iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Erik Tollerud @eteq.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

AAAAH she launched! And orbit is nominal!!

Erik Tollerud @eteq.bsky.social · 24/01/2026

Folks, I'm trying not to turn this account into a fully political place. But I grew up in the suburbs of Minneapolis, I cannot stay silent on this. If you have any friends or family who are connected to ICE, there is action you can take: cut them off. Tell them you will not speak to or aid them.

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Sean D. Johnson @seanjohnson.bsky.social · 24/01/2026

ICE agents are responsible for the majority of homicides committed in the Twin Cities so far this year. In most US cities, homicides committed by armed police represent a significant fraction, but I can’t think of any prior examples where it was as high as 2/3.

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Erik Tollerud @eteq.bsky.social · 13/11/2025

Unsolicited advice for those giving talks at science/technical talks: wear distinctive clothing on the day of your talk! It's a lot easier for someone who wants to talk to you later to find you if you are not wearing a generic gray skirt/button-up shirt 🧪🔭

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Erik Tollerud @eteq.bsky.social · 11/11/2025

Gotta share this from @emily.space 's excellent #adassxxxv talk on ATProtocol (the thing behind Blue sky) and how it's a chance to free scientists from the profit-motivated version of social media. More to the point, I love the metaness of posting a talk on bluesky about bluesky.

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Erik Tollerud @eteq.bsky.social · 11/11/2025

This slide by @mubdi.bsky.social at #adass2025 should be on ever astronomer's wall. Software is a central part of science and should be published accordingly!

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Erik Tollerud @eteq.bsky.social · 01/05/2025

A bit snarky but also honest question: If you asked people "Do you think stores are inefficient?" I suspect they'd almost all respond with "well some stores are, but not all, it depends on the store". Why don't people have the same reaction when asked "Is government inefficient?" ?

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Erik Tollerud @eteq.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

Fantastic talk by @niais.bsky.social on instrumentation esp UV and multi object capabilities that are being developed/will be available for the Habitable Worlds Observatory... I'm not a hardware instrumentalist, but I love love love these tech nerd-out sessions for astro

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Erik Tollerud @eteq.bsky.social · 24/03/2025

Who could have guessed this administration would have a lot of trouble with classified information. Oh wait ... That's right...

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Erik Tollerud @eteq.bsky.social · 23/03/2025

Ah! The classic astronomer colloquium joke, now in context and friendly to the masses: xkcd.com/3066/

xkcd.com

Cosmic Distance Calibration

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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 31/01/2025

It would be fantastic if major federal institutions would acknowledge that the executive branch cannot legally unilaterally cancel or redistribute congressionally appropriated funding on ideological grounds and thus they have no legal obligation to comply with such directives

abcnews.go.com

Trump funding freeze a blatant violation of Constitution, federal law: Legal experts

The Constitution, federal law and court decisions make it clear: President Donald Trump's order to pause federal funding is against the law, legal experts tell ABC News.

849374849872

Erik Tollerud @eteq.bsky.social · 16/01/2025

A positive trend that's been happening for years but has been particularly apparent at #AAS245 : most of the Q&A askers are beginning with "I really liked your talk" or similar. Really improves the general mood and collegiality IMHO.

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Chris Lintott @chrislintott.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

@eteq.bsky.social Diffords guide predicts 2025 could be the year of the blue drink.

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Erik Tollerud @eteq.bsky.social · 14/01/2025

Some amazing cosmology results from DESI presented at #AAS245 by M Ishak (from their massive paper drop in Nov): Hubble tension persists with DESI (DESI matches CMB, in tension with local H0)... But more provocatively, cosmological constant ruled out at > 3 sigma!!! But no deviations from GR. 🙀

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Erik Tollerud @eteq.bsky.social · 16/10/2024

Exciting professional news: I have just been awarded Tenure at the Space Telescope Science Institute! Thanks to all of you who have supported and encouraged me these 15 or so years. I came for the science but stayed for the community, and this is a good day to celebrate both! #bluedrink

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Erik Tollerud @eteq.bsky.social · 19/09/2024

Exciting news to share: Astropy has been awarded the 2025 Lancelot M Berkeley AAS Prize! (aas.org/press/astrop...) So if you'll be at the AAS this year be sure to stay to the end for the Prize talk by me and fellow Astropy Coordinators Kelle Cruz and Clara Brasseur.

aas.org

Astropy Collaboration to Receive 2025 Berkeley Prize | American Astronomical Society

The Astropy Collaboration will receive the 2025 Lancelot M. Berkeley − New York Community Trust Prize for Meritorious Work in Astronomy for the creation of an open-source ecosystem of interoperable as...

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Erik Tollerud @eteq.bsky.social · 15/08/2024

E di Teodoro in #iaus392 at #astronomy2024 (with @jegpeek.bsky.social) gives a really nice clean story of disentangling gas flow directions to show that at least radial gas flows aren't bringing in enough fuel to sustain star formation at the present day

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Erik Tollerud @eteq.bsky.social · 14/08/2024

Nice summary of some LADUMA results in talk by A Baker from #iaus392 at #astronomy2024. Particularly neat was showing work by @jwuphysics.bsky.social showing that you can pick out even individually undetected HI features using CNNs trained on multiwavelength data

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Erik Tollerud @eteq.bsky.social · 14/08/2024

From J Healy in #iaus392 at #astronomy2024 : in an HI survey of cluster Abell 2636 (with MeerKAT I *think*), some evidence that subgroups within the cluster protect galaxies' gas from the broader cluster environment. I wonder if this happens at LG scales (and if it could ever be observed...)?

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Karen Masters @karenlmasters.bsky.social · 14/08/2024

So enjoying hearing about neutral hydrogen observations of the Milky Way from Snezna Stanimirovic this morning. #astronom2024 🔭👩‍🔬

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Erik Tollerud @eteq.bsky.social · 13/08/2024

Neat dataset by P Mancera Piña at #astronomy2024 of HI rotation curves of several UDGs, showing that while their dark matter halo concentrations are hard to explain in CDM (and even harder with MOND), they are much more likely to exist in SIDM...

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Erik Tollerud @eteq.bsky.social · 13/08/2024

F Maccagni at #iaus392 of #astronomy2024 describes HI stripping data from a MeerKAT survey of the Fornax cluster. I found this plot especially impressive: a *very* clear floor where all the has gets stripped under a certain magnitude

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Erik Tollerud @eteq.bsky.social · 13/08/2024

E de Blok kicks off #iaus392 main session at #astronomy2024 by summarizing resolved HI observations now and in the near future. One fresh item I thought was especially interesting: "observing" TNG50 and FIRE2 sims just like MEERKAT shows the simulations are not getting the fluffy outskirts right

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Erik Tollerud @eteq.bsky.social · 13/08/2024

M Culver at #iaus392 of #astronomy2024 wraps up the plenary session telling us about how critical multiwavelength data are for understanding near future enormous HI datasets

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Erik Tollerud @eteq.bsky.social · 13/08/2024

K Oman kicks off the theory side of #iaus392 at #astronomy2024 with an overview of how simulations resolve (or sometimes don't!) HI gas in galaxies

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Erik Tollerud @eteq.bsky.social · 13/08/2024

C Spekkens at the opening talk of #iaus392 @ #astronomy2024 gives a great overview of what the near future looks like for neutral hydrogen surveys especially with SKA

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Erik Tollerud @eteq.bsky.social · 12/08/2024

Great talk by A Chiti at #astronomy2024 about the detailed abundances of v. low metallicity stars, esp in the LMC where the alpha to iron ratios are clearly very different from MW. Also, more coming from the MAGIC survey!

A Chiti at left and conclusion slide at the right

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Erik Tollerud @eteq.bsky.social · 12/08/2024

Great overview by @karenlmasters.bsky.social at #astronomy2024 of Galaxy Zoo, the prototypical citizen science program in astro, and birthplace of the zooniverse platform. And it just keeps going, with new results from desi, and some impressive machine learning classification tooling!

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Sarah Kendrew @sarahkendrew.bsky.social · 12/08/2024

🧪🔭 Reposting this opportunity from the #iauga24 slack: Fully funded 6-month postdoctoral fellowship for African woman scientists, in collaboration with Spanish Centres of Excellence. Deadline for applications is September 30th. (all sciences) mujeresporafrica.es/10th-edition...

mujeresporafrica.es

10th Edition - Science by Women - Mujeres por África

Rules and Guidelines Research Centers Associated Application form Brochure 2024-2025 Check out the Fellows Final beneficiaries Documentary 10TH EDITION “SCIENCE BY WOMEN PROGRAM” Research fellowships ...

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Erik Tollerud @eteq.bsky.social · 09/08/2024

At #astronomy2024, a neat talk about a Galactic BH discovered from Gaia and conclusively demonstrating 1) it's very massive 2) very metal poor progenitor, and 3) part of the halo, not the disk or bulge. Might even by from a disrupted dwarf galaxy! (Last bit my editorializing)

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Erik Tollerud @eteq.bsky.social · 10/07/2024

🔭@DGSCS - last talk by A Dropulic tells us about Streamgen and how you can learn a lot about predicted statistics of streams and how they change as you change galaxy formation parameters and the nature of dark matter

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Erik Tollerud @eteq.bsky.social · 10/07/2024

🔭@DGSCS - K Vivas shows us a beautifully clear DECam dataset of Crater II RR Lyrae. It is clearly disrupting, with all kinds of interesting structure and variable stars.

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Erik Tollerud @eteq.bsky.social · 10/07/2024

🔭@DGSCS - A Pace gives shares a whole bunch of different results in large area spectroscopy of classical (ish) dwarf spheroidals

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Erik Tollerud @eteq.bsky.social · 10/07/2024

🔭@DGSCS - T Li gives us a lightning fast overview of the S5 Survey - lots of science areas, too much to summarize, read the papers...

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Erik Tollerud @eteq.bsky.social · 10/07/2024

🔭@DGSCS - J Nibauer tells us all about modeling perturbations of stellar streams to constrain DM models. While there's a whole nest formalism, preliminary applications to data basically say "CDM is all you need", although LMCs impact is a wild card

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Erik Tollerud @eteq.bsky.social · 10/07/2024

🔭@DGSCS - starting off the last afternoon with A Bonaca first telling us all about MW stellar streams, what we'll be seeing in the LSST Era, and the secret weapon for follow up: the VIA instrument!

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Erik Tollerud @eteq.bsky.social · 10/07/2024

🔭@DGSCS - R Errani describes how small/faint MW dwarfs and their tidal interaction with the MW can be very sensitive to different forms of dark matter

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Erik Tollerud @eteq.bsky.social · 10/07/2024

🔭@DGSCS - S Smith describes a thorough characterization of UMa III/UNIONS 1, the new-found and by a wide margin faintest MW satellite. Still ambiguous if it's a galaxy or a star cluster because of how few stars there are... Although at this point my money is on galaxy which is WILD!

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Erik Tollerud @eteq.bsky.social · 10/07/2024

🔭@DGSCS - W Cerny kicks off the last day of talks with a great thorough investigation of the most compact end of the dwarf galaxy or maybe star cluster population. Spoiler alert: they are probably a heterogenous population!

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Erik Tollerud @eteq.bsky.social · 09/07/2024

Am chairing the next session of 🔭@DGSCS so won't have time to comment on talks but I am confident they will be awesome!

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Erik Tollerud @eteq.bsky.social · 09/07/2024

🔭@DGSCS - K McQuinn gives an overview of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and what it will do for dwarf galaxy science

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Erik Tollerud @eteq.bsky.social · 09/07/2024

🔭@DGSCS - S Koposov describes a technique of trying to disentangle the merger histories of LG satellites by modeling their metallicity distribution functions as mixture models. Seems to work on existing data but will be way cooler with next gen spectroscopic surveys

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Erik Tollerud @eteq.bsky.social · 09/07/2024

Not gonna lie: seeing this on someone's talk was really freaking me out. I'm glad the session chair went up and fixed it...

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Erik Tollerud @eteq.bsky.social · 09/07/2024

🔭@DGSCS - B Mutlu-Pakdil describes results around NGC 253 as part of PISCeS (a big takeaway for me: no evidence of planes of satellites), and the broader context of nearby beyond LG satellite systems

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Erik Tollerud @eteq.bsky.social · 09/07/2024

🔭@DGSCS - started off the second day with a great overview of how reionization and the early universe have important consequences for LG dwarfs (and vice versa!) by @mbkplus.bsky.social

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Erik Tollerud @eteq.bsky.social · 08/07/2024

🔭@DGSCS - last talk of the day by D Sand reveals lots of great candidate dwarfs in recent deep imaging (primarily by eye!) bodes well for Roman and LSST!

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Erik Tollerud @eteq.bsky.social · 08/07/2024

🔭@DGSCS - A Savino describes key results from the most complete yet HST survey of M31 satellite galaxies. Lots of fascinating similarities*and* differences from MW (too many to list, see summary slide!)

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Erik Tollerud @eteq.bsky.social · 08/07/2024

🔭@DGSCS - J Simon tells us the challenges the future holds with respect to spectroscopic follow-up of dwarf galaxies and friends in the LSST Era. It's a bit scary... But also exciting! (Especially enjoyed the "I didn't forget the minus sign" for the MV=2.2 candidate)

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Erik Tollerud @eteq.bsky.social · 08/07/2024

🔭@DGSCS - Z Shen describes early results from the Dragonfly Ultra wide Survey: lots of UDGs in it but dwarf/LSB objects too (And a neat description of the processing pipeline too!)

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