iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Thomas Gaudin @astrotom.bsky.social · 26/06/2025

The newest Astronomer’s Telegram of the S-CUBED team is now live! We have detected a new X-ray binary outburst in the SMC with our weekly observations. SXP 8.80 is the second of its kind to go off in 3 months and another interesting source to track! 🔭✨ www.astronomerstelegram.org?read=17246

astronomerstelegram.org

ATel #17246: S-CUBED Detects a new outburst of the Be/X-ray binary SXP 8.80

ATel On

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Reposted by Thomas Gaudin

g+ GameFlow @gameflow.bsky.social · 18/05/2025

g+ GameFlow: MLS Next Pro Regular Season Huntsville City FC v Chattanooga FC on May 17, 2025. #HNTvCFC ⚽️🤖

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Thomas Gaudin @astrotom.bsky.social · 18/05/2025

Absolute highway robbery in Huntsville tonight. 3 points to CFC in a match where they got thoroughly outplayed. 2 goals against the run of play. A penalty saved in the 90’. What a game.

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Thomas Gaudin @astrotom.bsky.social · 04/05/2025

Introducing MLS Next Pro’s Race to the Playoffs! We’re 8 matches into a 28 match season. Over the next 10 matches, we will see teams start to make their push for early playoff qualification. Use this as a handy guide to see when teams cross last year’s “playoff safety zone”!

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Thomas Gaudin @astrotom.bsky.social · 04/05/2025

Data from yesterday’s Chattanooga FC game. For the one of the first times this season, CFC underperforms in a draw instead of in a win or loss. Ancelin’s breakaway in the 81’ ends up being the difference. We may be seeing some regression to the mean happening. You can’t play that lucky forever!

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Thomas Gaudin @astrotom.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

I duplicated this plot for the MLS Next Pro season. Chattanooga FC’s value makes no sense at all. 1.6 points above expected over a 6 match stretch is an insane run of form for the Blues. It doesn’t feel sustainable, but it’s a hell of a ride while it lasts.

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Thomas Gaudin @astrotom.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

I’m at a work dinner in PA so threads like these are saving me right now

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Thomas Gaudin @astrotom.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

The ratio of blue to red in this video is heartwarming.

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Reposted by Thomas Gaudin

Next Pro News @nextpronews.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

Update: Only 1 section (211) still has tickets available on the south side. The atmosphere tonight is going to be unbelievable.

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Thomas Gaudin @astrotom.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

Last but not least, we have all of this data in table form. Current Elos, xG data, and a justice table. Chattanooga and Atlanta again stick out. St. Louis looks really good out of the gate. Let’s see what the next month holds for the league!

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Thomas Gaudin @astrotom.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

Not every team has had their home opener yet, so take this one with even more grains of salt. I’m just putting it out there so we can compare it to what it will look like later in the season.

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Thomas Gaudin @astrotom.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

I’m anxious about the Chattanooga match tonight, so I cooked up a few xG plots for MLS Next Pro to help calm me down. Interesting to see how lucky some teams are running, including Chattanooga (noisy sample of 3-4 games). North Texas surely cannot keep giving up over 3 goals per game.

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Thomas Gaudin @astrotom.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

I have never been more nervous about a soccer match than I am today. Sometimes a sporting event is about more than just the game. Today is one of those times. Anyways, Go CFC!

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Thomas Gaudin @astrotom.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

Homework: Read this excellent piece by tomorrow. Good versus Evil is about to be personified as the Soccer Wars find their newest venue in the heart of the south. There is only one team who should be supported. Chattanooga will always be blue.

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Reposted by Thomas Gaudin

Jordan @natfan9.bsky.social · 21/03/2025

I’m tired of hearing “it’s just Panama” from US fans. They’ve beat us in four of the last five competitive matchups, it’s time to put some respect on their name. There’s a clear top four in CONCACAF right now and we might be #4.

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Thomas Gaudin @astrotom.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

I will be a nervous wreck from 500 miles away…

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Thomas Gaudin @astrotom.bsky.social · 13/03/2025

With MLS NEXT Pro Matchday 2 about to kick off, I decided to run some calculations. Based on the Elo ratings that I derived a few months ago, I can forecast the match outcomes of MLSNP games. Here are the implied odds for the matches tonight. Let’s see how the Tom Model does throughout the season!

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Thomas Gaudin @astrotom.bsky.social · 09/03/2025

I would still put a total solar eclipse over this for “most beautiful astronomical sights”, but it is definitely a close second! We had gone unlucky outside of Hella and in Vík, but Höfn was good to us. Last time I was in Finland, it was May, so this is my first chance to see them. Very lucky!

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Thomas Gaudin @astrotom.bsky.social · 09/03/2025

I live in Pennsylvania, so I’ve seen weak aurorae. I was not prepared for how easily-identifiable the brightness and structure were!

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Thomas Gaudin @astrotom.bsky.social · 09/03/2025

The main thing that changes in person is the color. You can clearly identify each of these bands in the sky and even make out structure that dances and changes in real time. However, the bands and color and structure all appear white. It’s very hard to identify colors unless the storm is strong.

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Thomas Gaudin @astrotom.bsky.social · 09/03/2025

I hadn’t even thought of that, but thank you! This is also just the shot my iPhone picked up. I had my DSLR going and I CANNOT WAIT to see what it shows me when I get a chance to process the images!

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Thomas Gaudin @astrotom.bsky.social · 09/03/2025

I saw it from my home in Pennsylvania then, too, but I was not prepared for how different it would look tonight. You could see a sheet of light from the more southern locations, but in the north, you can watch the bands dance and change and move over your head. Truly magical!!

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Thomas Gaudin @astrotom.bsky.social · 09/03/2025

Thanks! It’s definitely been on my bucket list ever since I started doing astronomy and astrophotography! Glad to check it off. It’s worth doing at some point! Hard to describe what the experience is like!

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Thomas Gaudin @astrotom.bsky.social · 09/03/2025

Fluourescence at work! I’ve studied it in so many classes. Neat to watch it play out in real time over my head.

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Thomas Gaudin @astrotom.bsky.social · 09/03/2025

Thanks! Yeah, this was our last night away from cloudy, bright Reykjavík, and we had not seen them yet. I was starting to worry that it wouldn’t happen. We got really lucky. Even if we hadn’t seen them though, Iceland is spectacular! One of my favorite trips I’ve ever been on!

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Thomas Gaudin @astrotom.bsky.social · 09/03/2025

Wow, thanks for sharing! That looks so beautiful!

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Thomas Gaudin @astrotom.bsky.social · 09/03/2025

Thanks! I’m happy to share haha

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Thomas Gaudin @astrotom.bsky.social · 09/03/2025

Definitely special to see! I’ve seen them in Pennsylvania before, but always as a sheet. Never as the beautiful waving and dancing filaments!

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Thomas Gaudin @astrotom.bsky.social · 09/03/2025

After a week traveling around Iceland, we finally got lucky with the Northern Lights! Thankful to finally get clear skies and dense solar winds to witness an auroral light show. I’ve seen a lot of astronomical events, but watching the aurorae dance above us one of my favorites that I’ve seen! 🔭

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Thomas Gaudin @astrotom.bsky.social · 03/01/2025

All PK shootouts count as draws for the purposes of this ratings system. CFC won a lot of shootouts to move up the table. That lets them out-perform their Elo on the final table. Gotta start winning games not drawing them to boost the Elo…

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Thomas Gaudin @astrotom.bsky.social · 03/01/2025

The system is not perfect and tweaks will be needed to see where teams overperform their Elo in this system. I may have to look at the home field advantage or K value to see if either parameter needs tweaking. But this is a first step towards forecasting games in the league.

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Thomas Gaudin @astrotom.bsky.social · 03/01/2025

The formulae used are the same ones that I used for the Tom Model, based on the work done by the creators of eloratings.net. The only modification is the K value used. International game has several levels of competition. In MLSNP, I use K=40 for the regular season and K=50 for the playoffs.

eloratings.net

World Football Elo Ratings

Ratings for national football teams based on the Elo rating system.

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Thomas Gaudin @astrotom.bsky.social · 03/01/2025

Since I’ve had so much success with Elo-based analysis of international soccer, I decided to bring it to a domestic league to try it out. I thus have created my own Elo ratings system for all MLS Next Pro teams! What is attached is the final Elo rating of all teams after each season.

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Whiskey & Modelo @whiskandmo.bsky.social · 02/01/2025

NEW POD! The whole gang gets together to talk about our year that was and go over our 2025 New Year’s Resolutions, with a special off camera appearance by @astrotom.bsky.social!

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Thomas Gaudin @astrotom.bsky.social · 25/11/2024

I also have these same plots with the select group of retired players if you want a comparison. Let me know if you want to see other plots from my individual match data/Elo dataset. There is a lot of information to pull that I haven't thought of yet!

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Thomas Gaudin @astrotom.bsky.social · 25/11/2024

You can do the same thing with assists. Somehow LDLT having the highest per 90 assist rate in the pool had escaped my notice, but he is not doing it against good teams. Mostly seems to be feasting against teams like Grenada or Trinidad in the Nation's League.

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Thomas Gaudin @astrotom.bsky.social · 25/11/2024

Next, we filter out just the goal contribution rate and the Elo that those goals were scored against. Ideally, you would want to score goals frequently against good teams. There are some guys here who don't beat the "CONCACAF Merchants" allegations. Haji Wright's WC goal props him up here.

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Thomas Gaudin @astrotom.bsky.social · 25/11/2024

You can also plot the goal contributions versus minutes played. The thing that sticks out most is that Pulisic is just in a class of his own among this group of players. You can also see a group of contributors forming who need more playing time and some guys who need to step it up.

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Thomas Gaudin @astrotom.bsky.social · 25/11/2024

The USMNT tables for player stats compared to opponent Elo naturally lend themselves to some scatter plots to learn about the player pool. This first one is average Elo of minutes compared to goal contributions per 90. Besides Vazquez and Pepi, you get a decent snapshot of the current #USMNT pool.

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Thomas Gaudin @astrotom.bsky.social · 21/11/2024

Time of the goal doesn’t matter, but you are correct that Ream scored against a very bad team. A quick look at the data shows the single goal coming against Puerto Rico in a friendly.

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Thomas Gaudin @astrotom.bsky.social · 21/11/2024

Elo is a chess ranking system that has been modified for soccer. Essentially, it is a measure of a team’s strength at the time you play them. In each match, the winner takes points from the loser based on the points both teams have and the score of the match. Higher point totals means better teams.

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Thomas Gaudin @astrotom.bsky.social · 21/11/2024

What a cool sight to see such a massive space telescope come together like that! I can’t wait to see the amazing science that Roman will produce!

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Thomas Gaudin @astrotom.bsky.social · 21/11/2024

Yesterday, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to visit NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center for Swift’s 20th Anniversary. Unexpectedly, while we were there, we were fortunate to have a few minutes to watch the integration of the Roman Space Telescope with its science payload. 🔭

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Thomas Gaudin @astrotom.bsky.social · 20/11/2024

Happy 20th Anniversary to the Niel Gehrels Swift Observatory!! 20 years ago today, Swift launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida. Since then, it has contributed to so much science and found some really cool objects. Here’s to many more years of astronomy with Swift! #Swift20 🔭

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Thomas Gaudin @astrotom.bsky.social · 19/11/2024

The other filter that I put in place is for Away and Neutral matches. This mostly covers World Cup Qualifying and the World Cup, but there are some Nation's League matches and a few friendlies that make it in as well.

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Thomas Gaudin @astrotom.bsky.social · 19/11/2024

I have a few different filters as well. This filters out all friendlies and gives just the stats for competitive matches.

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Thomas Gaudin @astrotom.bsky.social · 19/11/2024

At this point, I have compiled a very detailed spreadsheet of individual match data for all active and a few select retired USMNT players. After the November window, here are the numbers. It is interesting to see how productive players are and compare it to the difficulty of their opponents! #USMNT

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Thomas Gaudin @astrotom.bsky.social · 14/11/2024

One thing I’m watching for over the next few years for the USMNT is Christian Pulisic’s production compared to the historical production of Landon Donovan and Clint Dempsey. At about the halfway mark of their caps, Puli is running ahead of Dempsey and with Donovan on goal contributions.

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Reposted by Thomas Gaudin

Eric Schmitz @eschmitz.bsky.social · 14/11/2024

As someone who is *in Kingston* right now, I have thoughts. Gonna make a thread of things in no particular order.

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Thomas Gaudin @astrotom.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

Nice you meet you! Glad to be part of the community here!

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