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Hamish Stewart @hamishs.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

Was there at least booze in it? Or at least some PG Tips?

Reposted by Hamish Stewart

Royal Society of Chemistry @rsc.org · 08/06/2026

Join us in celebrating the Orbitrap Astral Team, winners of the 2025 Analytical Science Horizon Prize, for their work which is accelerating discoveries that are helping to inform the development of new treatments. Watch the video to learn more: youtu.be/xz1tHE-aL0A #ChemSky

youtu.be

2025 Analytical Science Horizon Prize: Orbitrap Astral Team

YouTube video by RSC Corporate

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Hamish Stewart @hamishs.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

Don't know of anything published on the same instrument. Planning to get some such results in the next months. In principle though the Orbitrap is very well studied, and it's the same in OT Astral as in Exploris. One might compare public results of both instruments.

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Hamish Stewart @hamishs.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

Is anyone even doing TMT on a regular qToF? Mostly they're resolution limited to 8-plex vs 32-plex orbi/astral workflows Expect lower sensitivity to be the other main problem. Ratio compression can be partially mitigated by narrow isolation + FAIMS, though RTS-SPSS-MS3 is the gold standard.

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Hamish Stewart @hamishs.bsky.social · 26/04/2026

Well, a lot better than 99%, and in most applications losses are focused on background, analytically useless ions. Ion scheduling devices that preprocess E9 ions/s are perfectly feasible, but getting improvements for methods that aren't principally sensitivity limited will need more intelligence.

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Hamish Stewart @hamishs.bsky.social · 26/04/2026

Really nice animation explaining how Orbitrap Astral technology works and serves humanity. Commisioned by the Royal Society of Chemistry for the Horizon Prize.

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Hamish Stewart @hamishs.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

That's good to know! Would be interesting to see how widespread adoption already is, and what the limits are.

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Hamish Stewart @hamishs.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

It's a great story. Lowering a FAIMS electrode temperature compromises resolving power and greatly increases transmitted peptide ions, while still filtering out troublesome singly charged background. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.com

Low-resolution FAIMS for increased peptide coverage in low-load and single-cell proteomics - Scientific Reports

Scientific Reports - Low-resolution FAIMS for increased peptide coverage in low-load and single-cell proteomics

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Hamish Stewart @hamishs.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

Speculation, but TIMS devices empty as they scan out; perhaps populations with lower average mobility thus suffer less from global space charge. For local effects, M+ ions occupy a smaller spatial distribution as mentioned. Maybe dividing precursors into m/z or intensity bins will be revealing.

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Hamish Stewart @hamishs.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

Good observation and not all that intuitive. Presume that saturation of both is still dominated by Tims process rather than ToF. Could it simply be lower charge density of 1+ ions on average during elution (or emptier trap by the time they emerge on average)?

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Reposted by Hamish Stewart

Mike Goodwin @massspecpro.bsky.social · 15/03/2026

I just had one last dinner with John Syka, before he moves back to Virginia for retirement later this week. I am indescribably grateful for the opportunity to work with him over the last eight years at Thermo. #TeamMassSpec (1/N)

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Reposted by Hamish Stewart

Royal Society of Chemistry @rsc.org · 13/03/2026

There’s still time to share your analytical chemistry research at the Analytical research forum (ARF26). Oral abstract deadline is now 23 March. 📆 Submit your abstract today: rsc.li/arf2026 #ChemSky

Poster for the Analytical Research Forum (ARF26) by the Royal Society of Chemistry. Event on 15 June 2026 in London, UK. Oral abstract extension deadline: 23 March 2026. "Submit now" button is visible. Background features a stylized abstract design.

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Hamish Stewart @hamishs.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

Hardest part is that she doesn't know what a scam these cards are.

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Hamish Stewart @hamishs.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

Were there many reasons given not to fill one up like a foie gras goose?

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Hamish Stewart @hamishs.bsky.social · 05/03/2026

Wouldn't say any of it is really dumb, and they're all questions one might ask oneself. The next step for it might be how to discard an idea. For example, computational burden of real time analysis (and rescoring?), dynamic range on mega-multiplexing, electrodynamic signals on ToF mass range etc.

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Hamish Stewart @hamishs.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

That may be too much to ask! The really advanced algorithms are a bit too severe for millisecond response times. But maybe room for more general predictions...

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Hamish Stewart @hamishs.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

Indeed the automated analysis is very detached from both the priorities and even (what I would consider) the biggest problems.

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Hamish Stewart @hamishs.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

Get ready for the bombardment of crazy requests and ideas..!

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Hamish Stewart @hamishs.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

I like the thought that an LLM might come up with, and highlight, the sort of niche connections a serious expert might occasionally make in the shower. Can it though. How does one ask?

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Hamish Stewart @hamishs.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

Any interest in taking multiple scans per precursor at different mass ranges, or are losses more than acceptable? 😀

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Hamish Stewart @hamishs.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

Works on multiple levels! 😄

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Reposted by Hamish Stewart

IET @ietltd.bsky.social · 25/02/2026

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Hamish Stewart @hamishs.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

Aye, it all derives from the 2022 application. There's some mechanism behind claims in these additional documents.

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Hamish Stewart @hamishs.bsky.social · 01/03/2026

Number of ions imposes a limit, but things can always be worse. For context, label free quan peptide-level CV is ~10% typically, if I recall correctly.

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Reposted by Hamish Stewart

Nick Riley @nmriley.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

MS/MS scan range can be an afterthought that doesn't receive attention in method design, but improper settings can affect experimental outcomes. This is especially true in glycoproteomics. A #glycotime thread about a new #JASMS paper on this idea from @riley-research.bsky.social 1/10

The mass range of tandem mass spectra can be categorized into three main regions. For glycopeptides, the lower mass range contains mainly oxonium ions, the middle range contains mainly peptide fragments, and the high range contains charge-reduced fragments. All regions contain valuable fragment ion information, but they can only be simultaneously accessed by breaking the 5–10–15 rule.

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Hamish Stewart @hamishs.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

Alas no! We have a regime of industrial design guidance to make every product harmonised, user friendly, intuitive... and a white box with a black front and a blue pulsing light. The box looks much better, but the lighting is a devastating loss.

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Hamish Stewart @hamishs.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

Finally released the preprint covering TMT HR mode for the Orbitrap Astral Zoom mass spectrometer. Here, multi-pass MS/MS measurements grant us sufficient resolution to quantify TMT reporter ions even to 35-plex, greatly increasing analytical throughput. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

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Hamish Stewart @hamishs.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

Sounds reasonable to me, and this need to reduce co-isolation pulls us to long gradients, good chromatography etc. Idle speculation: Perhaps in Astral data, as many PSMs are filtered out from quantification (but there are a lot of PSMs), strong interferences may be preferentially filtered.

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Hamish Stewart @hamishs.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

I would expect 15 ions in Astral gives better reproducibility, if only because it's much further above the noise line. I think it shouldn't be hard to dig up CVs. But indeed, on the higher load (non degraded HeLa sample), it averages >100 ions per peak.

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Hamish Stewart @hamishs.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

In defense of MS2 TMT, use of FAIMS and advances in quadrupoles allow ~90% interference free index, similar to MS3 prior to real time search no? I'd show RTS MS3 if we'd kept the original plan and built the Orbitrap Astral MS with an ion trap, but we'd never have finished the project.

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Hamish Stewart @hamishs.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

Timing here is that this study combines data from multiple groups, a lot of it presented last ASMS, but the task of aggregating results and writing up wasn't owned by anyone. Took me a little while to confirm.

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Hamish Stewart @hamishs.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

Curious! I've seen comparisons to mass spec (albeit not in agreement, while MS vs MS is ok), but it should be no problem to assess via controlled samples. I know people for whom such investigation, with mass spectrometers, is much of their jobs.

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Hamish Stewart @hamishs.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

Are there not standard-based quantitative, multi-proteome or matrix matched serial dilution experiments? The sort of thing that's very standard in assessing mass spectrometers?

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Hamish Stewart @hamishs.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

Always enjoy a rare multi-reflection ToF publication. Fills in some gaps.

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Reposted by Hamish Stewart

Kermit Murray @kkmurray.bsky.social · 10/01/2026

(JASMS) [ASAP] Faces of Mass Spectrometry/Khatereh Motamedchaboki: Journal of the American Society for Mass SpectrometryDOI: 10.1021/jasms.5c00430 (RSS) #MassSpecRSS #JASMS

dlvr.it

[ASAP] Faces of Mass Spectrometry/Khatereh Motamedchaboki

Journal of the American Society for Mass SpectrometryDOI: 10.1021/jasms.5c00430

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Hamish Stewart @hamishs.bsky.social · 06/01/2026

I recall Waters had a guide for cleaning their Stepwave, which isn't too far off, and had a mixture of soft cleaning agents. No idea how effective it is though.

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Hamish Stewart @hamishs.bsky.social · 06/01/2026

Ooh thanks! a really mild mixture. I wondered how successful it would be. I see ion funnels sometimes caked in material, with acidic detergent being pretty good for removing it, though not an option for soldered parts.

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Hamish Stewart @hamishs.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

Nice! How do you usually go about cleaning ion funnels that have soldered pcb parts, if you dont mind my asking?

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Hamish Stewart @hamishs.bsky.social · 04/01/2026

Sounds incredible where can I buy one

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Hamish Stewart @hamishs.bsky.social · 29/12/2025

The worst of economic policy remains downright popular, and good remedies are too technical for the public. Not many people protesting to ease planning requirements, smooth out tax cliffs, or increase the childminder to child ratio.

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Hamish Stewart @hamishs.bsky.social · 29/12/2025

It still hasn't generally sunk in how poor this country has become. So much contemporary policy is still engineered to make us poorer.

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Hamish Stewart @hamishs.bsky.social · 18/12/2025

It's very cool that one can in principle perform DIA from only a mobility separation. Mass filters wont be going anywhere in general purpose instruments though. It's at least replaced the regular optimistic calls to drop chromatography in favour of ion mobility.

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Hamish Stewart @hamishs.bsky.social · 21/11/2025

The multi-ion isolation is the tricky part. That really requires a different cell design and power supply scheme - but since the IRM potentials are derived from the C-Trap's, it cannot simply be exchanged. Also no free space. Small downside of a highly integrated design like the Exploris module.

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Hamish Stewart @hamishs.bsky.social · 20/11/2025

You aren't alone in this, it just represents a shockingly large project. The platform lacks a convenient spot to incorporate an analytical trap or isolation cell.

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Hamish Stewart @hamishs.bsky.social · 13/11/2025

Our Orbitrap Astral Zoom mass spectrometer has won its first prize! Nice little interview here with my teammate Johannes. theanalyticalscientist.com/issues/2025/...

theanalyticalscientist.com

The Analytical Scientist Innovation Awards 2025: #2

Technical lead Johannes Petzoldt tells the story behind the development of Thermo’s Orbitrap Astral Zoom Mass Spectrometer

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