iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Francesca Fragkoudi @astrofrancesca.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

Our Virtual Reality movie about the life of the Milky Way is now out on YouTube in a flatscreen version! We're really proud of this and can't wait to take it out to schools in the North East 🤩🔭✨🧪

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Francesca Fragkoudi @astrofrancesca.bsky.social · 30/01/2026

Another proud supervisor moment today 🤩 Alex has their awesome paper out on the arXiv about what sets bar rotation in the cosmological context: arxiv.org/abs/2601.20941 Alex finds that galaxies with lower stellar mass and lower baryon-dominance have slower bars ✨ 🔭🧪 #astrosci #astro

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Durham University @durham.ac.uk · 26/01/2026

Our @durhamphysics.bsky.social astronomers have helped create the highest resolution map of the dark matter that threads through our Universe - showing the mysterious substance’s influence on the formation of stars, galaxies and planets. Discover more 👉 www.durham.ac.uk/news-events/...

durham.ac.uk

Revealing dark matter’s influence on the Universe - Durham University

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Francesca Fragkoudi @astrofrancesca.bsky.social · 22/01/2026

Very proud of PhD student Thomas Tomlinson, who's awesome paper is out on the arXiv today, on bar-induced substructures in stellar haloes 🤩🔭 #astrosci arxiv.org/abs/2601.14409

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Corey S. Powell @coreyspowell.bsky.social · 09/10/2025

Astronomers have detected a dark blob of...something, billions of light years away. It's as massive as a million Suns & it emits no detectable radiation. It might be a clump of dark matter, revealing new details about the structure of the invisible universe. 🧪🔭 www.ucdavis.edu/news/astrono...

Left, our best surface brightness model of the 1.7-GHz global VLBI observation used here, which has been reconvolved with the main lobe of the interferometer’s point spread function and added to the residuals (34 μJy per beam r.m.s.). For reference, red contours show the surface brightness at 2.1 μm observed by the W. M. Keck Observatory adaptive optics system30. The positions of two low-mass perturbers are each marked with a black X. The 2 × 108 M⊙ object first detected by ref. 24 is labelled , and the 1.13 × 106 M⊙ detection reported here is labelled . The zoomed-in region shown in the right-hand two panels is indicated by the black square, which has a side length of 60 mas. Top right, detail of the bright arc around , with the colour scale modified to emphasize the gap in the arc produced by the gravitational perturbation of . Bottom right, GI corrections to the lensing convergence (expressed in units of lens-plane surface mass density), showing a compact, positive feature whose position and mass are consistent with the independent parametric modelling results for . The dashed black circle has a radius of 80 pc and the lensed emission is indicated by the black contours.

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Marcel S. Pawlowski @8minutesold.bsky.social · 09/10/2025

Paper day! My PhD student Mariana Júlio, with @readdark.bsky.social, @pengfeili.bsky.social and others, studies the internal dynamics of dwarf galaxies and finds they don't agree with the Radial Acceleration Relation, challenging the dark matter alternative MOND. arxiv.org/abs/2510.06905 🔭☄️🧪 1/7

arxiv.org

The radial acceleration relation at the EDGE of galaxy formation: testing its universality in low-mass dwarf galaxies

A tight correlation between the baryonic and observed acceleration of galaxies has been reported over a wide range of mass ($10^8 < M_{\rm bar}/{\rm M}_\odot < 10^{11}$) - the Radial Acceleration Rela...

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ExGal-Twin: Excellence in Galaxies - Twinning the IAC @exgaltwin.bsky.social · 16/09/2025

🌌 Yesterday, the Durham Advanced School on Astrophysical Simulations kicked off at Durham University! PhD students and researchers are diving into both theoretical and practical aspects of astrophysical simulations. Big thanks to the Institute of Computational Simulations for organizing! 🙏

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ExGal-Twin: Excellence in Galaxies - Twinning the IAC @exgaltwin.bsky.social · 11/09/2025

The wait is over! Next week the Durham Advanced School on Astrophysical Simulations kicks off at @durhamuniversity.bsky.social We’re finalizing preparations for this international event with 50 students and ~12 lecturers 👩‍💻👨‍🏫 Big thanks to the DU-ICC for hosting! 📸 More updates and photos coming soon!

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IAU Office of Astronomy for Education @astro4edu.bsky.social · 15/08/2025

From using Arduino to simulate exoplanet transits (perfect for older students fond of technology) to exploring lightning on other planets, and wrapping up with a tactile Jupiter experience designed for younger children: This is the astroEDU summer collection of activities 2025! 1/4 🔭 #astroedu

Announcement card vor the astroEDU summer 2025 activities collection with three images showing electonics, a tactile Jupiter and a person rubbing a styrofoam container

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Sera Markoff @profsera.bsky.social · 14/08/2025

Great article about the importance of software engineering and open source code in astrophysics 🔭🧪 (and if anyone is keen to work with me on #BlackHoles lmk, I am planning to hire a software engineer soon!) 😊 www.simonsfoundation.org/2025/08/12/a...

simonsfoundation.org

A Stellar Revolution: How Open-Source Tool MESA Changed the Way We Study Stars

A Stellar Revolution: How Open-Source Tool MESA Changed the Way We Study Stars on Simons Foundation

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Francesca Fragkoudi @astrofrancesca.bsky.social · 13/08/2025

Last month we had the privilege of having Durham U's Chancellor, Dr Fiona Hill, record the narration for a new VR movie we're developing about the life of our Milky Way, using the new Auriga Superstars simulations 🔭☄️✨ We're really excited to share this soon with you all 👀 #astronomy #astrosci

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The Royal Society @royalsociety.org · 12/08/2025

Astrophysicist Margaret Burbidge FRS was born #OnThisDay in 1919. During her long career she helped originate the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis, discovered the most distant astronomical object known at the time, and helped develop instruments for the Hubble Space Telescope. #WomenInSTEM #Space

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Francesca Fragkoudi @astrofrancesca.bsky.social · 06/08/2025

oh dear, scary, but good to know since I often use google for quick calculations and unit conversions 😱

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Alex Ji @alexji.bsky.social · 05/08/2025

We’ve got a new zooniverse program called Dwarf Quest! Help us find members of our Milky Way’s galactic entourage in data from the Dark Energy Camera www.zooniverse.org/projects/ywy...

zooniverse.org

Zooniverse

The Zooniverse is the world’s largest and most popular platform for people-powered research.

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CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @rami.spaceaustralia.com · 03/08/2025

So something @stilgherrian.com shared earlier caught my eye and I did some reading. Apparently, SpaceX is lodged a complaint with the FCC that another company, AST, is putting to many satellites into orbit. First and foremost, let's get this out of the way ... fuckin lolz. They have no shame. 1/n

Letter from SpaceX that is complaining to FCC about AST.

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Jim Al-Khalili @jimalkhalili.bsky.social · 30/07/2025

🧪Physicists disagree wildly on what quantum mechanics says about reality, Nature survey shows From nature.com www.nature.com/articles/d41...

nature.com

Physicists disagree wildly on what quantum mechanics says about reality, Nature survey shows

First major attempt to chart researchers’ views finds interpretations in conflict.

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 30/07/2025

Big day for the matriarchy! 🥳 Huge congrats to the awesome Prof. Doughtery, lead on the Jupiter-bound ESA JUICE mission & STFC Exec Chair. If anyone's confused on the astro royal hierarchy: Michele and I are the astro equivalents of 🇬🇧Westminster and 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿Holyrood 🤗 ℹ️: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... 👩‍🔬🔭🧪

bbc.co.uk

UK gets first female Astronomer Royal in 350 years

Prof Michele Dougherty is the first woman to be appointed to the influential post.

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Francesca Fragkoudi @astrofrancesca.bsky.social · 21/07/2025

Our sister institute at Durham, the Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy, are advertising for a five year lectureship position 🔭☄️ Advertisement is here, have a look and come join us in pretty Durham: durham.taleo.net/careersectio... #astrosci

durham.taleo.net

Lecturer in Observational Astronomy (Research %26 Education)

Click the link provided to see the complete job description.

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Paul McMillan @mcmillan-astro.bsky.social · 15/07/2025

🔭 Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, UK astronomy version. Inspired by a comment from LOC chair David Alexander at #NAM2025 🔭

Sgt Pepper Beatles in NAM 2025 group photo

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Mike Boylan-Kolchin @mbkplus.bsky.social · 14/07/2025

I have a lot of thoughts here, but the most basic one is that it's insane that we've allowed people to get so rich that they can basically fund this with their own money while at the same time not providing any real mechanism for governmental oversight or regulation.

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NAM 2025 Durham @nam25-durham.bsky.social · 09/07/2025

DAY 3 #NAM2025durham 🌟 Midweek at #NAM2025 brings one of our busiest days of sessions! Join us for these special events: 🎨 Artwork unveiling in OCW including dance and poetry performances 🎲 board games night in the TLC And reminder to vote for most engaging exhibitor by 5pm!

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Durham University @durham.ac.uk · 02/07/2025

We're excited to be hosting almost 1,000 leading space scientists at the @royalastrosoc.bsky.social ‪National Astronomy Meeting #NAM2025 next week, 7 to 11 July! Leading up to NAM, discover more about our amazing research into the mysteries of the Universe 👉 www.durham.ac.uk/news-events/...

A montage of space related images including a simulation of the cosmic web, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN and people looking up at the Milky Way in the night sky.

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Emily Hunt @emily.space · 26/06/2025

Finding out about Gaia at #EAS2025Cork! ☄️ Just announced: Gaia DR4 will be released in December 2026!

A photo of the slide with the December 2026 release date

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Francesca Fragkoudi @astrofrancesca.bsky.social · 25/06/2025

am I... the only person who likes the game of "submit to arXiv at exact time to be first"? 👀 I totally understanding those who don't want to play it and submit at any time. I always go through the whole list anyway, or lately tend to use something like benty-fields which sorts the papers for me

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Francesca Fragkoudi @astrofrancesca.bsky.social · 24/06/2025

allowing myself a small moment of pride to say that I'm really happy to have been promoted to associate professor 😊

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

What's that you say? You don't have 400 HD TVs to see the #RubinFirstLook images at full resolution? Fear not, surf through Rubin's view of the cosmos with the @vrubinobs.bsky.social skyviewer app! Click the link to visit these little beauties 🥰 🧪🔭 🏄‍♀️: skyviewer.app

A big galaxy on a galaxy-studded sky that looks just like the letter S!

Two swirly blue galaxies that look like twins, on top of a black sky studded with tiny galaxies

Another huge galaxy, edge on and dusty on a backdrop of oodles and oodles of other tiny galaxies.

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Francesca Fragkoudi @astrofrancesca.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

wow look at how deep the VRubin image is!

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Bibiana Prinoth @bibianaprinoth.ch · 12/06/2025

I don't post super often here, but I just came by to share this news article with you (published alongside the paper in Nature yesterday). www.nature.com/articles/d41... There are a couple of sentences in the news article that stuck with me more than anything: 1/x

nature.com

When do girls fall behind in maths? Gigantic study pinpoints the moment

Analysis of almost three million children captures when ‘mathematical gender gap’ first emerges and could help focus efforts to stop girls from falling behind.

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Royal Astronomical Society @royalastrosoc.bsky.social · 17/06/2025

Planning to attend #NAM2025 but don't have a ticket? Time to get your skates on because registration closes at the end of this week! 🛼🛼🛼 👉 🎟️ You can book your spot at: conference.astro.dur.ac.uk/event/7/over...

conference.astro.dur.ac.uk

National Astronomy Meeting (NAM) 2025

Image credit: Durham University The Royal Astronomical Society is proud to present the next National Astronomy Meeting, NAM2025, at Durham University from Monday 7th July to Friday 11th July, 2025.…

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Michael Tremmel @michaeltremmel.bsky.social · 17/06/2025

Cluster is down for maintenance

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Oliver Hahn 🇪🇺 @cosmohahn.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

Final weekly problem set for our methods of computational astrophysics class in Vienna: self-gravitating Vlasov-Poisson dynamics with a symplectic PIC method and spectral Poisson solver. Dear students, we've come a long way!

the caustic pattern obtained by simulating the collapse of a collisionless fairly cold perturbation showing ringlike features around a common center

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Paul McMillan @mcmillan-astro.bsky.social · 06/06/2025

Yes. Plot everything. (Do not put all of those plots in your paper/lab report!) A favourite exercise when I taught stats was to get students to calculate the mean and std deviation of one set each from the 'Datasaurus dozen', and then get them to plot their data! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datasau...

Data points that make the image of a T-rex

By Alberto Cairo - http://www.thefunctionalart.com/2016/08/download-datasaurus-never-trust-summary.html, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=144852759

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NAM 2025 Durham @nam25-durham.bsky.social · 02/06/2025

We're so excited to be welcoming NAM back to Durham! Here's a bit more about the history of NAM ✨️ #NAM2025Durham #community #sciencethroughconnection

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ESO @eso.org · 02/06/2025

The Moon is peering over the shoulder of one of the antennas of ALMA, spread out atop the Chajnantor Plateau in Chile 📡 🌕 ALMA's antennas observe the cool Universe using wavelengths between infrared radiation and radio waves. Read more: www.eso.org/public/image... 🔭 🧪 📷 Y. Villalon/ESO

The enormous white dish of an antenna is visible in the centre of the image. It’s held up by a large stand, and four beams come from the top, bottom and sides of the dish to meet in the middle of the huge antenna. The sky behind it is completely free of clouds. Just to the right of the dish, the Moon is faintly visible.

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NAM 2025 Durham @nam25-durham.bsky.social · 30/05/2025

NAM is the @royalastrosoc.bsky.social National Astronomy Meeting - 5 days bringing together the astronomy community from many different areas of the field to share their research and build connections! Remember to register to be part of NAM before the 20th June (6th June for presenters)!

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European Space Agency @esa.int · 30/05/2025

🎉 #50YearsOfESA: today, 30 May, we’re celebrating 50 years since the signing of the Convention for the creation of a single European Space Agency in May 1975.

esa.int

Special edition marks 50 years of the ESA Convention

Today, 30 May, we’re celebrating 50 years since the signing of the Convention for the creation of a single European Space Agency in May 1975. 

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Emily Hunt @emily.space · 03/04/2025

Next paper I want to highlight: the paper for STRAUSS by @trayford.bsky.social et al. came out! ☄️ #astrocode STRAUSS is a tool for sonifying scientific data, meaning you can enhance the presentation & accessibility of your data. Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2504.01660 Here's a great example:

youtube.com

Hearing black hole winds

YouTube video by Audio Universe

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Francesca Fragkoudi @astrofrancesca.bsky.social · 22/05/2025

correction: it's a bar within a star-forming oval overdensity INSIDE A WEAK BAR WITHIN A LARGER DISC. WHAT! A *chef's kiss* fractal galaxy. I think it's my new fave 🥰

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Francesca Fragkoudi @astrofrancesca.bsky.social · 21/05/2025

my office mate today, seriously slacking off

a fluffy grey cat sleeping very peacefully

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Francesca Fragkoudi @astrofrancesca.bsky.social · 21/05/2025

very proud of Paula Lopez, PhD student in Argentina, on her paper out on arXiv today 🤩🥳 Paula explored the formation and evolution of boxy/peanut bulges (the vertically extended part of stellar bars) in the Auriga cosmological simulations ☄️🔭 #astronomy arxiv.org/abs/2505.13590

arxiv.org

Formation and evolution of boxy/peanut bulges in the Auriga cosmological simulations

Boxy/peanut (b/p) or X-shaped bulges have been extensively explored with theory and numerical simulations of isolated galaxies. However, it is only recently that advances in hydrodynamical cosmologica...

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Francesca Fragkoudi @astrofrancesca.bsky.social · 19/05/2025

This galaxy is mad tings. It's a bar within a star-forming oval overdensity WHAT IS GOING ON

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Michael Tremmel @michaeltremmel.bsky.social · 08/05/2025

Hey I’m hiring a 4-year PhD student in #astronomy at UCC to work on studying massive black holes in cosmological simulations! Fast turn around on this bc it is so late (due 6 June) but please pass on to any interested and qualified students! Feel free to dm/email me! 🔭🧪 www.ucc.ie/en/astro/job...

ucc.ie

Job Opportunities | University College Cork

Learn, Study and Research in UCC, Ireland's first 5 star university. Our tradition of independent thinking will prepare you for the world and the workplace in a vibrant, modern, green campus.

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Durham University @durham.ac.uk · 15/05/2025

Congratulations Prof Ryan Cooke from our Department of Physics - the joint recipient of the 2025 Gruber Foundation Cosmology Prize, for his work with Prof Max Pettini @cambridgeastro.bsky.social. measuring the composition of the Universe just after the Big Bang.👉 www.durham.ac.uk/news-events/...

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Daniel Pomarède @pomarede.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

2025 Gruber Cosmology Prize Ryan Cooke and Max Pettini awarded for bringing the light element abundances and Big Bang Nucleosynthesis into the realm of precision cosmology. gruber.yale.edu/press/2025-g... 🧪 #Cosmology

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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 07/05/2025

Bleak. nymag.com/intelligence...

Text from article:

It’ll be years before we can fully account for what all of this is doing to students’ brains. Some early research shows that when students off-load cognitive duties onto chatbots, their capacity for memory, problem-solving, and creativity could suffer. Multiple studies published within the past year have linked AI usage with a deterioration in critical-thinking skills; one found the effect to be more pronounced in younger participants. In February, Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University published a study that found a person’s confidence in generative AI correlates with reduced critical-thinking effort. The net effect seems, if not quite Wall-E, at least a dramatic reorganization of a person’s efforts and abilities, away from high-effort inquiry and fact-gathering and toward integration and verification. This is all especially unnerving if you add in the reality that AI is imperfect — it might rely on something that is factually inaccurate or just make something up entirely — with the ruinous effect social media has had on Gen Z’s ability to tell fact from fiction. The problem may be much larger than generative AI. The so-called Flynn effect refers to the consistent rise in IQ scores from generation to generation going back to at least the 1930s. That rise started to slow, and in some cases reverse, around 2006. “The greatest worry in these times of generative AI is not that it may compromise human creativity or intelligence,” Robert Sternberg, a psychology professor at Cornell University, told The Guardian, “but that it already has.”

(Katie's added note: the sentences about reorganization of abilities and telling fact from fiction have been highlighted.)

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