Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Matthew Kenworthy

Benjamin Pope @benjaminpope.bsky.social · 1d

We can see Io rotate slightly over the hour-long timelapse, tracking volcanoes on its surface!

And check out the Conversation piece for a cool slider showing how NGC 1068 lines up perfectly with previous data from LBTI.

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Reposted by Matthew Kenworthy

Benjamin Pope @benjaminpope.bsky.social · 1d

The raw data look like messy interferograms that are hard to understand by eye - and we enhance these data to restore beautiful images of the environment of the black hole in NGC 1068, Jupiter's moon Io, and a dusty binary system WR 137.

3x3 multipanel figure showing the AMI imaging results. Top to bottom: raw data, calibrator, and restored images, for the active galaxy NGC 1068, Jupiter's moon Io, and the colliding-wind binary WR 137.

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Matthew Kenworthy @mattkenworthy.bsky.social · 1d

Gibson et al. “TESS Discovers a Second System of Transiting Exocomets in the Extreme
Debris Disk of RZ Psc” showing 24 exocomet transits and the existence of a broken power law for the sizes of these exocomets, unlike Beta Pic’s exocomet distribution #exoplanet #astrodon #astrosci

TESS light curve of RZ Psc, showing several dog tooth-like dips indicating exocomet transits.

Plot os radius of exocomet versus cumulative number count - the RZ Psc shows a distinct change in slope at 2.5km, whilst the Beta Pic distribution from des Etangs shows a single straight power law.

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Reposted by Matthew Kenworthy

The Conversation AUNZ @aunz.theconversation.com · 5d

Satellites beaming sunlight down to Earth sound like science fiction – and they have astronomers very worried. 👉 theconversation.com/a-us-st...

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Matthew Kenworthy @mattkenworthy.bsky.social · 2d

They look fantastic, well worth the effort!

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Reposted by Matthew Kenworthy

George Monbiot @georgemonbiot.bsky.social · 5d

They're going to put an enormous lawsuit magnet in the sky.
mastodon.social/@sundogplane...

Prof. Sam Lawler (@[email protected])

It's becoming increasingly clear to me that Reflect Orbital's fucking stupid giant mirror satellite, with absolutely NOTHING useful to offer, which will cause countless safety issues, ecological disas...

mastodon.social

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Matthew Kenworthy @mattkenworthy.bsky.social · 5d

A lovely morning to go rowing in #Leiden - my sculling needs improvement, but it’s fantastic to be on the water on these calm Autumn days.

Two single rowing boats with orange striping sit in the water next to a wooden decking. The sky is blue and dotted with clouds, the three quarters Moon is shining in the sky to the top right. The river is flat and still, and a reflection of a windmill can be seen in the water.

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Matthew Kenworthy @mattkenworthy.bsky.social · 5d

Wow, I am sorry Gerard - definitely their loss. Onwards and upwards!

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Reposted by Matthew Kenworthy

Michael Brown @mjibrown.bsky.social · 5d

A US tech startup is proposing to use mirrors in space to power solar farms on Earth at night. Is this even feasible? And what are the light pollution dangers?

Myself and @mattkenworthy.bsky.social have crunched the numbers for The Conversation.

theconversation.com/a-us-startup...

A US startup plans to deliver ‘sunlight on demand’ after dark. Can it work – and would we want it to?

Satellites beaming sunlight down to Earth sound like science fiction – and they have astronomers very worried.

theconversation.com

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Reposted by Matthew Kenworthy

Bloomberg News @bloomberg.com · 8d

Startup Reflect Orbital aims to power solar farms at night by reflecting sunlight from about 4,000 satellites, has recently requested a license for a 2026 demo. But astronomers warn the bright objects could be “ruinous” to vital scientific research.

Plan to Reflect Sunlight to Power Solar Panels at Night Upsets Astronomers

Reflect Orbital aims to launch its first of a planned 4,000 satellites into orbit next year. Scientists worry that it would be “ruinous” for research.

bloom.bg

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Matthew Kenworthy @mattkenworthy.bsky.social · 5d

That is utterly spectacular - holograms are one of the things that got me into science.

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Matthew Kenworthy @mattkenworthy.bsky.social · 6d

Santos-Sanz+ with “JWST occultation reveals unforeseen complexity in Chariklo’s ring system” - I’m fascinated by #exorings and seeing more activity and weirdness with small bodies in the Solar system gets me very intrigued indeed….. #astrosci #astrodon

$A plot showing the light curve of a star passing behind Chariklo's rings. A horizontal line, with two narrow dips. Zoomed in panels showing the eclipses in detail show positive excursions from diffraction around the edge of the rings.$

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Matthew Kenworthy @mattkenworthy.bsky.social · 7d

"Hold my beer, now watch this!"

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Matthew Kenworthy @mattkenworthy.bsky.social · 7d

Getting mentally prepared to read all the #slack channels on #wispit2 #JWST proposals

A middle aged man wearing a metal helmet and what looks like welders glass in ski giggles. It is a photo from the 1950's showing army equipment.

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Matthew Kenworthy @mattkenworthy.bsky.social · 9d

"Aaaah, go on Ted!"

Richard Alexander @richardalexander.bsky.social · 9d

Happy Father Dougal Day to those who celebrate. 🎉

(Admittedly that's basically just my third-year class, but we'll still have some fun with it.)

Richard Alexander @richardalexander.bsky.social · Oct 11

First time on this platform: it's "angular-diameter distances with Father Dougal" day. Looking at my notes, we're also doing luminosity distances with the muppets ("near", "far"...). 🔭

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Matthew Kenworthy @mattkenworthy.bsky.social · 11d

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Matthew Kenworthy @mattkenworthy.bsky.social · 11d

I'm torn about this. Paying once for infinite updates is (imho) unreasonable but we've been conditioned to have everything free on the internet... how to set a (reasonable) refresh payment is tricky.

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Matthew Kenworthy @mattkenworthy.bsky.social · 15d

Wolff, @andrasgaspar.bsky.social et al. with a beautiful analysis of “JWST/MIRI Imaging of the Warm Dust Component of the Epsilon Eridani Debris Disk”, the last of the “Big Four” circumstellar disks with #JWST - a smooth disk at all but the longer wavelengths and hosting an RV #exoplanet ☄️

Four images showing a smooth round disk face on to our line of sight. The longest wavelength image a thin ring can be seen superimposed in the image.

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Reposted by Matthew Kenworthy

Richard Alexander @richardalexander.bsky.social · 15d

New paper, led by @physicsuol.bsky.social PhD student @simintong.bsky.social. Simin looked at the rings we see in planet-forming discs, and combined new models with multi-wavelength ALMA observations to understand the underlying physical properties of the dust and gas. 🔭

arxiv.org/abs/2509.24818

Fig.3 from Tong et al. (2025), showing ALMA observations of the GM Aur protoplanetary disc at 1.3mm (Band 6) and 2.1mm (Band 4). Left panels are the sky-plane images from Huang et al. (2020); right panels show the same observations de-projected.

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Matthew Kenworthy @mattkenworthy.bsky.social · 15d

Cugno and Grant @sierragrant.bsky.social with “A Carbon-rich Disk Surrounding a Planetary-mass Companion” detected using #JWST - an impressive detection of several different carbon molecules that are very promising for #exomoon formation around the directly imaged #exoplanet CT Cha b ☄

An image of the planetary companion CT Cha b shown as a red dot next to its parent star, with a spectrum from 12 to 16 microns from JWST showing several rotational and vibrational bands in emission for several carbon molecules.

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Matthew Kenworthy @mattkenworthy.bsky.social · 15d

Congratulations to you and the team, this is a very cool result!

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Reposted by Matthew Kenworthy

Marco Langbroek @marcolangbroek.bsky.social · 22d

Herfstequinox

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Matthew Kenworthy @mattkenworthy.bsky.social · 29d

A very cool result! Julo+ with a paper on “Stellar halo subtraction … with integral field spectroscopy… on the PDS70, HTLup, and YSES1 systems” showing that the YSES 1b #exoplanet has a lot of emission lines - H alpha , H beta, He I, Ca H and K triplets, Na in absorption… oh my! #astrodon ☄

Two spectra of the planet YSES 1b. The left hand spectrum shows a huge peak of Hydrogen alpha emission, and the right hand spectrum shows Calcium II triplet in emission, next to a fuzzy Sodium absorption feature.

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Matthew Kenworthy @mattkenworthy.bsky.social · Sep 12

Thanks! The scary bit is that if we didn't have GRAVITY astrometry, we would have kept calling it a planet for a few more years.... its velocity really is consistent with a bound Keplerian orbit around the star...

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Matthew Kenworthy @mattkenworthy.bsky.social · Sep 12

Some sad #exoplanets news in a paper led by me: “YSES 2b is a background star”. A distant M dwarf star some 2 kiloparsecs behind the star just so happens to have a non-zero proper motion in EXACTLY the wrong direction: this required multiple GRAVITY observations to solve… #astrosci #astrodon

A coiled spiral representing proper motion plus parallax shows a fit to several astrometric points, showing that the object next to the star YSES 2 is probably a very distant M dwarf star far away in our Galaxy. Drat, damn and blast!

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