iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Andrey Kravtsov @grumpy1.bsky.social · 18/12/2025

National Science Foundation significantly downgrades the review process of its proposals... 🧪 www.science.org/content/arti...

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Andrey Kravtsov @grumpy1.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

ESA/Webb picture of the month - image of interacting dwarf galaxies NGC 4490 and NGC 4485. Interaction between these galaxies led to a recent starburst and formation of star clusters. 🔭 esawebb.org/images/potm2...

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Andrey Kravtsov @grumpy1.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

Schrödinger's plates: the plates are simultaneously whole and broken and we won't know their true state until we open the cabinet... ) p.s. This month marks the 90th anniversary of Schrödinger's famous thought experiment involving cat in a chamber.

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Andrey Kravtsov @grumpy1.bsky.social · 28/11/2025

A fantastic image by @ajamesmccarthy.bsky.social cosmicbackground.io/pages/ea_int... 🧪🔭

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Andrey Kravtsov @grumpy1.bsky.social · 13/11/2025

Food for thought/discussion. 🧪

Francois Chollet's post saying "The most powerful scientific instrument of the 21st century isn't the electron microscope or the particle collider. It's the algorithm.

Today, a scientist in biology, physics, chemistry etc. is more likely to be debugging a Python script than to be running a wet lab. Going forward, the biggest breakthroughs will be mostly software achievements, like AlphaFold."

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Andrey Kravtsov @grumpy1.bsky.social · 12/11/2025

Aurora over lake Michigan tonight. In the background are Castor, Pollux, Jupiter, and Procyon. 🔭

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Andrey Kravtsov @grumpy1.bsky.social · 07/11/2025

(Adler) Planetarium eclipse... 🔭

Rising sun eclipsed by the Adler Planetarium dome.

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Andrey Kravtsov @grumpy1.bsky.social · 24/10/2025

"Beyond Hubble": a workshop aimed to trigger cross discussions between observers and theorists on our current understanding on galaxy morphology and kinematics, with an emphasis on revisiting the Hubble Sequence in the modern-day galaxy formation framework. sites.google.com/cam.ac.uk/be... 🔭

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Andrey Kravtsov @grumpy1.bsky.social · 30/06/2025

Here is a mid-infrared image of the same galaxy. The emission in this image is produced by the warm dust and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). 🔭

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Andrey Kravtsov @grumpy1.bsky.social · 30/06/2025

A new fantastic image of M82 by JWST NIRCam, showing a biconical outflow of gas and dust from this starbursting galaxy. 🔭🧪 esawebb.org/images/potm2...

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Andrey Kravtsov @grumpy1.bsky.social · 02/03/2025

If your next European adventure does not pan out, Illinois has alternatives to offer...

A google map with a path through the state of Illinois with 7 towns with the same names as major European cities (Paris, Vienna, Athens, Berlin, Rome, Milan, Geneva, IL).

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Andrey Kravtsov @grumpy1.bsky.social · 08/02/2025

A reminder from @astrokatie.com at the end of her "Picture an Astronomer" talk at UChicago tonight that no matter what you see in the news, things can get MUCH worse if the Higgs field tunnels to its true vacuum state... 🧪🔭

A quote from Coleman & De Luccia (1980) paper about how their result that the transition of the Higgs field to its true vacuum state will collapse will end all hope for our Universe.

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Andrey Kravtsov @grumpy1.bsky.social · 31/12/2024

Best wishes for 2025 everyone! 🧪

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Andrey Kravtsov @grumpy1.bsky.social · 19/12/2024

From Yuan-Sen Ting on X. Evolution of the programming languages use in astronomy research. 🔭

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Andrey Kravtsov @grumpy1.bsky.social · 14/12/2024

Intergalactic salsa dance anyone? This is an infrared image of merging galaxies IC 2163 and NGC 2207 by the MIRI instrument on the James Webb Space Telescope. If you wonder why it looks different than typical images of galaxies, this is because this image shows dust particles and dense gas.

infrared image of merging galaxies IC 2163 and NGC 2207 by the MIRI instrument on the James Webb Space Telescope

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Andrey Kravtsov @grumpy1.bsky.social · 14/12/2024

Not a particularly impressive image taken with my phone (but what do you expect from a theorist?..) on a flight last week. This view of the Moon and Venus over Mississippi at sunset was pretty mesmerizing though. 🧪

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Andrey Kravtsov @grumpy1.bsky.social · 11/12/2024

The source plane reconstruction of light in this galaxy looks like this. There is evidence that Milky Way went through a similar stage early on when most stars formed in massive clusters. science.nasa.gov/missions/web...

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Andrey Kravtsov @grumpy1.bsky.social · 11/12/2024

Firefly Sparkle is a galaxy with mass was discovered in JWST observations of a galaxy cluster as a highly lensed and magnified source. Remarkably, about half of stars in this galaxy are in 10 massive star clusters. This galaxy provides a unique view into the youth of our own Milky Way galaxy. 🔭

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Andrey Kravtsov @grumpy1.bsky.social · 10/12/2024

@jwstfeed.bsky.social Amazing new field imaged by JWST with a nascent cluster of galaxies. esawebb.org/news/weic2428/ 🔭

A sky field imaged by JWST with a young galaxy cluster.

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Andrey Kravtsov @grumpy1.bsky.social · 11/11/2024

Derek Lindstrom, who received a heart transplant a year ago, completed his 115th marathon last Saturday (Nov 9) in Indianapolis setting the world record among runners with transplants. First 10k he averaged under 12 min/mi. 🧪 His story is recounted here: www.jsonline.com/story/sports...

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Andrey Kravtsov @grumpy1.bsky.social · 17/07/2024

David had a big impact on my scientific career and careers of many of his PhD students

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Andrey Kravtsov @grumpy1.bsky.social · 17/07/2024

Great three days of science and meeting old friends at David Weinberg's 60th fest at the University of Utah.

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Andrey Kravtsov @grumpy1.bsky.social · 21/06/2024

The plot below shows the said mass Mdm(<r_1/2) as a function of stellar mass with the model shown by lines and shaded bands (+individual galaxies outside the 2 sigma band), while observed Milky Way dwarf satellites and ultra-diffuse galaxies are shown by red stars and magenta symbols.

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Andrey Kravtsov @grumpy1.bsky.social · 09/04/2024

Sun's crescent on the way to totality today via a pasta strainer... 🔭🧪😎

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Andrey Kravtsov @grumpy1.bsky.social · 13/01/2024

JWST composite image of NGC 628. I think observations did not just catch up with simulations but overtook them by a lot... Still seems to be qualitatively consistent with the star formation - feedback cycle that is reflected in the long depletion time... 🔭🧪

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Andrey Kravtsov @grumpy1.bsky.social · 16/12/2023

Prompt: "give me raw latex for the equation in which column of 2 variables \epsilon_{n+1} and \xi_{n+1} = column of 2 other variables \varepsilon_{n+1} and \nu_{n+1} plus 2x2 matix of derivatives of f and g with respect to x_n and v_n times column of 2 variables \epsilon_{n} and \xi_{n}" 🧪 ChatGPT:

Correct LaTeX equation for the ChatGPT prompt

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Andrey Kravtsov @grumpy1.bsky.social · 04/12/2023

Even six months ago this was still true, but now most solutions from the AI "homework machines" tend to be correct, at least in programming exercises. I'd be interested to learn how other people try to rethink their courses to account for this new reality. 🔭🧪

Homework machine: illustration to the Shel Silverstein's poem from "A Light in the Attic" - allusion to modern AI tools that students can use to get solutions to homework problems.

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Andrey Kravtsov @grumpy1.bsky.social · 12/11/2023

If you know Python. You can explore these images yourself using this code:

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Andrey Kravtsov @grumpy1.bsky.social · 12/11/2023

This is what the Sun looked like in the hard UV on Nov 3, just when the coronal mass injections that produced beautiful Aurora's all over the Earth last weekend occurred. You can see these CMEs happening on the surface in the form of prominences protruding out from the surface of the Sun. 🔭

The Sun in hard UV on Nov 3 showing prominenses that caused beautiful Aurora's on Eath last weekend.

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Andrey Kravtsov @grumpy1.bsky.social · 01/11/2023

It's simple and it conveys what pressure really is (the flux of momentum carried by particles).

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Andrey Kravtsov @grumpy1.bsky.social · 31/10/2023

'Tis the season to teach the bitwise operators...

Logical and bitwise operators illustrated using two overlapping pumpkins.

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Andrey Kravtsov @grumpy1.bsky.social · 27/10/2023

It's a galaxy with tricky morphology: spiral in its inner regions (spiral bulge!) and spheroidal in its outer regions. This is what it looks like if zoomed out by a factor of ~10.

When zoomed out the Prime galaxy is a spheroid!

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Andrey Kravtsov @grumpy1.bsky.social · 27/10/2023

The Prime galaxy: the points in the plot have coordinates x = p*cos(p) y = p*sin(p) where p are prime numbers.

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Andrey Kravtsov @grumpy1.bsky.social · 26/10/2023

Fun with trigonometric functions and Matplotlib 🌀

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Andrey Kravtsov @grumpy1.bsky.social · 19/10/2023

A couple of photos of Chandra from the UChicago library archive to celebrate his birthday. The first was with his wife Lalitha at the dedication of the McDonald Observatory in 1939 and the second is at the expedition to observe solar eclipse in 1945.

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Andrey Kravtsov @grumpy1.bsky.social · 10/10/2023

Happy Ada Lovelace Day everyone! www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-... 🔭

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