Huei Sears, PhD 🌟
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starlights.bsky.social
Huei Sears, PhD 🌟
@starlights.bsky.social
1.5K followers 760 following 1.1K posts
✨ she/her ✨ astrophysicist studying supernovae + GRBs ✨ reputation is my favorite album ✨
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starlights.bsky.social
I was so lucky to visit Kitt Peak last week. They gave us an in-depth tour of the Mayall Telescope (home of DESI!) and the WIYN Observatory (home of NEID!).
A set of telescope domes on a mountain. Hand painted telescope weights. The small mural shows an ocean with a narwhal and expands up to a starry night sky. Me standing in from of the mirror of the Mayall Telescope. Me, smiling in the hole of the (unused) dummy weight for the Mayall Telescope. It has a large, detailed mural painted on it showing the local life on the reservation and expands up into a night sky.
November 23, 2025 at 7:21 PM
starlights.bsky.social
150,000 jobs cut in October !!! what !!!!
Overall, employers slashed more than 150,000 jobs in October, the largest wave of layoffs in over 20 years, according to a report from outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
November 21, 2025 at 12:10 AM
starlights.bsky.social
literally this
A horse running in a field in front of a glowing mountain. The text over the image says “this is what it feels like to write 3 paragraphs without stopping”
November 19, 2025 at 5:20 AM
starlights.bsky.social
i love Italian juices
A close up of a diner menu section titled “Juices.” The three drinks in this section are “espresso, cappuccino,” and “flavored cappuccino.”
November 8, 2025 at 4:46 PM
starlights.bsky.social
: ) 365 giorni of italiana 🇮🇹
White text on an orange background that says “I’m on a 365 day learning streak!” There is a duolingo owl on the right that is aflame, like a phoenix.
November 6, 2025 at 7:22 PM
starlights.bsky.social
!
An ‘I Voted’ sticker
November 4, 2025 at 3:22 PM
starlights.bsky.social
i think it's really beautiful that through the most powerful telescope in space, stars look like snowflakes
Two bright stars in a JWST image. They appear as 6-pointed snowflake-like shapes.
October 31, 2025 at 7:24 PM
starlights.bsky.social
indeed, i do practice what i preach
A disco ball dazzling in the sun in a mostly empty apartment.
October 21, 2025 at 3:41 AM
starlights.bsky.social
yeah… i’m a paid influencer (◡ ‿ ◡ ✿)
An email from Venmo showing a $30.81 payment from the ‘Facebook Consumer Privacy User Profile Litigation Settlement Administrator.”
October 21, 2025 at 1:50 AM
starlights.bsky.social
why…. is it phrased this way
A duolingo screenshot showing a cartoon of a man in a shower. The Italian sentences say “Io mi lavo sempre in questo bagno. È il mio preferito.” which translates in English to “I always wash myself in this bathroom. It is my favorite.”
October 20, 2025 at 4:56 PM
starlights.bsky.social
how it’s been
October 17, 2025 at 12:47 AM
starlights.bsky.social
Rubin Observatory tiramisu for a trip to UDelaware today to see @fedhere.bsky.social + Somayeh Khakpash (+ luckily @yymao.bsky.social !)
A tiramisu on a plate which is on a messy + cluttered counter. The Rubin Observatory logo is stenciled out of the chocolate powder (or at least, was attempted to be).
October 3, 2025 at 3:09 AM
starlights.bsky.social
i was v honored to give a seminar at the @amnh.org yesterday on my GRB + SN Ia research. They let me tour the museum after too and ah ah ah !!!!!! what a fantastic place !!!!!!!!!!!!
A giant blue whale sculpture at the museum. A sperm whale and giant squid exhibit. A gigantic purple geode. A massive wall sticker of a feathered TRex.
September 19, 2025 at 5:28 PM
starlights.bsky.social
was v excited to see work by @danmil.bsky.social (+ many others!) featured at the @amnh.org today !!
Three canvas-like prints of star clusters and neabulae on a dark purple wall. A canvas print of Cas A on a dark purple wall. A placard for the Cas A canvas. Of importantance to this post, it shows credit to Danny Milisavljevic (of course, among others).
September 18, 2025 at 9:38 PM
starlights.bsky.social
very very excited to see this work from Berkeley postdoc, Nayana AJ, on the X-ray and radio properties of the most luminous fast, blue optical transient (L/FBOT), AT 2024wpp! Their analysis suggests that 2024wpp is likely caused by super-Eddington accretion onto a neutron star or black hole!

🧪🔭☄️🦖👩‍🔬
A schematic cartoon of the likely geometry of AT 2024wpp. In this, an X-ray source is surrounded by a disk of material with a wind above the plane of the disk toward the observer. The different emission components are labeled. See the caption of Figure 14 in the paper for more detail.
September 3, 2025 at 1:31 PM
starlights.bsky.social
very very excited to see this new work from Berkeley graduate student, Natalie LeBaron, on the UV/O/IR properties of the most luminous fast, blue optical transient (L/FBOT), AT 2024wpp (see figure below)! These transients are luminous, fast, and blue, and their origins remain uncertain!

🧪🔭☄️🦖👩‍🔬
Figure 4 in paper. In panel A, 24wpp has the highest (pseudo) bolometric luminosity when compared to other LFBOTs. In panel B, the UV magnitude light curve of 24wpp shows a rise and very late-time observations. Panel C shows that 24wpp is ~4.5x more UV luminous than 2018cow at peak.
September 3, 2025 at 1:19 PM
starlights.bsky.social
saw these identical gnome twins at the thrift store and Their name (for they have only one) is “Columbine”
Two small identical gnome/troll figurines. They are in pink dresses, have blonde hair in pigtails, are holding brown baskets with leaves in them, and have very tall, green cone-shaped hats.
August 30, 2025 at 8:57 PM
starlights.bsky.social
new work led by Daniel Brethauer, a graduate student at UC Berkeley, shows that at very early times, (quasi)non-local thermodynamic effects (Q/NLTE) can be important! Fig. 11 (below) shows some of their modeling compared to observations of AT2017gfo—our best observed kilonova!

🧪🔭☄️🦖
g, r, i, and J band light curves of AT 2017gfo (compiled by Villar et al. 2017) to the QNLTE and LTE models. See Fig 11 caption for more information.
August 29, 2025 at 12:50 PM
starlights.bsky.social
!!! i know her !! yay Vic !!!!
A photo of a sparkling spiral galaxy with the FRB marked. The caption shows a credit to Yuxin “Vic” Dong.
August 27, 2025 at 1:23 AM
starlights.bsky.social
New from Peter Blanchard! A possible NIR-counterpart (observed with JWST, “NIR-1”) to an extremely close and bright fast radio burst (FRB). The origins of FRBs are uncertain, and until now*, haven’t been observed in any non-radio wavelength! very very cool !! 🧪🔭☄️

www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/origin-...
A James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) infrared image of the galaxy NGC 4141 containing the fast radio burst FRB 20250316A. This FRB was discovered March 16, 2025 using the CHIME Outrigger array. The inset shows a tiny area of the galaxy containing the FRB’s precise location, revealing the faint infrared source, NIR-1. This may be the binary companion of a neutron star that produced the FRB or fading light from an energetic outburst that produced the FRB. If NIR-1 is unrelated to the FRB, the young massive stars surrounding the FRB location also point to a neutron star origin.
August 22, 2025 at 5:00 AM
starlights.bsky.social
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.
August 19, 2025 at 7:07 AM
starlights.bsky.social
The Whirlpool Galaxy, M51, as seen in the 1800s and today.

Fig. 13 from this "Cornelis Easton:The Milky Way as a spiral galaxy" by Pieter C. van der Kruit on the arXiv at arxiv.org/pdf/2508.03409.

🔭☄️🧪
Multiple drawings and one Hubble Space Telescope image of The Whirlpool Galaxy, M51. The drawings were made in the 1800s.
August 8, 2025 at 1:53 AM
starlights.bsky.social
the TRex emoji is for this btw
A feathered TRex oulined in yellow and filled in with an optical space image. The dinosaur overlays a stylized yellow, blue, and purple "TREX."
August 7, 2025 at 2:47 AM
starlights.bsky.social
new from Itai ! v exciting new radio results on TDE 2024tvd.

"The off-nuclear TDE 2024tvd exhibits double-peaked radio light curves and the fastest evolving radio emission observed from a TDE to date."

See Figures 1 + 2 below! : )

🦖🔭☄️🧪
A radio detection of TDE 2024tvd. The background is blue, while 24tvd is a bright rainbow-colored ellipse. The host galaxy center is also visible in pale blue and is offset from the TDE. Radio light curves of several TDEs. AT 2024tvd is shown as red and orange stars and shows a prominent double peak at ~100 and ~200 days.
August 7, 2025 at 2:41 AM
starlights.bsky.social
so excited to be presenting at @astronomyontap.bsky.social - Lansing on 8/13 with Laura Chomiuk !!!! hope to see you there : )
An Astronomy on Tap - Lansing poster for 8/13 at the Michigan Wildlife Conservancy. The speakers are Laura Chomiuk and Huei Sears.
August 4, 2025 at 9:21 PM