iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Dr. Heloise Stevance

Christopher Berry @cplberry.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

Bitterly disappointing to see the Astronomer Royal—who should be advocating for the importance of astronomy and its contributions to society—imposing the greatest cuts to astronomy research in a generation Glad to see that the Astronomer Royal for Scotland is fulfilling her role properly 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 ☄️🔭

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NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory @rubinobservatory.org · 25/02/2026

The largest spot-the-difference effort EVER has begun!🚨 On the night of Feb 24, NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory officially released its first ~800,000 public alerts of detected changes in the night sky!🔍 A new era of discovery is here✨ 🔭🧪☄️ 🔗: rubinobservatory.org/news/first-a...

A 3-by-4 grid of grayscale astronomical images zoomed in on single objects. From left to right, the columns are labeled Template, New image, and difference. From top to bottom, the rows are labeled supernova, variable star, active galactic nucleus, and solar system object.

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NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory @rubinobservatory.org · 25/02/2026

These first alerts use early, pre-survey observations while Rubin finishes preparations to begin its decade-long survey. 🔭🧪☄️ This is just the start for a system that is expected to produce up to ~7 million of these alerts per night! ✨ 🔗: rubinobservatory.org/news/first-a...

A 3-by-5 grid of grayscale astronomical images zoomed in on single objects, specifically active galactic nuclei. From left to right, the columns are labeled Template, New image, and difference. From top to bottom, the rows are labeled active galactic nucleus 1-5.

A 3-by-5 grid of grayscale astronomical images zoomed in on single objects, specifically solar system objects. From left to right, the columns are labeled Template, New image, and difference. From top to bottom, the rows are labeled solar system object 1-5.

A 3-by-5 grid of grayscale astronomical images zoomed in on single objects, specifically supernovae. From left to right, the columns are labeled Template, New image, and difference. From top to bottom, the rows are labeled supernova 1-5.

A 3-by-5 grid of grayscale astronomical images zoomed in on single objects, specifically variable stars. From left to right, the columns are labeled Template, New image, and difference. From top to bottom, the rows are labeled variable star 1-5.

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Rubin LSST:UK @lsstuk.bsky.social · 24/02/2026

We catch up with Héloïse Stevence @sydonahi.bsky.social to talk astronomy and machine learning – and discover how many Rubin images this Schmidt AI in Science Fellow can classify per minute with the human eye. Read our latest In the Spotlight interview: www.lsst.ac.uk/news/2026-02... 🔭

Dr Héloïse Stevence is a Schmidt AI in Science Fellow at the University of Oxford.

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Fabian Schussler @fabianschussler.bsky.social · 31/01/2026

🚀 Astro-COLIBRI v2.26.0 is live! ☄️ This update brings cool new tools and better accessibility: 🌍 Multi-language support (EN, DE, FR, ES, IT) 👤 #Google Login 🔭 Observation planning for #Fermi & #IceCube 🌌 New Host-Galaxy Cross Matching tool Read the full changelog here: tinyurl.com/ver2-26

tinyurl.com

🚀 Astro-COLIBRI v2.26.0 is now available!

We are excited to announce the release of Astro-COLIBRI v2.26.0 (January 28, 2026). This update brings again significant improvements to the user interface, powerful new science tools for observation ...

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Dr. Heloise Stevance @sydonahi.bsky.social · 30/01/2026

A couple of weeks ago I was asked to speak at the AI and Ethics conference organised at Oxford - my talk has now been put online and summarised in a written piece you can read for free! After the shenanigans at NeurIPS, scientific rigour is more important than ever www.ox.ac.uk/news/2026-01...

ox.ac.uk

Expert Comment: Computers can help us to do science, but they can’t

Dr Heloise Stevance, Schmidt AI in Science Fellow in Oxford University’s Physics Department, is a computational astrophysicist developing intelligent recommendation systems for sky surveys. In this

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Reposted by Dr. Heloise Stevance

NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory @rubinobservatory.org · 18/12/2025

One Rubin image = up to ~10,000 alerts! 🌌🔭 From supernovae to asteroids, comets, and more, Rubin will capture the Universe in action every night. ☄️✨ See what kinds of events Rubin will alert us to: rubinobservatory.org/explore/how-ru…

Diagram showing changes detected in one Rubin image including supernovae, variable stars, active galactic nuclei, and solar system objects. In total, each Rubin will contain up to 10,000 changes, ~70% of which will be variable stars.

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ESO @eso.org · 05/12/2025

The interstellar visitor 3I/ATLAS ☄️ cruising through our Solar System is no alien spaceship and won't hit Earth. Still, the buzz around it is far from unfounded 🤩 Discover why with #ChasingStarlight: www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtiqLxfSiVI 🔭 🧪

A bright white object glowing with green tones against a dark, starry space backdrop. The text "3I/ATLAS Facts, not fiction" appears on the image.

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Fabian Schussler @fabianschussler.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

We've just released a massive update to Astro-COLIBRI! 🔭☄️🧪⚛️ Version 2.25.0 features a completely redesigned mobile experience (yes, you can finally swipe between screens!) and adds powerful new data sources like the RAPAS network and LAST Observatory. More details in our forum: tinyurl.com/ACv2-25

forum.astro-colibri.science

Release Notes v2.25.0: Major Mobile UX Update, RAPAS Photometry & LAST Integration

Dear Astro-COLIBRI community, We are excited to announce the release of version 2.25.0! This update brings a significant overhaul to the mobile user interface to make navigation smoother during your ...

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Reposted by Dr. Heloise Stevance

Keith Smith @drkeithsmith.bsky.social · 20/11/2025

A giant impact between proto-Earth and a planet called Theia produced the Moon. Hopp et al. use isotopic measurements of lunar samples and cosmochemical modelling to show that Theia formed in the inner Solar System, probably closer to the Sun than Earth. ☄️ #planetsci www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

science.org

The Moon-forming impactor Theia originated from the inner Solar System

The Moon formed from a giant impact of a planetary body, called Theia, with proto-Earth. It is unknown whether Theia formed in the inner or outer Solar System. We measured iron isotopes in lunar sampl...

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Dr. Heloise Stevance @sydonahi.bsky.social · 24/11/2025

When you feel vulnerable, whatever the reason, try to stop your brain focusing on the things you lack, and analyse the things you can bring and share with the group. Sometimes all we have to bring to the table is enthusiasm and time, but that's already a lot. Happy Science!

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Dr. Heloise Stevance @sydonahi.bsky.social · 24/11/2025

And this analysis will depend on the crowd you're in and the theme of interest. But for example it can be that you have a closer link to the day-to-day challenges of the science or the method because you ACTUALLY DO IT (professor delegate). Maybe you know a novel method, maybe you have QUESTIONS!

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Dr. Heloise Stevance @sydonahi.bsky.social · 24/11/2025

When you're the youngest in the room, there will be things you have less of: titles, number of papers, research achievements. It's when we focus on these that we talk ourselves down or over compensate. So we need to focus on what we have MORE of:

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Dr. Heloise Stevance @sydonahi.bsky.social · 24/11/2025

Don't talk yourself down, but don't over-compensate. When we feel "small" humans have one of two common ways of coping: Some will talk themselves down in an attempt to raise sympathy from the crowd; some will exaggerate their confidence or achievement to feel less small. There's another way...

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Dr. Heloise Stevance @sydonahi.bsky.social · 24/11/2025

Last week I had the honour to speak at the 5th Innovation Forum for Intelligent Computing at Zheijang Lab, and share my voice on a panel with experts with a lot more seniority. Here are some tips for early career researchers for when you're the youngest in the room and feeling small 🧪🔭

Me standing behind a podium (left hand side) on a large stage (15 meters across?) with a very large wall-screen displaying my title slide "Virtual Research Assistants for Sky Surveys; Intelligence is in the Design not in the Models"

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Reposted by Dr. Heloise Stevance

Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 20/10/2025

This person is paying OpenAI two hundred dollars a month to have a chatbot gaslight them about making an excel spreadsheet

Cannot generate simple excel files on pro version
Question
So I have used ChatGPT pro for a while now and recently I have been facing an issue while trying to collate data from pdfs and put it in an excel sheet where in my chat it keeps asking me questions when it finally gets down to generating an excel sheet it never gives me the me the link to download the file.
After multiple attempts when it does give me a lin k to download the excel file I rec an error which says file not found. Starting to grow frustrated with this now.
Look forward to any suggestions to tackle this #problem

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Reposted by Dr. Heloise Stevance

Fabian Schussler @fabianschussler.bsky.social · 10/10/2025

We are pleased to announce that the Astrophysics Centre for Multimessenger Studies in Europe (ACME) EU-funded project has officially launched its online platform for virtual access to multi-messenger expertise. 🔭🧪⚛️☄️ support.acme-astro.eu Details in the thread below and on: www.acme-astro.eu

support.acme-astro.eu

ACME VA platform

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Dr. Heloise Stevance @sydonahi.bsky.social · 25/09/2025

How long do we give the techno-bros to start weaponising DEI by saying their fave AI is conscious and has feelings and saying otherwise is "dehumanizing" and cruel?

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GruntyThrst @gruntythrst.bsky.social · 11/09/2025

That’s a much better title yeah

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Dr. Heloise Stevance @sydonahi.bsky.social · 11/09/2025

My preferred title "Bot does Astronomers' Cosmic Laundry" But I guess it didn't sound serious enough. Fun fact the tool still works even though we added a whole new telescope in the stream this summer and without retraining 🤣🫶 www.ox.ac.uk/news/2025-09...

ox.ac.uk

AI tool developed at Oxford helps astronomers find supernovae in a

A new AI-powered tool has reduced astronomers’ workload by 85% - filtering through thousands of data alerts to identify the few genuine signals caused by supernovae (powerful explosions from dying

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Dr. Heloise Stevance @sydonahi.bsky.social · 11/09/2025

Design. The hardest part of applied ML is asking the right question and choosing the right metrics. Once you've done that you can pick the right model and in science it's often not the biggest newest thing! ML is not a dick measuring contest but I'll leave this for another rant later today 💅

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Dr. Heloise Stevance @sydonahi.bsky.social · 11/09/2025

"AI-powered" is obviously a marketing term. My models use a nifty little trick called Histogram Based Gradient Boosted Decision trees. TL;DR it approximates complex probability distributions by adding loads of small functions (here trees). Why is it smart if it's so simple? 1/2 #AstroSci

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Dr. Heloise Stevance @sydonahi.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

Reminder that you can take your science seriously without taking yourself too seriously. #AstroSci 🧪

Diagram showing 3 cartoon "monsters" all with straight tails to illustrate that if you only have the tail you can't do classification properly.

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Reposted by Dr. Heloise Stevance

Emily Hunt @emily.space · 08/09/2025

For the last two years, I've been paying for the Astronomy feeds hosting myself. It has been a privilege to grow our community here, but I also shouldn't keep doing it for free 😅 That's why I'm delighted to announce that we now have a donations page on Open Collective! 🔭☄️ #astrophotography

opencollective.com

The Astrosky Ecosystem - Open Collective

We're building an open-source ecosystem of social media tools for the space science & astronomy communities.

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Huei Sears, PhD 🌟 @starlights.bsky.social · 19/08/2025

New from Wynn Jacobson-Galán ! it’s so cool to see such an expansive spectral energy distribution (SED) of such an extraordinary event. arxiv.org/abs/2508.11747 🧪🔭☄️

A full late-time (t > 150d) multi-wavelength (radio - X-ray) SED of SN 2023ixf.

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Reposted by Dr. Heloise Stevance

James Davenport @jradavenport.com · 15/08/2025

Well... the discussion around 3I/ATLAS continues to... evolve. This object is super exciting, fascinating, worthy of a LOT of study and press! ALSO so far as I have seen, & from every solar system expert I've talked to (and I know a lot of 'em!), it looks like a comet, not a spaceship. 🔭🧪☄️

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Dr. Heloise Stevance @sydonahi.bsky.social · 11/08/2025

But everyone goes for viridis (hahaha cuz it's the default)

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Dr. Heloise Stevance @sydonahi.bsky.social · 11/08/2025

Aimed for plasma, got magma. Winning

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Dr. Heloise Stevance @sydonahi.bsky.social · 11/08/2025

Guess which matplotlib colour map this was inspired by. 🧪🔭 #AstroSci

My face and hair (white, yellow, orange, purple, black)

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Dr. Heloise Stevance @sydonahi.bsky.social · 10/08/2025

Sidereal time is the time in which the moon looks the same relative to background stars my bad I got the two confused 😅

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

PS if you’re a member of the press: I and my colleagues will happily talk about 3I/ATLAS until the (interstellar) cows come home. But my only comment on whether it’s an alien spacecraft is: Avi is talking nonsense on stilts, and doesn’t understand comets.

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

I see the first articles in the UK press giving space to the claim that 3I/ATLAS is an alien spacecraft. Briefly: It’s a comet that formed billions of years ago, passing through our Solar System. It’s behaving like a comet. There is no evidence it’s artificial.

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Dr. Heloise Stevance @sydonahi.bsky.social · 10/08/2025

Thanks! I knew bluesky woulD come through

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Dr. Heloise Stevance @sydonahi.bsky.social · 10/08/2025

I am looking for proper scientific literature, SOME anthropologist SOMEWHERE must have written about it but I can't find it on the hell the internet has become ❤️🙏

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Dr. Heloise Stevance @sydonahi.bsky.social · 10/08/2025

I know the synodic period is 29.5 days but ti doesn't fucking matter, the point is how many days does it take for an earth observer to see the same phase I am NOT talking about period synchronization nonsense. Just having regular cycles on same period as a visible heavenly body being practicle 2/

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Dr. Heloise Stevance @sydonahi.bsky.social · 10/08/2025

Hey bluesky! Please help me reach the right scientists 🧪 The moon **sidereal** period is ~27 days and menstruation is ~27 to 28 days on average. I am wondering if it is due to an evolutionary advantage in early humans with calendars being able to predict period and do family planning 1/

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Martin Paul Eve @eve.gd · 08/08/2025

The University of Warwick has paid a lot of money, I'm guessing, for their internet banner ads on the Guardian and elsewhere. But they can't spell "curiosity". This isn't a US-UK variant. They just, genuinely, have a massive spelling error in their banner ads.

A banner advert for the University of Warwick, which says "Beyond ignores curiousity". This is a spelling error.

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Christopher Berry @cplberry.bsky.social · 09/08/2025

I did the thing that took 20 minutes and I've been putting off for 6 years!

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Dr. Heloise Stevance @sydonahi.bsky.social · 08/08/2025

Paper on the ATLAS Virtual Research Assistant is still in press (but fully accepted) so I'm holding off on further bragging for a little bit, but in the mean time the Schmidt AI in Science folks at Oxford did a quick profile on me Let's be nosy about the Universe! saiis.web.ox.ac.uk/article/a-st...

saiis.web.ox.ac.uk

A stellar performance – Dr Heloise Stevance is going supernova in her field of exploding stars

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Maria Leptin @marialep.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

Very promising news on the next seven-year EU budget, with a proposed substantial increase for Horizon Europe including the ERC. We are analysing the other parts of this proposal in more detail. @Vonderleyen @EZaharievaEU research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/news/all-res...

research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu

Horizon Europe 2028 - 2034: twice bigger, simpler, faster and more impactful

Research and innovation news alert: As part of the next long-term EU budget 2028-2034, the Commission is proposing to double the budget of the research and innovation framework programme to €175 billi...

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Dr. Heloise Stevance @sydonahi.bsky.social · 08/07/2025

I changed my exacto knife blade twice! also I spread the glue with my fingers to remove any excess so I would leak onto the paper as I pressed edges together. I was covered in glue by the end but the telescope wasn't!

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