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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Fab 1st day at #NewScientistLive. Absolutely brilliant astro talks from @chanda.blacksky.app & @chrislintott.bsky.social and I even managed to fangirl Helen Sharman (astronaut) to tell her about the time she visited my school and changed my life. She is the nicest person in the world ever 🤗🔭

Chanda is on the Universe New Scientist live stage with her hand raised in the air. It's a rubbish photo because the room was packed and I was at the back of it trying to zoom in on my hero on the stage!

Chris is on stage with a firey image on the screen behind him. It's another rubbish photo because the room was packed and I was at the back of it trying to zoom in on my hero on the stage!

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Fab story from Margaret Hamilton, RIP, showing why Science-Mums are brilliant scientists! When innovating at the cutting edge of technology, it's so important to bring together a wide range of lived experiences. Sad that only ~20% comp-scientists are female 👩‍🔬🧪 ℹ️: www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Right: A woman looking very cool in a 70's dress standing next to a massive pile of very thick books
Left text: Did your life as a software engineer and a mother ever collide?
Often in the evening or at weekends I would bring my young daughter, Lauren, into work with me. One day, she was with me when I was doing a simulation of a mission to the moon. She liked to imitate me – playing astronaut. She started hitting keys and all of a sudden, the simulation started. Then she pressed other keys and the simulation crashed. She had selected a program which was supposed to be run prior to launch – when she was already “on the way” to the moon. The computer had so little space, it had wiped the navigation data taking her to the moon. I thought: my God – this could inadvertently happen in a real mission. I suggested a program change to prevent a prelaunch program being selected during flight. But the higher-ups at MIT and Nasa said the astronauts were too well trained to make such a mistake. Midcourse on the very next mission – Apollo 8 – one of the astronauts on board accidentally did exactly what Lauren had done. The Lauren bug! It created much havoc and required the mission to be reconfigured. After that, they let me put the program change in, all right.

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

So sad to hear that the iconic, trailblazing, Apollo 11 moon landing software engineering lead, Margaret Hamilton, is no longer with us. Love this image of her, standing next to a print out of the software that landed Buzz Aldrin and Neil Amstrong on the moon! 👩‍🔬🔭🛰️🧪 ℹ️: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

A woman looking very cool in a 70's dress standing next to a massive pile of very thick books

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Extremely loud squeals of excitement chez-Heymans.... that is the actual CERN Director General holding a copy of my book in front of the actual LHC tunnel 🥰 🤩 Huge thanks to @pippawells.bsky.social for taking the book on a little site tour before it joins its friends on the CERN library shelves 🙏⚛️🔭

A bespectacled man in a suit (the CERN Director General Mark Thomson) with a large long tunnel behind him (the Large Hadron Collider Tunnel) is smiling holding a copy of "How to Design a Universe"

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

🔊Alright #London! Some Queens & Kings from BlueSky 🔭Astro are coming to visit y'all next week! #NewScientistLive 😎 Sa 10 Oct: @chanda.blacksky.app & @chrislintott.bsky.social 😎 Su 11 Oct: @dreochapman.bsky.social, @jimalkhalili.bsky.social et moi 🤗 ℹ️: live.newscientist.com/2026-talks-p...

New Scientist Live "One week to go"
10-12Oct 2026, Excel London and online
A man looking slightly nervous in goggles and a microphone is experimenting with a large flame of fire.

Join me at New Scientist Live
The Universe: Reality or Simulation?
Catherine is looking unusually glamorous while laughing at the camera.

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I don't have a mobile phone - so this is with my laptop.... The train is now super full!

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

🥳 New Observatory alert! (Yes, she cuts ribbons!) Huge congratulations to Dr Charles Wang and all the wonderful #Aberdeen University team who have built the brand new Anne Cruickshank Observatory! 🔭🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 ℹ️: www.abdn.ac.uk/news/26204/ 🎥: Dave Galloway NorthSound1

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

🔊Calling #Aberdeen #Elgin & #Inverness: I am heading North to come see y'all. There'll be grown-up book talks + school visits on route! Come & say hello. 🔭🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🎢 📘Th 1st: Aberdeen Science Centre 📗Fr 2nd: Moray Astronomy Club 📙Sa 3rd: Inverness Science in the Atrium ℹ️: www.roe.ac.uk/~heymans/H2D...

A crowd of people sat in a large marquee awaiting the start of the show at Wigtown book festival. The holding slide says Prof. Catherine Heymans. Reader - Catherine almost falls of the stage in surprise when she walks out to see a full house waiting to hear her speak!

Catherine is looking very excited, sat on a copy cushion with small people all around her. The text reads "Professor Catherine Heymans inspiring young minds about space" and "Attempting to explain the infinite universe to 5yr olds". Catherine is not afraid to tackle the biggest questions that the young people want answered!

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

There is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing! Here's me and the wonderful Gill Khosla, braving the elements at the #CrawickMultiverse! 🤗. Well worth a visit. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🔭 ℹ️: www.crawickmultiverse.co.uk

Catherine standing at the Crawick Multiverse sign looking very damp but delighted with life. A rainbow is in the background.

Catherine living her best life, absolutely drenched, with a ring of cairns on top of a hill behind her. (That is a landscape representation of Andromeda)

Catherine and Gill, the dark grey raining sky behind hime. Stones are jutting up out of the landscaped grass. (This was part of the colliding galaxies sculpture)

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

The wonderful & exceptionally talented 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿artist, Gillian Eilidh O'Mara (insta @light.on.the.sea), has created "this imagined corner of the cosmos" after having her "entire mind blown open" by my book. I'm absolutely blown away: all the love, joy and wonder I poured into the book, in a single picture.

Swirls of candyfloss pink, cherry reds, warm oranges and sparkly yellows and golds. A small rocket whooshes us away to discover new worlds together.

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

"So we've got to make it look like she's in a simulation" "OK, got it. We'll make her shirt bright orange" "Fab! Float everyday objects in the background?" "I've got a chair, tennis ball and bat?" "What about an upside-down dog!" "Genius....and we're done" 😉🗞️: www.newscientist.com/article/2588...

Catherine smiling in black and white, with an artificially imposed alarmingly bright and pixelated orange shirt on. In the background floats a random selection of objects, a chair, tennis ball and bat, and upside-down dog that is very strangely proportioned - looks kind of cool but also kind of not.

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

⏰ Start your countdown clock for the exact moment of the autumn #equinox, 01:06 (UK) 23rd Sept, when the Northern hemisphere and Southern hemisphere are equally illuminated. The day length in 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿Scotland will be ~the same as in 🇳🇿New Zealand 🤓🧪🔭 📷: National Maritime Museum, Greenwich

The main diagram shows the Earth's annual rotation around the Sun, surrounded by a zodiacal scale that gives the names, symbols and images of the signs of the zodiac. The seasons and the positions of the equinoxes and solstices are marked. Text at the corners describes the Zodiac and the Earth, and a longer text at the bottom explains the Phenomena of the Seasons.

From https://collections.rmg.co.uk/media/501/182/l1073_001.jpg

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

#TopOfThePops (well - top 10 - momentarily - in the Amazon 🔭Astronomy audio book best seller chart!). Beaten by the several books authored by your main man Brian, G.O.A.T Sagan, and deGrasse Tyson. I'll take that. 🥳 📻: amzn.eu/d/06m17g9B

The front cover of Catherine's Book (moody dark with stars, but peachy-pink and golden at the same time). Ranked #10 in the Audible Audiobook rankings.

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

NASA picture of the day today is a real 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿beauty! This is a composite image of the ~5000yo Callanish Stones on the Isle of Lewis. The amazing Giuseppe Petricca has only gone and photographed the Sun at noon there, every few days, for a whole year. #Dedication 🔭🧪👌 ℹ️: science.nasa.gov/image-articl...

The imposing Callanish Stones stand talk with their shadows spanning out across the glass. It's a super clear sky, but looks cold. Above the central stone is a strange figure-of-8 shape of dots. This is the location of the Sun, at noon, on various different days across the year.

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

BlueSky! Any Sunday chores on your to-do list today that would benefit from an audio accompaniment? Here is me & Jason Goodyer (editor of BBC Science Focus) having a lovely long blether about reality. Suitable for both cooking and cleaning activities. You're welcome 🤗🧪🔭 🔗: pod.link/1296673906/e...

Podcast episode
Are we living in a simulation? How to tell if reality is fake.
Instant Genius.
A picture of a spooky face with plants in its brain....???

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

🔊 Calling #Ayr! You have the most amazing #astrophotography event happening right on your doorstep between now and Sunday! 📍Cutty Sark Centre ⏰ 10:30-17:30 every day until 20th Sept 🎟️ Free! Just turn up 🤗 I'll be there on Friday - come and say hello! ℹ️: photonica.co.uk

Photonica 26 "A journey through the cosmos"
A picture of a nebula with a Seestar S30 up for the chance of winning

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

🥳The book launch was the most amazing night at Dynamic Earth! @spacedoot.bsky.social knocked it out of the park when it came to the visuals! If you missed it, the planetarium show will be repeated * @glasgowscience.bsky.social 23 Sept * Winchester Planetarium 13 Oct * @sherwoodobs.bsky.social 9 Dec

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

👇At the #DynamicEarth book launch last night, a rare sighting of me with me fella. This was the 1st time we've ever been on stage together despite both of us often being on stage independently! @spacedoot.bsky.social was a total legend with the awesome planetarium visuals. An epic night had by all 🤩

Catherine tiny under a giant twisting turning Sun in the planetarium

Guy playing bass guitar looking up at the craters on the moon in the planetarium

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

And in the meantime, here are some screenshots of the relevant pages in the e-book. So sorry about that David!

Pages from How to Design a Universe with the computer code

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

The 13yo just came home from his paper-round with this! I think I might have finally impressed him 👌 Vogue next? 🤣 👩‍🔬

Photo of the Scotsman newspaper. On the front cover of the magazine section it says "A star is born, make space for Astronomer Royal Catherine Heymans", and Catherine is vaguely smiling infront of a massive supercomputer of wires!

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Oh amazing - thank you Karen. I really hope you like a lot of it, and hope that you don't ever get as frustrated as I did once with a science book and throw it in the bin.

I can remember sheepishly fishing this book out of the Texan trash
can to give it a second chance. It’s just as well I did, as it is now
immortalised in time as a prop in a portrait of me that hangs on the
wall of Scotland’s National Academy, the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Book launch tech rehearsal at Dynamic Earth complete! @spacedoot.bsky.social is officially amazing: his planetarium show is going to be awesome! Sound check with the 🎸Sound Rays was fantastic. There are only a few tickets left - come - it's going to be🤩 Fri 11th: dynamicearth.org.uk/event/how-to...

Catherine reading from a lecture on stage, amazing graphics of the Australian outback behind her

A base guitar sits under a galaxy-filled sky.

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

🤩 I've already started Invisible Rainbows.... my bookshelf isn't as super cool as yours though!

Books on a shelf including the wonderful "Invisible Rainbows"!

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Good news - I come in audiobook format too. 📻: www.audible.co.uk/pd/How-to-De... Here is me totally losing my mind with excitement after 6 1/2 days in the studio. Shout out to the most amazing producer, Beeg Al, Canongate studios, who kindly laughed at all my jokes and was just the nicest guy ever🙏

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Happy publication day morning to me!! Dear friend @chrislintott.bsky.social said on record that it was "Truly unique! Sparkling with charm and interest & uncompromisingly clear". In person he said "I don't want you to take this the wrong way, but it was surprisingly good" 🥳 Major compliment! 🤗🧪

"Sparkling with charm and interest".
Chris Lintott present of The Sky at Night
Catherine's book is below it, looking dark and moody, but with peachy-pink tones.

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

A total heart-sink moment this morning when I saw this over on LinkedIn from a colleague who transitioned to corporate data science 8yrs ago. I have politely pointed them to @hogg.bsky.social's excellent piece on AI-use in academia, but internally I'm screaming "Why? Why? Why would you do this?" 🫣🧪

On my own I have written 6 papers in the past 2 weeks, all of them PhD-quality or higher, with the help of Fable 5.1 and other models. The AI got a research draft done in tens of minutes for most of those, I just guided it the rest of the way.

Note that I have been out of the field for 8 years, I have no grad students, no grants, no compute, nothing but my 5 year old desktop and AI. For those who have left the field but still want to contribute, this is a godsend.

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

A big shout out to the fab #Kirkcudbright Dark Space Planetarium who hosted me this w/end for a sneak preview of the book ahead of its official launch this Thurs! Did I give a science talk about the chances that we're living in a simulated universe in the Parish Church? 😵‍💫 Yes BlueSky, I did. 😎

Catherine sat next to a massive pile of books inside a very funky looking science centre, which is the Kirkcudbright Dark Space Planetarium

The inside of a massive church. Catherine is sat in the middle of the audience, looking rather out of place!

A planetarium, Catherine pointing up an image of Europa - moon of Jupiter.

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Another morning with an inbox full of scam e-mails that say the nicest things about the new book: it's a wonderful pep-talk until you remember it's all just a hallucinating AI-agent 🥺 Thank goodness then for the wonderful @richbamford.bsky.social who is 100% human and is already up to Chpt 2 🥳

A message from Rich.
"Thought I'd have a quick glance at the prologue before bed ... just stopped myself in chapter two"

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

#Edinburgh! What are you doing on Friday night? Come to my book launch at Dynamic Earth! There will be: 🍺 A bar 🎶 Music 💃 Dancing (well, I'll be dancing from all the excitement) 🪐 Planetarium 360 visuals 🧪 Science + a little bit of philosophy 🎟️: dynamicearth.org.uk/event/how-to... 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🔭

How to Design a Universe: Planetarium Show
Prof. Catherine Heymans Boos Launch
Readings and live music with Planetarium visuals.
Text on a cool pink version of the Andromeda Galaxy

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Go to Carrick Beach at high tide, they said. It's a gorgeous place for a swim, they said.... Well I've never been one for the weather Gods spoiling my plans.... 🤗 #SwimmingInTheRain

Catherine in the murky waves looking delighted!

A dreich day on a Scottish beach. A small pink hat can be seen - a made woman swimming in the water.

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

🥳 Congrats to MOONS which saw its first light last night! The STFC CEO described it as a "tremendously exciting..landmark moment". I agree! So why has STFC cut all funding for the MOONS data processing archive that UK-folk were planning to use to carry out their "transformational science"? 🤔🤷‍♀️🔭

A computer screen showing spectra from the 1000 robotic eyes of the MOON spectrograph

A team of happy people in hardhats standing in front of the massive MOONS instrument.

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

It's official: the ARScot is rated 9.9/10 - I thank you #Kirkcudbright Primary! 😊 A fab morning full of questions from an absolutely wonderful and curious group of young minds. From P1-P7 we talked about aliens, astronauts, black holes, exploding stars, and the beginning & end of space and time 🤗🔭

a coloured-in happy character with a score 9.9/10!

A curious character, writing on a book.
"I was taking notes and was interested in all the topics you talked about"

A relaxed happy character
"I think that I really want to be an astronomer"

A relaxed happy character
"I learned that stared exploded - I didn't know that!"

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Well I think I am liking this new +ve PM! In response to @sarahrussellmp.bsky.social on Jodrell: "there must be a way to save #JodrellBank and I give her a commitment at this dispatch box - we will find it" Brilliant Burnham! Can you now save all the other epic projects that have also been cut 🙏🔭

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Link to the scientific presentation by Sam Eriksen: lz.lbl.gov/wp-content/u... Link to the LZ collaboration submitted paper: lz.lbl.gov/wp-content/u... #DarkMatter #LZCollaboration 🧪🔭⚛️

$We report on a search for dark matter particles interacting with xenon nuclei in an exposure of 2.84 tonne-years with the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment. An extended nuclear recoil energy window up to approximately 270 keV enables searches for effective field theory and inelastic models of dark matter where high-energy recoils account for a larger fraction of the predicted recoil spectrum compared to the nominal spin independent interaction. We observe one event with characteristics consistent with a nuclear recoil of 248 ±23 (stat) ±23 (sys) keV, in a region where the known background expectation is low. A profile likelihood ratio test finds tension with the background- only hypothesis at a global significance of 2.6σ when accounting for look-elsewhere effects, with a maximum local significance of 3.4σ across the models tested. We describe the analysis and event of interest, the background model used in the statistical inference, and detail several of the rare background topologies considered$

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

😃Have my particle physics cousins spotted an actual #DarkMatter particle? I'm v excited! The chances of this 16 June 2023 blip just being noise, are about the same as the chance that today is my birthday (which it is not, but it is for some of you). We need more data to know for sure!!!! 🤞🧪⚛️🔭

A slide from a talk entitled "A single event - LZ230616). It shows some plots. I honestly don't know what the axes are, because particle physicists never label their axes in human readable form - one of my pet peeves. But anyway, far away from the main body of data is a tiny dot, something unusual. Is it dark matter? Who knows. But it's definitely something special!

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Hey @sciencecentres.bsky.social I'm ready to trial your new "colour your experience" impact assessment tool with all ~200 pupils at Kirkcudbright Primary on Friday! Here's hoping they pick the happy/interested peas after I visit their classrooms for "Ask the Astronomer Royal Anything"! 👩‍🔬🔭#scicomm

Some small pot plants behind stack of sheets of different pea-like mood characters and the phrase "colour your experience"

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

I've known my best friend since we were 3yo. She's currently reading the book & sending a running commentary 😂 "It's surprisingly good" "SO beautifully written. How can you be amazing at prose when you’ve spent 25 yrs just writing academic papers????" 🥳 YOU PUT ME IN A FOOTNOTE ABOUT ELECTRONS!

A screen shot of text that reads:

To the grammar fanatics: yes, I have intentionally capitalised the
word Diva here! As we move through the book this will provide a
regular reminder that each electron Diva is an individual, as unique
as your best friend Esther or your Auntie Jan.

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

This is very meta..... doesn't display until you click on it 😂

A blank post entitled "Welcome to Bluesky"

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Full marks to the ever-fab @drcarpineti.bsky.social, who managed to organise the Nancy Grace Roman space telescope launch to be timed perfectly with his Invisible Rainbow book tour talk in Edinburgh today! 🥳 And the crowd went wild 🤗 (also I got to meet Alfredo's v v cute Corgie called Clue 😍)

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Ooh yes you're right! How annoying. Their countdown to launch is actually the countdown to their coverage of the launch starting 🤷‍♀️

LIVE Coverage for Roman Space Telescope Launch

Sunday, Aug. 30
6:20 a.m. EDT – Launch Coverage Begins: Stream on X, Discovery+, Amazon Amazon Prime, YouTube, and NASA+ (Find your local broadcast time here)
7:26 a.m. EDT – Launch!
9:30 a.m. EDT – Postlaunch News Conference: Stream on X, and YouTube

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

This part of the piece is spot-on. Other research councils need to look at contributing to the rising facilities costs at STFC because it is their researchers who are relying on them.

One of the strangest features of this situation is that most of the researchers using these facilities are not funded by STFC.

A letter signed by researchers from across UK science estimates that more than 90% of UKRI-funded research activity at Diamond is supported by EPSRC, BBSRC, MRC and NERC. The council paying for a research grant may therefore be different from the one paying to keep the necessary equipment operating.

That arrangement may have worked while there was enough money to go around. It looks far less sensible when one council is forced to cut a facility relied upon by researchers whose grants sit elsewhere in UKRI.

An MRC-funded dementia researcher can still hold a perfectly healthy research grant and find that the national facility named in the application has less beamtime, fewer staff or a longer queue. A university cannot solve that by buying its own synchrotron or neutron source.

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Even the big boss, Astronomer Royal, Lord Martin Rees of Ludlow, liked it 🤗🥳 ℹ️: www.bloomsbury.com/uk/how-to-de...

A journey into the science of reality
"Informative, fascinating and entertaining". Martin Rees

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

🔊 #Edinburgh! Join me to celebrate the launch of my new book at Dynamic Earth. With live music from the Sound Rays + a full-dome planetarium experience, we'll be reconsidering what it means to be real! 🔭 Fri 11th Sept 18:30 Bar opens 19:30 Show + Book signing 🎟️: dynamicearth.org.uk/event/how-to...

A massive purple explosion appears to have occurred above Catherine's head (it's a dark matter map) as she gazes off in to the distance while holding her book. A nice old telescope in propped on the table (not that she'd be able to see the invisible dark matter with it).

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

"We'd like your photoshoot to be with a historic telescope" "But my book is about creating a virtual universe inside a futuristic supercomputer" [pulls in massive favour from colleagues at the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre] "Great news - I can offer you both space-age and sparkly" 👌👩‍🔬

Catherine is looking moody in a blue shirt that is colour-co-ordinated with a blue strip light that runs along cabinets that house computers. In the foreground a photographer is taking her photo.

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

I appear to have had a lot of things to say on these two very important topics.... 🔭👩‍🔬⚛️ ℹ️: www.bloomsbury.com/uk/how-to-de...

A screenshot of the index page:

sexual discrimination in academia
81–2, 102–3, 215–16, 228
‘shut up and calculate’ approach to
quantum physics 127–31, 132,
142, 144, 162, 166–7, 170, 176

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Having a little internal chuckle at this juxtaposition in the index of the new book "How to Design a Universe". I mean, who wouldn't I want to read about sub-atomic particles, ancient pre-Socratic Greek philosophers, and Brussels sprouts.... 🤔. #booksky 🧪🔭 ℹ️: www.bloomsbury.com/uk/how-to-de...

And index page for the letter T

TAS2R38 and sprouts 61
taste, sense of 59–61
tau-neutrinos 165
Thales of Miletus 22

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Just off BBC Breakfast: it's so wonderful that we're still talking about the #eclipse half a week later! It's like the celestial equivalent of the Strictly Come Dancing Final - a unique, special, sparkly, time-sensitive extravaganza that joyfully brings together the whole community! 🤗 🔭

A woman and a bearded man looking up at the Sun with eclipse glasses on. They are both laughing and having a fab time.

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