran RHD sims using the Fixed & Paired initial conditions formalism and boosted effective volume by a factor of 3.5: ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2024MNRA...

ui.adsabs.harvard.edu

Cosmic variance suppression in radiation-hydrodynamic modelling of the reionization-era 21-cm signal

The 21-cm line emitted by neutral hydrogen is the most promising probe of the Epoch of Reionization (EoR). Multiple radio interferometric instruments are on the cusp of detecting its power spectrum. I...

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Anshuman Acharya @anshumanastro.bsky.social · 16/12/2024

applied it to real data even with older analysis pipelines in ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2024MNRA.... Also, this was tested against mock SKA data in the Science Data Challenge 3a, and got the best possible results too by a significant lead (sdc3.skao.int/challenges/f...)!

ui.adsabs.harvard.edu

Revised LOFAR upper limits on the 21-cm signal power spectrum at z ≈ 9.1 using machine learning and gaussian process regression

The use of Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) for foregrounds mitigation in data collected by the LOw-Frequency ARray (LOFAR) to measure the high-redshift 21-cm signal power spectrum has been shown to ...

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Anshuman Acharya @anshumanastro.bsky.social · 16/12/2024

Firstly, I talked about using ML to build templates of the 21-cm signal power spectrum, which can be used to extract the signal by removing foregrounds and noise from LOFAR (or any other radio interferometer) data. We tested this with mock datasets in ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2024MNRA... and...

ui.adsabs.harvard.edu

21-cm signal from the Epoch of Reionization: a machine learning upgrade to foreground removal with Gaussian process regression

In recent years, a Gaussian process regression (GPR)-based framework has been developed for foreground mitigation from data collected by the LOw-Frequency ARray (LOFAR), to measure the 21-cm signal po...

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Anshuman Acharya @anshumanastro.bsky.social · 16/12/2024

Thanks to @maxplanck.de, MPA and my supervisor for providing the support and funding for all of these exciting projects and the ability to showcase them in various places.

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Anshuman Acharya @anshumanastro.bsky.social · 16/12/2024

Wrapping up on a busy 2024! From @astroai.bsky.social to @scienceacademyswe.bsky.social, and from Cosmo21, Radio 2024 to CCA @flatironinstitute.org, it's been a busy year of presenting results ranging from EoR 21-cm signal extraction with ML, to large-scale simulations, to plans of super-resolution.

A collage of me giving talks of my PhD work at various places and some nice pictures of those places.

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Mike Boylan-Kolchin @mbkplus.bsky.social · 14/12/2024

The vibe I exude to my bluesky followers

Pirates of the Caribbean meme

YOU MUST BE THE WORST ASTROPHYSICIST I’VE HEARD OF

BUT YOU HAVE HEARD OF ME

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Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 11/12/2024

Something I tried to emphasize to the Schmidt Foundation a couple of years ago is that one of the ways to intervene in this pattern is for foundations that give out scicomm awards to provide academic winners with research funding so universities see there is fiscal value in supporting scicomm

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sanjana! @sanjanacurtis.bsky.social · 11/12/2024

fantastic piece discussing the evolving role of scholars/scientists www.nationalacademies.org/news/2024/06...

nationalacademies.org

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Anshuman Acharya @anshumanastro.bsky.social · 08/12/2024

I'll be talking about pretty much everything I've done during my PhD: from implementing ML-based templates for the IGM 21-cm signal from the Epoch of Reionization, to the development of new simulations, their needs, and current issues. Also will discuss projects I hope to work on as a postdoc!

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Anshuman Acharya @anshumanastro.bsky.social · 08/12/2024

Heading off to New York for the "Cosmology and galaxy astrophysics with simulations and machine learning" happening at CCA at @flatironinstitute.org! Lots of interesting science, and of course, Christmas festivities in the city to look forward to. 😁

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Anshuman Acharya @anshumanastro.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

An unfortunate event at any astro institute/department:

Darth Vader representing the admin, saying "coffee prices will go up", while everyone at the institute is represented by Luke Skywalker screaming "nooooooooo"

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Anshuman Acharya @anshumanastro.bsky.social · 05/12/2024

On a paper with both theorists and observers, I managed to annoy both! f_esc here represents the "escape fraction", or the fraction of ionizing photons escaping out of galaxies and reaching the Intergalactic Medium.

$Regular Winnie the Pooh is labeled as "theorists" saying that the escape fraction is 10%. Then Winnie the Pooh with a tuxedo is labeled as "observers" saying that as it's a fraction, it should be 0.1. Then the third Winnie the Pooh has the tuxedo, but also a top hat and monocle, and is labeled as "me", saying that as it's a fraction it should be 1 by 10.$

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Robert "The Bobby Yaga" McNees @mcnees.bsky.social · 04/12/2024

I’ve seen some posts recently, about the value of basic research, in light of funding cuts and demands that research have immediate economic justification. Let me collect some info here, in a thread, about why it’s a bad idea to attach those sorts of demands to funding. 🧵 🧪 ⚛️

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Bruce Macintosh @bmacastro.bsky.social · 01/12/2024

Prompted by this and a need for distraction I Did Some Math. Turns out most extrasolar planets are quite cauliflower-compatible. A thread, with citations. And laboratory astrophysics. And footnotes.

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Anshuman Acharya @anshumanastro.bsky.social · 30/11/2024

With the final conference season of the year upon us in the next two weeks, I believe this is apt:

A screen capture from Smosh's Ultimate Werewolf Gentlemen edition, with two guys dressed in top hats, suits and bowties look at each other smiling conspiratorially. One of them has a fake cigarette, while the other has a lollipop in hand.

The caption reads: "PhDs when the two rival profs at the conference start fighting", because PhD students tend to find the drama entertaining.

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Anshuman Acharya @anshumanastro.bsky.social · 28/11/2024

The coffee has to hit right after all!

A caption saying "PhDs for half an hour after saying that they've to do something immediately", with the word "immediately" written in all caps. The photo is that of a cute hamster making coffee, with no care in the world.

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Anshuman Acharya @anshumanastro.bsky.social · 25/11/2024

Summary of the postdoc application process discussion today amongst final year PhDs (over cups of coffee):

A caption relaying a proclamation by PhD students that they won't wait until the last moment to do things, but invariably, on the day of the deadline, things end up as shown in the attached picture. In the picture, a sleepy cat labelled as the PhD students' brain is getting strangled by another cat labeled as the "8th coffee of the day as there's still a lot to do".

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Anshuman Acharya @anshumanastro.bsky.social · 23/11/2024

Perhaps it's time to start sharing on Bluesky the memes I've been making to document my time as a PhD so far.

Caption saying "my Overleaf when I start a new postdoc proposal after completing one", with the gif of Steve Harrington from Stranger Things opening his ice cream shop and saying "again? Seriously?" with absolute exasperation and a little bit of disgust on his face.

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Anshuman Acharya @anshumanastro.bsky.social · 23/11/2024

Going from the first meme to the second took a while. Still, it's amazing how many things I had barely any clue about are now things I am helping make sense of. 😁

The "are you winning son?" meme template, but that's replaced with "are you binning son?", with the caption saying "Postdoc who's not sure if I'm plotting a histogram or the points directly", while the stick figure sitting at his desktop is marked as "me, with no thoughts, but many plots".

Gif with caption saying "me sending plots to collaborators showing that I've resolved the issue we've been worrying about for a month". The gif is of Barney from How I Met Your Mother, saying "I request the highest of fives".

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Anshuman Acharya @anshumanastro.bsky.social · 23/11/2024

Perhaps it's time to start sharing on Bluesky the memes I've been making to document my time as a PhD so far.

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Anshuman Acharya @anshumanastro.bsky.social · 23/11/2024

Reminded about this meme I made earlier, after some discussions on different hydrodynamical simulations. (it's time for astro/academia memes on Bluesky!)

Caption saying "cosmological simulators whenever they meet for absolutely no good reason", for an image where one cat seems to be absolutely pummelling another cat with punches as it's already on its back. The fallen cat is an orange cat, as expected.

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Anshuman Acharya @anshumanastro.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

Sorry, just sent the request and forgot to reply here. 😂 The username ending with "007" was me. Added others who commented as well! And my code is 0084 0223 4144 if more people are interested.

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Anshuman Acharya @anshumanastro.bsky.social · 18/10/2024

Hi! 😁 It's so nice to see so many astro folks in the comments

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Anshuman Acharya @anshumanastro.bsky.social · 26/01/2024

Our code can directly be used with data from the Chandra telescope, so feel free to use it and improve your spectral fits! 🧪🔭

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Anshuman Acharya @anshumanastro.bsky.social · 26/01/2024

We used this for spectral fitting for X-ray data in our paper ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2023ApJ...., finding fascinating results on metal abundances and flux periodicities, and giving us a sneak peek into possible star-planet interactions in the HD 179949 system.

ui.adsabs.harvard.edu

X-Ray Activity Variations and Coronal Abundances of the Star-Planet Interaction Candidate HD 179949

We carry out detailed spectral and timing analyses of the Chandra X-ray data of HD 179949, a prototypical example of a star with a close-in giant planet with possible star-planet interaction (SPI) eff...

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Anshuman Acharya @anshumanastro.bsky.social · 26/01/2024

Sometimes fitting a model to data "works" based on chi-square and Cash statistics minimisation, but it can still be improved. Thus we look at trends of residuals to access information that such global measures miss, in ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2024RNAA...! 🔭🧪

ui.adsabs.harvard.edu

Spectral Fit Residuals as an Indicator to Increase Model Complexity

Spectral fitting of X-ray data usually involves minimizing statistics like the chi-square and the Cash statistic. Here we discuss their limitations and introduce two measures based on the cumulative s...

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Ava Polzin @avapolzin.bsky.social · 09/09/2023

Since it's already fall(!), wanted to share the site where I've been compiling open source astro teaching materials -- e.g., textbooks, lecture notes, visualizations: astroteaching.github.io Pretty piecemeal to now, but would love to link to any other resources not already included here :) 🧪 🔭

astroteaching.github.io

Resources for Astrophysics Pedagogy · Resources for Astrophysics Pedagogy

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