iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Dr Ashley J Ruiter @astronomash.bsky.social · 26/08/2025

Apparently it's #internationaldogday 🐶 Our little floofer is 9 months tomorrow 💗

Jimmy the cavoodle puppy lying in his bed looking at camera with puppy dog eyes rest-biting his favourite bunny toy.

Reposted by Dr Ashley J Ruiter

Astronomy Australia Limited (AAL) @astroaustralia.bsky.social · 10/07/2025

Fantastic to see the 2026-2035 Astronomy Decadal Plan launched at the Annual Science Meeting. What better way to celebrate than cake! We look forward to continuing to support the Australian astronomy community to implement this inspiring plan. Read the plan here: t.co/HUGz9Vgn86

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Dr Ashley J Ruiter @astronomash.bsky.social · 02/07/2025

Oh I had to look that one up... 😂

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Dr Ashley J Ruiter @astronomash.bsky.social · 02/07/2025

Thanks for helping to put this together ESO PR team! Very excited to see the paper finally out in @natastron.nature.com 🧪🔭

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NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory @rubinobservatory.org · 23/06/2025

Introducing...your sneak peek at the cosmos captured by NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory! Can you guess these regions of sky? This is just a small peek...join us at 11am US EDT for your full First Look at how Rubin will #CaptureTheCosmos! 🔭🧪 #RubinFirstLook ls.st/rubin-first-look-livestream

A sprawling, textured field of galaxies scattered across the deep black of space. It is filled with the delicate smudges and glowing cores of galaxies of many shapes, sizes and colors, as well as the bright multi-colored points of stars. The image focuses on a collection of interacting galaxies connected by delicate streams of stars. At top center lies a large elliptical galaxy that is dense and smooth, like a polished stone glowing with golden light. Like delicate spider silk or stretched taffy, these stellar bridges link the large elliptical to the few larger galaxies beneath, evidence of past collisions.

All throughout the image, thousands of galaxies gather in clusters or are spread throughout, like glittering gems strewn on a table. Some are sharp-edged and spiral, like coiled ribbons; others round and diffuse, like polished pebbles. Still others are just smudges of various colors against the black of space. The background is peppered with pinpoint stars in reds, yellows, and blues, crisp against the velvet black.

A cosmic tapestry of glowing tan and pink gas clouds with dark dust lanes. In the upper right, the Trifid Nebula resembles a small flower in space. Its soft, pinkish gas petals are surrounded by blue gas, and streaked with dark, finger-like veins of dust that divide it into three parts. It radiates a gentle, misty glow, diffuse and soft like the warmth of breath on a cold hand. To the lower left, the much larger Lagoon Nebula stretches wide like a churning sea of magenta gas, with bright blue, knotted clumps sprinkled throughout where new stars are born. Both nebulae are embedded in a soft tan backdrop of gas that is brighter on the left than on the right, etched with dark tendrils of dust and sprinkled with the pinpricks of millions of stars.

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Reposted by Dr Ashley J Ruiter

European Space Agency @esa.int · 11/06/2025

🌞 See the Sun from a whole new angle. For the first time, our Solar Orbiter mission has captured close-up images of the Sun’s mysterious poles, regions long hidden from our view.

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Reposted by Dr Ashley J Ruiter

Robert "The Bobby Yaga" McNees @mcnees.bsky.social · 07/06/2025

If you teach physics, Prince can help your students learn the Right Hand Rule. 🎢

A black and white photo of Prince, next to a column on text in a magazine spread. His right hand is outstretched, with his thumb and fingers pointing out three orthogonal directions, they have been labeled F, v, and B as a mnemonic for determining the direction of magnetic force on a moving positive charge.

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CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @rami.spaceaustralia.com · 15/05/2025

Yo, #Sydney and #Melbourne! Some exciting news! Over last few months have been planning an excellent #SciComm event for our cities. We're hosting @astrokatie.com here in Oz for two weeks to talk about 'The End of Everything!' and more fun science. Got a fantastic program planned for you! 1/3 🔭

Portrait photo of Katie Mack. She is smiling and looking towards the right of the image.

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Sarah Hörst @planetdr.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

For those of us who made the poor choice to have our life’s work governed by orbital mechanics, 4 years can change a project from “some really interesting science to do towards the end of my career”into “won’t happen in my lifetime” (Looking at you Uranus orbiter)

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Phil PlAIt @philplait.bsky.social · 01/06/2025

Pretty big coronal mass ejection from the Sun hit us last night. The results are beautiful.

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US National Gemini Office @usngo.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

This week’s image is of type Ia supernovae! Optical and NIR spectra taken with Gemini's GMOS and Flamingos-2 helped assess the goodness of various models that constrain the explosion, progenitor star, and binary companion. Check out the 🧵 for more papers on supernovae! #astronomy 📷 credit in thread

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Dr Jan Eldridge @astro-jje.bsky.social · 12/05/2025

So the Department of Physics at the University of Auckland is looking to hire a lecturer/senior lecturer in one of the following areas: - Physics education research, - Quantum optics and quantum information, - Biophotonics and/or medical physics, - Astrophysics and/or space technology. 1/2...

jobs.smartrecruiters.com

Lecturer/Senior Lecturer in Physics

Company Description: Waipapa Taumata Rau | The University of AucklandKo te whare Pūtaiao | The Faculty of Science at the University of Auckland is the leading science faculty in New Zealand and one of...

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Reposted by Dr Ashley J Ruiter

NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory @rubinobservatory.org · 13/05/2025

Rubin #CommissioningNotes ✍️: The data deluge from NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory is coming! Rubin captured over 500 exposures per night across 3 nights this week, using its automated observation scheduler — that’s 20x more than during the 7 week period with the engineering camera last year!🔭 🧪 🧵

View of Rubin Observatory's massive telescope structure inside the observatory dome. The telescope is a teal steel structure shaped like a squat vase with a round bottom. To the left, a large white donut-shaped screen is mounted on the dome wall, about two-thirds the size of the telescope structure. Just above the telescope, the vertical dome slit is slightly open, showing a blue-purple night sky outside. The interior of the dome is silver metal above and black light-blocking screen s on the sides, all criss-crossed by teal support beams.

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Roman Telescope 🔴 Gallery @roman-telescope.bsky.social · 05/05/2025

NASA Science: Roman Space Telescope article (Aug 8, 2024) NASA's future missions will rely on citizen scientists to help discover new exoplanets beyond our solar system. science.nasa.gov/open-science/exoplanet-future-citizen-science/

K2-33b, shown in this illustration, is one of the youngest exoplanets detected to date using NASA's Kepler Space Telescope. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

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Benjamin Pope @benjaminpope.bsky.social · 17/04/2025

This is great, but it's also a little depressing that it's unfunded and fishing for philanthropic support.

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Jonathan McDowell @planet4589.bsky.social · 06/04/2025

An obit for Alicia Soderberg, a lovely person who will be much missed. I met Alicia when she was an undergrad student in my summer REU research progam; she later became a valued teacher in the same program, mentoring many students who themselves went on to success.

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ESO @eso.org · 07/04/2025

What's the magical green glow that dominates the sky in this pic of ESO’s La Silla Observatory? 🧐 Known as airglow, it's a faint light emitted by the Earth’s atmosphere and it is only visible in the darkest of places. What causes it? Find out here: www.eso.org/public/image... 🔭 🧪 📷 J. Pérez/ESO

A fisheye lens view of the night sky taken from the ground of an astronomical observatory. Several telescope domes and other buildings are arranged around the circular frame. The sky glows in green hues and it is filled with stars. The band of the Milky Way galaxy is visible in the middle.

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CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @rami.spaceaustralia.com · 26/03/2025

Finally! We can start to talk about the absolute carnage that is magnetic field orientation of Neptune. What even is this absolute chaos?! How?!?! Why is Neptune like this???!!! (I love Neptune, probably equal first with Jove) 📸 Aplin et al. 2020 Space Science Reviews

Diagram showing Neptune and its very offset magnetic field. The North Pole stars where the equation and rotation axis meet. South Pole is pointed near the south edge of the planet. The magnetic axis does not align with rotation axis and is offset by 47°. Field lines are also drawn

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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 25/03/2025

Duckworth: "Hegseth is the most unqualified sec def in history & this is further demonstrating his incompetence. He's literally leaking classified war plans via group chat...if you're our allies, I'd be thinking twice about sharing classified information...All these people need to lose their jobs"

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ARC Tracker @arc-tracker.bsky.social · 25/03/2025

Meanwhile, in Europe👇

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Brett Morris @brettmorr.is · 19/03/2025

The atomic spectral lines in this app come from the NIST atomic spectroscopy group, which has provided the world with spectroscopic measurements for 120 years. Today we got word that the federal government is laying off the entire group. 🔭🧪

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Reposted by Dr Ashley J Ruiter

Physics Today @physicstoday.aip.org · 10/03/2025

Vera Rubin has been selected to be featured on the back of a quarter. She is the first astronomer to be honored this way. Read about her research on the Andromeda galaxy and how it led to the discovery of dark matter in this article written by Rubin herself. doi.org/10.1063/1.24... 🔭 #WomenInStem

A black and white photo of Vera Rubin measuring spectra

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Reposted by Dr Ashley J Ruiter

Ted Stryk @tedstryk.bsky.social · 01/03/2025

Today in 1982, Venera 13 landed on Venus, taking the first color photos of the surface of Venus. These are my reprocessed versions of the full panoramas.

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Reposted by Dr Ashley J Ruiter

Benjamin Pope @benjaminpope.bsky.social · 26/02/2025

Loved this historical paper on comparing Henrietta Swan Leavitt's Cepheid period-luminosity data & law to the most modern measurements of the same stars & same law - and remarkably, for century old data, it stacks up pretty well!

arxiv.org

The Legacy of Henrietta Leavitt: A Re-analysis of the First Cepheid Period-Luminosity Relation

Henrietta Swan Leavitt's discovery of the relationship between the period and luminosity (hereafter the Leavitt Law) of 25 variable stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud, published in 1912, revolutioniz...

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Dr Ashley J Ruiter @astronomash.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

Our baby No.4 💕 He has 4 white socks 🧦🧦 and sharp baby teeth!

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Physghoul 👻 🎃 @physgal.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

🧪⚛️

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William Gibson @greatdismal.bsky.social · 02/02/2025

So are Vancouver bartenders whipping up a maple syrup and tequila cocktail?

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CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @rami.spaceaustralia.com · 14/01/2025

Astro folks - do this survey if you get a chance, please! Keen to see the results since we've had a couple of large migrations over here in the last few months. 🔭🧪📡🪐

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Emily Hunt @emily.space · 12/01/2025

The @esa.int Gaia satellite will take its final scientific measurements on Wednesday. 🔭 This will conclude a 12 year series of continuous observations. Larger Gaia data releases are still in progress, but Gaia has already had a HUGE impact on our understanding of the #milkyway. (Image: ESA)

An artist's impression of the Gaia spacecraft.

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Reposted by Dr Ashley J Ruiter

Konkoly Observatory @konkolyobs.bsky.social · 02/01/2025

Glorious aurora and SAR arc on the first night of 2025, as captured by our all-sky camera at Piszkéstető station: www.youtube.com/shorts/X3aOj...

youtube.com

2025 New Year's Aurora from Piszkéstető

YouTube video by László Molnár

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Reposted by Dr Ashley J Ruiter

Jason Spyromilio Ιάσων Σπυρομίλιος @apolitosb.bsky.social · 27/12/2024

🔭 a good year so far. Telescope going up, mirrors being delivered … Christian’s Supernova paper on H0 submitted arxiv.org/abs/2411.04968 Spent months talking & thinking why most in the Astro community don’t teach forbidden lines correctly. Finally decided to write it up. arxiv.org/abs/2410.22539

arxiv.org

Forbidden lines are not quenched

There is no such thing as quenching of forbidden lines.

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Reposted by Dr Ashley J Ruiter

CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @rami.spaceaustralia.com · 27/12/2024

A cool celestial firework (a supernova!) went off in NGC 3621, - a galaxy ~22 million light-years away - in April of this year, and lots of folks from around the world turned their telescopes to catch it. It was very bright, even through small apertures. I tracked it for months! #Highlights2024

Two tile image features two vertical tiles. The first on the left is a wide angle shot of a spiral galaxy. It is small and resides within a dense star field. On the right is the zoomed in version, looking closer at Galaxy. An annotated arrow points to a white star which is the supernova.

Five vertical narrow tiles, each showing a zoomed in section of an astrophotograph of a spiral galaxy’s edge. There is an arrow annotated to one of the bright stars in the galaxy which is the supernova on each of these images.

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Dr Ashley J Ruiter @astronomash.bsky.social · 25/12/2024

Sorry Rami... but yeah you are better off without them 🌈

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CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @rami.spaceaustralia.com · 21/12/2024

Wi-Fi (provides benefits to billions of people) ... came from radio astronomers looking for tiny black holes PCR tests (helped billions during the pandemic) ... came from studying extremophile bacterium in hot springs and now this 👇👇👇 You never know what science research will give our future!

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 21/12/2024

Happy #WinterSolstice! The days in the north will get longer from here on in 🥳

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Dr Ashley J Ruiter @astronomash.bsky.social · 18/12/2024

Last day working at #HITS #Heidelberg Taking the 30 "short bus" for maybe the last time

Towards-the-sky sky shot showing HITS bus stop (Haltestelle) sign with clouds in background with HITS purple flag and main gate plus some trees.

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Reposted by Dr Ashley J Ruiter

Ele Willoughby @minouette.bsky.social · 11/12/2024

Day 11 #ArtAdventCalendar: Happy birthday to trailblazing US #astronomer Annie Jump Cannon (1863 – 1941), here with her stellar classification system which sorted stars based on spectral types, revealing their temperature from hot blue to cool red stars: O,B,A, F, G, K & M. 🧪🐡👩🏼‍🔬🔭 #histsci 🧵

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Howie Hua @howiehua.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

Look at the tan lines I got on the beach #math #ITeachMath #EduSky

A selfie of me at the beach. My left arm has a sketch of the graph of y=tan(x).

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CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ @rami.spaceaustralia.com · 03/12/2024

MOAR EVIDENCE FOR THE GRAVITATIONAL WAVE BACKGROUND! Using MeerKAT (super sensitive telescope array) the MPTA team have also found supporting evidence (with their assumptions and models) of the GWB that other PTAs announced last year. This is further independent verification! The Universe rattles!

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Bluesky @bsky.app · 03/12/2024

Scientists, academics, researchers: We’re excited to share that @altmetric.com is now tracking mentions of your research on Bluesky! 🧪

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Dr Ashley J Ruiter @astronomash.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

Thanks @apolitosb.bsky.social! Our review on Type Ia supernovae 🌟 was a few years in the making, glad it's finally going to be published! 🔭🧪

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Dr Laura Driessen @astrolaura.com · 30/11/2024

Looking to add some science from amazing scicomm-ers to your feed? The Superstars of STEM starter pack by @florahui.bsky.social: go.bsky.app/FGXUnLS And a couple of astro/physics starter packs by @sevenrasmussen.com: go.bsky.app/NvQERru go.bsky.app/4Kr3B48

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Bryan Gaensler @scibry.bsky.social · 01/12/2024

Important advice: how to avoid gender bias when writing recommendation letters.

See https://csw.arizona.edu/sites/default/files/avoiding_gender_bias_in_letter_of_reference_writing.pdf for PDF version.

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Physghoul 👻 🎃 @physgal.bsky.social · 24/11/2024

👩🏻‍🔬 ⚛️ Looking for astronomers

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