iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Ben Sutlieff @bensutlieff.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I was invited to write a short article for the @leverhulme.ac.uk newsletter out this month, and excitingly it was chosen to feature on the cover! Read about our work on exoplanet atmospheres and why clouds are kind of great, actually #WorldSpaceWeek 🪐🔭

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Leverhulme Trust @leverhulme.ac.uk · 15/09/2026

The Trust’s latest Newsletter is out now! Read about women and screen culture in Central Asia, the origin and extinction of mammoths, the invisible currency of cobalt and much more: leverhulme.ac.uk/newsletter

Space art featuring a large striped red planet, two small icy blue moons and a swirling galaxy framed top and bottom by layered red clouds.

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Ben Sutlieff @bensutlieff.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Absolutely fantastic show, and nice to meet you all in the pub the following day!

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Yvette Cendes @whereisyvette.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

If @science.org is covering it, I guess I should share something here- we have for the first time definitively detected radio emission from a planet around another star! 🔭🧪🎢 What does this mean? Details in thread! (But TL;DR- still not aliens) 🧵 www.sciencenews.org/article/exop...

sciencenews.org

First radio waves seen from an exoplanet hint at otherworldly auroras

The gas giant Beta Pictoris b, about 63 light-years away, has the mass of 10 Jupiters and a magnetic field thousands of times as strong as Earth’s.

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Evert Nasedkin @evertnasedkin.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

🔭 New paper day! 🪐 This time from Merle Schrader, a PhD student in the brown dwarf group at Trinity College Dublin. Today, they're publishing a fresh look at SIMP-0136, using principal component analysis, identifying the mechanisms driving its atmospheric variability. arxiv.org/abs/2607.26182

arxiv.org

The JWST weather report: Unravelling the atmospheric variability of isolated worlds using principal component analysis

Brown dwarf variability directly probes atmospheric dynamics beyond the Solar System, and recent JWST time-resolved spectroscopy has opened a new window into these processes. Principal component analy...

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Ben Sutlieff @bensutlieff.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

Very sad to hear this. Ralph was the director of API during the first half of my PhD there and he always took such a kind interest in the professional and personal lives of everyone in the institute - our friendly chats whenever we passed in the corridor always brightened my day. He will be missed.

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Phil PlAIt @philplait.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

The purloined planet: Astronomers find a third planet around the nearby very young star Beta Pictoris… and it was hiding in plain sight for over a decade! [with amazing video of the planet's orbital motion] badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/a-third-pl... 🔭 🧪

badastronomy.beehiiv.com

A third planet for the nearby star Beta Pictoris!

The gas giant has been hiding in plain sight for over a decade

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Ben Sutlieff @bensutlieff.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

@luke-parker.bsky.social and I had a lot of fun on that trip, little did we know we'd find a new planet while we were there!

A photo of Luke and I at the summit of Cerro Toco, a 5604m-high volcano in the Chilean Atacama. There are amazing views of the desert, other volcanoes, and a lake across the Bolivian border.

Luke in the Very Large Telescope (VLT) control room, working on the incoming data.

View of a sunset behind two of the VLT Unit Telescopes.

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Jayne Birkby @jaynebirkby.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

Hide-and-seek champion award goes to the newly discovered beta Pic d! 🏆 Please welcome the newest member of the exoplanet zoo, and be kind, it’s a little shy, it’s been hiding in direct imaging data for over a decade!

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Ben Sutlieff @bensutlieff.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

An independent team (Gibbs et al.) also discovered the planet at the same time with JWST (they have their own PR here: science.nasa.gov/missions/web...) We coordinated the publication of the 2 papers but kept the science separate, and were really excited to find that our results agree so well!

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Ben Sutlieff @bensutlieff.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

We first spotted beta Pic d in new images from the Very Large Telescope (VLT), before then finding it in archival JWST + VLT data dating back as far as 2014 using new analysis techniques. It was hiding all along! This allowed us to observe its orbital motion. 📹 ESO/B. Sutlieff, M. Bonse et al. 🔭

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Ben Sutlieff @bensutlieff.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

With the press release out, I'm delighted to share our work reporting the discovery of a 3rd planet in the beta Pictoris system! Say hello to beta Pic d - a gas giant with 2.4 times the mass of Jupiter that takes 91 years to orbit its host star, far longer than the 2 known planets in the system 🪐🔭

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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 01/04/2026

In honor of (hopefully) today's launch of NASA's Artemis II mission, the first crewed mission to orbit the Moon in more than 50 years, here is a to-scale graphic of exactly how far away the Moon actually is. (Click image to expand.) You could fit about 30 Earths between the Earth and the Moon!

A scale illustration of the Earth and the Moon, with the Earth on the far left, lots of black, and then the Moon on the far right, about 30 Earth diameters away.

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Cian O'Toole @astrotoole.bsky.social · 28/03/2026

I am delighted to share that my first paper has now been accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics and is now on the arXiv!! arxiv.org/abs/2603.24663 In this paper I disentangle the drivers of variability in three early L-dwarfs using HST/WFC3. More info below 🧵!!

arxiv.org

Disentangling auroral, cloud and magnetic spot driven variability in three early L-dwarfs with HST/WFC3

Variability monitoring provides an unparalleled insight into the atmospheric processes of brown dwarfs and directly imaged exo-planets. Inhomogeneous clouds, aurorae and magnetic spots have all been p...

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Johanna Vos @johannavos.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

TWO recently accepted papers on arxiv today from our group, led by PhD students @maddielam.bsky.social and @astrotoole.bsky.social. If you like brown dwarfs, variability, clouds, aurorae and/or magnetic spots there is something here for you! 👀 arxiv.org/abs/2603.24662 arxiv.org/abs/2603.24663

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Maddie Lam @maddielam.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

Proud to announce that my first PhD paper has now been accepted and is live on arXiv!! arxiv.org/abs/2603.24662 In this paper I provide the first analyses of JWST spectra of a sample of young, co-eval L dwarfs, focusing on the silicate absorption and whether there are any equator-to-pole variations.

arxiv.org

Clouds with a silicate lining: Using JWST spectra to probe atmospheric diversity in young AB Dor L dwarfs

We present the first full JWST NIRSpec Prism and MIRI LRS 0.6 - 14 $μ$m (R ~ 100) spectra and analysis of five ~ 133 Myr L dwarf members of the AB Doradus moving group and one probable $\sim 500$ Myr ...

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RAS Journals @rasjournals.bsky.social · 28/11/2025

Published in #MNRAS: "Chasing the storm: investigating the application of high-contrast imaging techniques in producing precise exoplanet light curves", Sutlieff et al. This is Fig. 1: for the caption & to read the paper please visit academic.oup.com/mnras/articl... @royalastrosoc.bsky.social

The left-hand and centre panels are examples of the final processed LBT/ALES + dgvAPP360 images produced when the data were median-combined in both time and wavelength. Left: the case where no artificial companions were injected to the data, so only the bright host star HD 1160 A and its bonafide companion HD 1160 B is visible. Centre: similar to the left-hand panel, but three artificial companions have been injected at 90° intervals in position angle from HD 1160 B. All three artificial companions were injected with contrasts of 2.88 x 10^(-3) (6.35 mag) relative to the host star. This image is a composite; for the purposes of the analysis, only one companion was injected at a time. Right: a single frame of data highlighting examples of the apertures (solid lines) and annuli (dashed lines) used to extract photometry and background measurements for the host star (in green) and artificial companions (in blue). The left-hand and centre panels use the same arbitrary logarithmic colour scale, while the right-hand panel uses a different one, and all three panels are aligned to north, where north is up and east is to the left.

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Ben Sutlieff @bensutlieff.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

But, turbulence in Earth's atmosphere adds noise that makes this tricky. Here, we used real & simulated observations to test the impact of specific noise sources. TL;DR - the thermal background is the main source of noise, but varying planets are typically distinguishable from non-varying planets 🔭

A screenshot of Fig. 3 from the Sutlieff et al. 2025 paper consisting of 3 columns of 3 images per column. Simulated images of a star and companion for a different Zernike mode are shown in each column at three different observing times. Different Zernike modes modify the shape of the star/companion images in a different way, so while these aberrations remain static, the brightness of the companion can artificially appear to change as it moves through the image and over the aberrations.

A screenshot of Fig. 5 from the Sutlieff et al. 2025 paper consisting of 3 images, each one a simulated image of a star and companion, with a different additional noise source added for each image from the left to the right. The left-hand panel shows the image with only the residual wavefront error after adaptive optics correction. The star and companion are both clearly visible. The centre panel shows the same image but now with simulated photon noise added, making the image appear more noisy and the companion less distinguished. The right panel is the same again but now including noise from the thermal background. The background of the image behind the star is now very bright and the companion cannot be seen.

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Ben Sutlieff @bensutlieff.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

And while I'm at it, a belated promo for my latest first-author paper (out late last year). I've been using APP coronagraphs as a tool to look for changes in brightness in imaged companions (exoplanets & brown dwarfs) due to variations in their atmospheres such as clouds or radiative convection 🪐🔭

arxiv.org

Chasing the storm: Investigating the application of high-contrast imaging techniques in producing precise exoplanet light curves

Substellar companions such as exoplanets and brown dwarfs exhibit changes in brightness arising from top-of-atmosphere inhomogeneities, providing insights into their atmospheric structure and dynamics...

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Ben Sutlieff @bensutlieff.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

These coronagraphs are weird & wonderful things - most coronagraphs block the star that you're observing to let you see faint planets, but APPs modify the light to produce multiple images of the star, with high-contrast 'dark holes'. So, you can see planets and their host stars at the same time 🔭

A screenshot of Fig. 1 from the Kenworthy et al. 2026 paper with two panels. The left panel shows the phase pattern design of the Apodizing Phase Plate (APP) coronagraph on the ERIS instrument. The right panel shows a simulated image, which contains the multiple images of a target star produced by the APP. Two of them have D-shaped dark holes, regions of high-contrast in which fainter companions can be observed.

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Ben Sutlieff @bensutlieff.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

For all the coronagraph fans out there: I'm pleased to share our paper (led by @mattkenworthy.bsky.social) on the design & performance of the Apodizing Phase Plate coronagraph for the ERIS instrument at the Very Large Telescope + our recommendations for using it to study exoplanets & brown dwarfs 🪐🔭

arxiv.org

The VLT/ERIS grating vector Apodizing Phase Plate coronagraph

We describe the design, laboratory manufacture, and on-sky testing of the grating vector apodizing phase plate (gvAPP) coronagraph for the Enhanced Resolution Imager and Spectrograph (ERIS) on the Ver...

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Matthew Kenworthy @mattkenworthy.bsky.social · 12/09/2025

My periodic reminder for #astrosci #astrodon #exoplanets Early Career Researchers to please, please, please have a simple web site with your current email address on it - rationale here: kenworthy.space/advice/

A pen sketch of a web page for an astronomer, showing name, email, optional phone number, and professional contact details, with a one sentence summary of their research and an ADS link.

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Ben Sutlieff @bensutlieff.bsky.social · 20/06/2025

Swapped ‘on sky’ in the astronomical sense for ‘on Skye’ in the Scottish sense last week - I’d been meaning to visit this stunningly beautiful place since moving to Edinburgh and it definitely lived up to expectations! So many amazing hikes and things to see (+ we even had surprisingly good weather)

A selfie of me smiling in front of The Storr, a mountain on the Trotternish peninsula of the Isle of Skye in Scotland, which has several unique jagged rock formations.

The view from the summit of Blà Bheinn, a mountain on the Isle of Skye that has stunning views over a large area of the island including the Black Cuillin ridge, a famous mountain range that gets its name from the dark colour of the gabbro rock it is composed of.

A photo of the cliffs at Neist Point, the headland that represents the westernmost point of the Isle of Skye. There is a yellow and white lighthouse on the top of the cliffs with green hills in the foreground. There is a seabird colony on the cliffs themselves, perched high above the sea.

A photo of Dun Beag Broch shortly after sunset. Dun Beag Broch is an iron-age broch, largely in ruins today but the walls can still be seen. There are mountains in the distance and the sky is a sunset gradient of blue to orange.

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Matthew Kenworthy @mattkenworthy.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

Together with Sebastiaan Haffert our review on “High-Contrast Coronagraphy” is out - writing an ARA&A review has been on my academic bucket list, and I’m very proud of the result. It uses the showyourwork! framework, making it a completely reproducible paper. #FAIR #astrodon #exoplanets

Different telescope mirror apertures and their resultant point spread functions.

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Ben Sutlieff @bensutlieff.bsky.social · 25/05/2025

I’m around in Edinburgh! Am otherwise occupied this weekend but can maybe meet up in the week if that works? (also let me know if you fancy a visit to the ROE and have time - I’m sure the other exoplanet folks here would be keen to talk to you!)

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Planets @ Oxford @oxoplanets.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

Congratulations to Dr Ben Sutlieff (@bensutlieff.bsky.social) for his pop up talk describing his poster about mapping exoplanet atmospheres with ground based observations 🔭 #ukexom25

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Ben Sutlieff @bensutlieff.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

Wow, these are beautiful! Looking forward to following this thread!

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Sera Markoff @profsera.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

Please help us get the word out: our 6 wk astrophysics 🧪🔭summer research program for international MSc students is open for application! Note this is aimed at students from disadvantaged regions or under-represented groups in astro! I will host one position on black holes ⚫️! aspire.science.uva.nl

aspire.science.uva.nl

ASPIRE

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Matthew Kenworthy @mattkenworthy.bsky.social · 30/08/2024

With astronomy job season approaching, if you’re a PhD or early postdoc, PLEASE make a webpage and put your current contact details on it, so that searching for “< your name > astronomer” finds you first - more explanation how and why here: Unsolicited Advice #astrodon 🔭🪐

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Ethan Mollick @emollick.bsky.social · 08/12/2024

Sharks are older than the rings of Saturn. This paper finds that the rings are no older than 400M years. Sharks date back to at least the Late Ordovician Period, 450M years ago.

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Briony Allen @brionya.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

Lovely to go on the Dirleton Solar Walk and see some of what @bensutlieff.bsky.social has been up to 🪐 Would definitely recommend, and Neptune is near a great garden centre if you need cake motivation.

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Ben Sutlieff @bensutlieff.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

Yes, it was such a beautiful morning! A really lovely welcome for my first visit to the city.

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 12/10/2024

Calling the Lothians - fancy an autumnal planet walk? The beautiful historic village of #Dirleton is proud to announce that dirleton.solar is open! 🥳😎 Take a stroll from the Sun in the village through to Neptune at the Archerfield Walled Gardens. Scan the QR codes for planet-facts en route! 🔭

A leafy grassy verge, surrounded by trees, sports a tall pole with a silver orb on top. This is the start of the Dirleton solar walk.

Inside on a table and all lined up are the planet markers before they were installed in the outside. You can see the swirly pinks on Jupiter and the pockmarks on mercury. Bluer planets for Neptune uranyst and earth are in the distance with red mars right at the end of the table

A wooden marker saying "Earth" with a perspex earth like planet on the top. The autumnal leaves scatter the grass verge with trees surround a sort of grassy paddock in the background.

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More Stressed Chameleon @mark-nicol.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

Just found out that some of the talented people at work helped with this project to make a walk that takes you through the solar system in the very lovely heart of East Lothian. Definitely on the list to try out soon. dirleton.solar/flight-plan

dirleton.solar

Getting there. Plan your journey to the Dirleton Solar Walk | Dirleton Solar System Scale Model

Plan your visit to the Dirleton Solar Walk using our maps, tips and information. Once you are here, explore our great local facilities, making use of our detailed map or what3words location markers. ...

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Ben Sutlieff @bensutlieff.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

Lastly, thank you very much to @astroroyalscot.bsky.social for introducing me to the team, and to @martinwhitfieldmsp.bsky.social and @brionya.bsky.social for joining us for the grand opening today!

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Ben Sutlieff @bensutlieff.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

Very excited to be at the opening of the Dirleton Solar Walk today - a scale model of our Solar System in the East Lothian countryside, placed over 1.2km of the John Muir Way walking route! 🪐🔭 This was a really fun project to support and I highly recommend it for those local, esp. for kids/families!

A sign showing a map of the Dirleton Solar Walk, with information describing its scale (1:3.6 billon) and instructions on how to access its augmented reality features for each planet.

Myself next to the marker for the planet Jupiter, which consists of a fence post with a sign on top showing an artistic representation of Jupiter and a metallic ball representing its relative size according to the scale. There is also a QR code linking to information about the planet and an AR representation.

The marker for the planet Saturn, with a view of the countryside around Dirleton.

Myself and my colleague Gergely Friss attempting to demonstrate the augmented reality visualisation of the planet Neptune. I am trying to hold the planet but my hands are in totally the wrong place.

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Ben Sutlieff @bensutlieff.bsky.social · 05/12/2024

Also these excellent penguin bollards 🐧

A photo of some bollards in Dundee, Scotland. Some are standard black bollards, but several are designed to look like penguins, emphasising Dundee’s connection to the Antarctic.

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Ben Sutlieff @bensutlieff.bsky.social · 05/12/2024

In Dundee yesterday for the Scottish Universities Physics Alliance Annual Cormack Astronomy Meeting (longest conference name ever? 🔭) with @agastro.bsky.social, @dirkscholte.bsky.social, and others. A full day of talks, but still managed to sneak in a little bit of sunrise sightseeing!

The RSS Discovery, a historic barque-rigged auxiliary steamship built in Dundee and launched in 1901. It carried Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton on their first journey to the Antarctic. It is now a museum ship in Dundee.

A view over the River Tay, just before sunrise. The sky is yellow and the water is reflective like a mirror. A bird (a cormorant, I think) is swimming by.

The McManus art gallery in Dundee. It is an impressive gothic revival building with green trees on either side and a curved staircase leading up to the main entrance.

The view as seen from Dundee Law (a hill in Dundee) shortly after sunrise, with the sun low in the sky to the east. The city below is in the foreground with the River Tay behind it. The Tay Rail Bridge over the river can be seen.

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Andrea Luck @andrealuck.bsky.social · 01/12/2024

Reposting this video because I think everyone needs to see it. We’re so used to seeing Martian dust storms in movies, but this is actual footage, this is real! 🔭

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Kevin M. Gill @kevinmgill.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

An enormous 5,000 kilometer wide storm in Jupiter’s north polar region. Imaged by NASA’s Juno orbiter on November 24th during Perijove 67 approach.

A huge circular storm

NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill

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Philip Muirhead @philipmuirhead.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

Check out BU PhD-student @alliemccarthy.bsky.social's paper just accepted to ApJL! JWST spectral light curves of SIMP 0136 show clear pressure-dependence, indicating three variability mechanisms: clouds, hot spots and C chemistry. @johannavos.bsky.social is the JWST PI! arxiv.org/abs/2411.16577

arxiv.org

The JWST Weather Report from the Isolated Exoplanet Analog SIMP 0136+0933: Pressure-Dependent Variability Driven by Multiple Mechanisms

Isolated planetary-mass objects share their mass range with planets but do not orbit a star. They lack the necessary mass to support fusion in their cores and thermally radiate their heat from formati...

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Jason Wang @thejason.wang · 23/11/2024

Optimist: The cup is half full Pessimist: The cup is half empty Exoplanetary scientist: We've detected water in the cup!

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Dr James O'Donoghue 🪐 @interplanetary.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

These are the planets to scale not only in size, but also in their tilt and rotation speed. Pluto and Ceres (a couple of dwarf planets) are included whether you like them or not 🫣

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Ben Sutlieff @bensutlieff.bsky.social · 23/11/2024

Does it still count as being at work if I left my card for the gate at home? 😉

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Ben Sutlieff @bensutlieff.bsky.social · 23/11/2024

Finally got to experience a snow day at the observatory!! I only wish I had a sledge… 🔭☃️ (also saw this excellent snowman on Blackford Hill for which I cannot take credit)

A selfie of me in front of the Royal Observatory Edinburgh. There is a lot of snow on the ground, with some grass poking through and a few scattered trees.

A view of a snow-covered Arthur’s Seat (an extinct volcano in Edinburgh) as seen from Blackford Hill.

A landscape shot showing the snow on Blackford Hill and the Braid Hills beyond. In the far distance, the much taller Pentland Hills can just about be seen through some clouds. A radio mast is visible on the right.

A very happy snowman (not built by me!) with a large smile and sticks for arms on Blackford Hill. Arthur’s Seat can be seen in the background on the right, as well as Edinburgh Castle on the left.

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Astronomy Picture of the Day 🪐 @apod.shinyakato.dev · 19/11/2024

What's happening with these clouds? While it may seem that these long and thin clouds are pointing toward the top of a hill, and that maybe a world-famous observatory is located there, only part of that is true. In terms of clouds, the formation is a chance superposition of impressively periodic undulating air currents in Earth's lower atmosphere. Undulatus, a type of Asperitas cloud, form at the peaks where the air is cool enough to cause the condensation of opaque water droplets. The wide-angle nature of the panorama creates the illusion that the clouds converge over the hill. In terms of land, there really is a world-famous observatory at the top of that peak: the Carnegie Science's Las Campanas Observatory in the Atacama Desert of Chile. The two telescope domes visible are the 6.5-meter Magellan Telescopes. The featured coincidental vista was a surprise but was captured by the phone of a quick-thinking photographer in late September. Your Sky Surprise: What picture did APOD feature on your birthday? (post 1995)

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