iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Dr./Prof. Cara Battersby @battersbot.bsky.social · 05/09/2025

Check out my interview with the amazing @fcain.universetoday.com on youtube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpaE... !!! This was fun and nerve-wracking, but I am so excited to share my love for science with you all <3 <3

youtube.com

Unveiling The Most Obscured Part of Our Galaxy

YouTube video by Fraser Cain

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Reposted by Dr./Prof. Cara Battersby

PRIMA probe @prima-probe.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

The PRobe Infrared Mission for Astrophysics (PRIMA) team is excited to announce the release of a special issue in the Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems (JATIS), Volume 11 Issue 03! This issue was edited by Naseem Rangwala and Matt Griffin.

arxiv.org

Advanced Search | arXiv e-print repository

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Reposted by Dr./Prof. Cara Battersby

American Astronomical Society (AAS) @aas.org · 06/06/2025

Last week, NASA and NSF released their FY26 budget requests. We list the detailed impacts on the astronomical sciences in this blog post, and share how you can take action today. aas.org/posts/news/2... @policy.aas.org

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Reposted by Dr./Prof. Cara Battersby

Sarah Hörst @planetdr.bsky.social · 30/05/2025

The Presidents Budget Request for NASA is out. It’s a bloodbath Canceled are DAVINCI, VERITAS, Juno, OSIRIS-APEX, US participation in ExoMars and EnVision… Huge cut to R&A. No funding to begin development of the Uranus Orbiter. If you’ve ever cared about NASA, time to contact congress.

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Dr./Prof. Cara Battersby @battersbot.bsky.social · 29/05/2025

Nervousness aside, I hope I did justice to the amazing science being done by the folks at the Milky Way Laboratory (battersby.physics.uconn.edu/our-team/). I'll share the video when it's published and in the meantime, check out and consider supporting Universe Today (www.patreon.com/cw/universet...)

battersby.physics.uconn.edu

Team | Professor Cara Battersby

The Milky Way Laboratory Research Team Meet the people who make the science happen! Faculty: Dr. Cara Battersby is the PI and founder of the Milky Way Labor ...

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Dr./Prof. Cara Battersby @battersbot.bsky.social · 29/05/2025

3) After the fact, I kept thinking of how I could have said something better, an analogy I could have brought up, someone's work I should have mentioned, etc. But I'm pretty sure if you wait to put yourself out there til you are perfect... it won't happen. So, deep breath, leap of faith, go!

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Dr./Prof. Cara Battersby @battersbot.bsky.social · 29/05/2025

2) I was SO much more nervous than I expected. I'm used to talking to auditoriums full of people about astronomy, but I was definitely feeling intimidated and majorly starstruck. Feeling in awe of the folks who do this on the reg. how. do. you. do. it??

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Dr./Prof. Cara Battersby @battersbot.bsky.social · 29/05/2025

1) Fraser Cain and the team at www.universetoday.com are *awesome*. I've been a fan for a long time, but the work they are doing is more important than ever. High quality, engaging astronomy journalism - now with no ads 🤯. If you're not a fan already GET. ON. THAT. TRAIN.

universetoday.com

Home

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Dr./Prof. Cara Battersby @battersbot.bsky.social · 29/05/2025

Whew guys, I had a big, fancy, grown-up interview with THE @fcain.universetoday.com today! 🤯😮🤩 You'll be able to check out the interview (mostly me gushing about our fabulous Galactic Center maybe?) on his youtube channel (www.youtube.com/@frasercain) soon. A few take-aways:

youtube.com

Fraser Cain

Your ultimate guide to all things space with Fraser Cain, Publisher of Universe Today and co-host of Astronomy Cast. Here you can find: 🚀 Space Bites – all the most important space news stories rele...

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Dr./Prof. Cara Battersby @battersbot.bsky.social · 21/05/2025

The highly filamentary nature of dust and gas in the interstellar medium is a huge topic of discussion and debate, so good observation! Depending on the scale and environment it could be from gravitational flows, turbulence, magnetic fields, some combination or something else entirely!

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Dr./Prof. Cara Battersby @battersbot.bsky.social · 21/05/2025

Perspective! The Sun (and therefore the Earth and all of us!) are deep in the disk of our Milky Way Galaxy, so we see it "edge-on" when we look out. To get a "top-down" perspective you'd need to send a spacecraft several thousand light years above the plane - not practical now or probably ever!

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Dr./Prof. Cara Battersby @battersbot.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

Not a dumb question at all! Being in the middle of all the gas and dust of the Milky Way is a big challenge! Most surveys of galaxies just look ABOVE the Galactic plane to avoid it. But I want to understand all the gas and dust of the Galaxy, so I stare straight at it 😜

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Dr./Prof. Cara Battersby @battersbot.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

Lol, I've already decided we just have to embrace the typos, otherwise, it will drive us crazy 😆

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Dr./Prof. Cara Battersby @battersbot.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

to be fair, i literally joined yesterday, but your support is so greatly appreciated 🙏❤️

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Dr./Prof. Cara Battersby @battersbot.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

Love it!!! There is SO SO much more to be seen in the Galactic Center, as perfectly evidenced by the combination with that phenomenal MeerKAT data 😍🤩

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Dr./Prof. Cara Battersby @battersbot.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

haha, yes true! But that's historically been the "universe" that we could access at high spatial resolution. That's changing with new facilities though!

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Dr./Prof. Cara Battersby @battersbot.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

I do astrophysics research with an awesome group of students at the Milky Way Lab (battersby.physics.uconn.edu) at UConn and would love to be able to share our most exciting results!

battersby.physics.uconn.edu

Home | Professor Cara Battersby

Contact InformationEmail: cara.battersby@uconn.edu Office: Gant South S-113F Virtual Office: https://uconn-cmr.webex.com/meet/cab16109 Phone: (860 ) 486-398 ...

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Dr./Prof. Cara Battersby @battersbot.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

Thank you! And yes - how big the universe and its largest structures are is absolutely mind-blowing!

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Dr./Prof. Cara Battersby @battersbot.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

Yes exactly! What I wouldn't give for the top-down view... 😮🤩

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Dr./Prof. Cara Battersby @battersbot.bsky.social · 19/05/2025

By combining with other datasets and cutting edge simulations (see our 3-D CMZ page! centralmolecularzone.github.io/3D_CMZ/) we are creating a top-down model of our Galaxy's center, allowing us to trace gas flows from the disk of the Galaxy, all the way to its center.

centralmolecularzone.github.io

3-D CMZ

Unveiling the Structure of our Galaxy’s Central Molecular Zone

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Dr./Prof. Cara Battersby @battersbot.bsky.social · 19/05/2025

By systematically studying light from the entire inner Milky Way, we showed (in Battersby et al. 2025a: ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2025ApJ....) that the CMZ is separate and unique in our Galaxy and may be bigger than previously thought.

ui.adsabs.harvard.edu

3D CMZ. I. Central Molecular Zone Overview

The Central Molecular Zone (CMZ) is the largest reservoir of dense molecular gas in the Galaxy and is heavily obscured in the optical and near-IR. We present an overview of the far-IR dust continuum, ...

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Dr./Prof. Cara Battersby @battersbot.bsky.social · 19/05/2025

This image shows three far-infrared wavelengths from the Herschel space observatory (350, 160, and 70 micron) towards the inner 7 degrees of our Galaxy. The "figure 8" shape near the very center is our Central Molecular Zone (CMZ), the site of the most extreme star formation in the Galaxy.

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Dr./Prof. Cara Battersby @battersbot.bsky.social · 19/05/2025

For my first bluesky post (🥳🎉), I'll describe my cover image. Our Galactic Center stands alone and strange. Largely separated from the rest of the Galaxy, it responsible for controlling how much gas eventually flows towards the central supermassive black hole.

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