Tessera

Shanika Galaudage

@astronerdika.bsky.social

🕵️ Investigator of ripples in space-time | Astrophysicist ✨ Postdoc fellow | CIERA + Adler Planetarium 🇺🇸 linktr.ee/astronerdika | 🇦🇺🇱🇰(she/her)

340 Posts1804 Follower 221 Folgt

Aaron Sojourner @aaronsojourner.org · 2w ago

Admirable clarity @science.org

The Trump administration hates academic science funding, full stop. They hate where that money goes, and they hate who it goes to. They want to keep all that money for themselves, to hand out to favored cronies who can help them get elected and to steer yet more money and more power back into their hands.

That’s it. That’s the story

David Roberts@volts.wtf · 2w ago

Whew, the editors of @science.org are getting real.

ARC Tracker @arc-tracker.bsky.social · 2w ago

The ARC's new grant scheme table, in case you don't want to read through the details (which are here: www.arc.gov.au/system/files...)

Screenshot of a table (black text on variously shaded backgrounds) showing some main aspects of the new grant schemes announced by the ARC.

ARC Tracker@arc-tracker.bsky.social · 2w ago

The ARC has released their new set of grant schemes ▶️ www.arc.gov.au/news-and-pub... Before implementing them, they’re now going to “consult with the sector”. Hopefully genuinely, not just with a few disengaged DVCRs. In the meantime, there’ll be another round of Discovery Projects (DP28).

ARC Tracker @arc-tracker.bsky.social · 2w ago

arc.gov.au

Stefan @stefan.bsky.social · 2w ago

Good work by the ABS in acknowledging the day…

Dr Space Junk (Alice Gorman)@drspacejunk.bsky.social · 2w ago

For International Moon Day: the Declaration of the Rights of the Moon. #IMD2026

Declaration of the Rights of the Moon – Australian Earth Laws Alliance

earthlaws.org.au

Shanika Galaudage @astronerdika.bsky.social · 2w ago

Behold, some moon nails! 💅 It’s International Moon Day 🌖 (well, actually, these are the nails I had on during the week’s of the Artemis II mission, so not presently on my nails but I still think they’re cool 😎)

Image of Shanika‘s nails painted to look like the lunar surface, in a sort of realistic way, but not quite. Really just some nail art that has different shades of grey dabbed on the nail.

Shanika Galaudage @astronerdika.bsky.social · 3w ago

I just saw someone refer to ‘fairy bread’ as ‘dot bread’. I am not ok.

Count Binface @countbinface.bsky.social · 4w ago

What’s that, Dale? You want to give me an unconditional personal gift of £5million to do whatever I want with? Sure! I just need to fill out a form. If I didn’t declare it that would be silly.

CosmicRami 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️@rami.spaceaustralia.com · 4w ago

Awesome talk from @geodesicvoyager.bsky.social giving an update of @ligo.org results here at the @astrosocaus.bsky.social 2026 conference. Also featuring awesome SciArt graphics from @astronerdika.bsky.social! Last talk of the week for me — heading to airport for flight home. Been a great week!

Sharan standing in front of a lecture feature presenting results on a big screen

Graphic of binary black hole merger scenarios on the big screen in front of the room during a lecture

The Spaceshipper 🚀@thespaceshipper.com · 4w ago

RIP Wally Funk (1939-2026), one of the Mercury 13 (which inspired For All Mankind) Also: "In July 2021. Funk became the oldest woman to travel to space at the age of 82. During the 11-minute flight, Funk experienced a few moments of weightlessness and marveled at the darkness of space."

CNN@cnn.com · 4w ago

Wally Funk, a pioneering aviator who volunteered to be an astronaut for NASA’s “Women in Space Program” in 1961, has died at the age of 87. https://cnn.it/4foiJlL

Shanika Galaudage @astronerdika.bsky.social · 4w ago

Never in my life have I wanted a bin to win an election… or even thought about this prospect… but here we are 🤣

Shanika Galaudage @astronerdika.bsky.social · last mo.

Isobel, you absolute legend 🔥🔥🔥 @ligo.org @ligomagazine.bsky.social #WomenInSTEM #GravitationalWaves

Royal Astronomical Society@royalastrosoc.bsky.social · last mo.

We're delighted to announce that Dr Isobel Romero-Shaw has won the 2026 Caroline Herschel Prize Lectureship. Her lecture, at the University of Bath in November, is titled 'Violent Beginnings Have Violent Ends: Deciphering the Origins of Binary Compact Object Collisions with Gravitational Waves'. ⤵️

SpaceAustralia.com @spaceaustralia.com · 3mo ago

New research from @monashastro.bsky.social @ozgrav.bsky.social has shown that some stars live young, burn bright, then just blow themselves up! ⭐💥 Article and graphics by @astronerdika.bsky.social www.spaceaustralia.com/news/black-h... 📸 S. Galaudage #SpaceAustralia

Infographic titled “Pair-Instability Supernova,” with the subtitle “how very massive stars can destroy themselves completely.” Three illustrated panels show the process from left to right. In the first panel, “Pair Production,” high-energy photons inside a massive star create electron–positron pairs, shown in a zoomed-in bubble, draining pressure support from the core. In the second panel, “Core Contraction,” the star’s core contracts and heats up as radiation pressure can no longer balance gravity. In the third panel the star has blown itself up with the world "Total Disruption" below it.

Shanika Galaudage @astronerdika.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Forbidden black holes?! 👀 Check out this article about a really fun study led by PhD student Hui Tong 🤩 Looking at colliding black holes with gravitational waves, we are able to learn about the massive stars that formed them! #Astrophysics #BlackHoles #GravitationalWaves

SpaceAustralia.com@spaceaustralia.com · 3mo ago

Shanika Galaudage @astronerdika.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Pure evil.

The Sydney Morning Herald (unofficial)@smhaustralia.nzcow.com · 3mo ago

📢 Council officers in the City of Port Phillip are preparing to confiscate the personal belongings of people experiencing homelessness under new local laws.

LIGO Scientific Collaboration @ligo.org · 3mo ago

Autotuning gravitational-wave detectors using the chirps of the cosmos! ⚫⚫🎶🎛️ Meet #GW240925 and #GW250207, two new, LOUD #GravitationalWave detections that have enabled us to use astrophysical calibration to tune our laser interferometers 🖼️ : @astronerdika.bsky.social, @sbisco.bsky.social 🔭🧪⚛️☄️

The Autotune problem in gravitational waves: understanding astrophysical calibration with music

1. We hear an autotuned recording (detector data) and we want the original voice recording (gravitational wave).
BUT
2. We don’t know the autotune settings (calibration uncertainty).
3. So we use a bunch of trial voice recordings (waveform templates) and apply various autotune settings to them to obtain a set of autotuned recordings.

The best match reveals BOTH the autotune settings AND the original voice recording!

GW240925 and GW250207 Events

GW240925 with component masses of about 9 and 7 solar masses located roughly 1.1 billion light-years away.

GW250207 masses of about 35 and 30 solar masses located about 600 million light-years away.

LIGO Livingston and Virgo were online and observing fine, but LIGO Hanford had calibration issues. KAGRA was not observing at the time.

The Distorted Recording

Infographic describing gravitational-wave detector calibration. Three panels show:

A compact binary system of two orbiting black holes producing gravitational waves.
A stylized interferometer being stretched and squeezed by passing waves, illustrating calibration and detector response.
A green waveform representing the recorded gravitational-wave signal.

Detectors measure tiny changes in distance, and calibration disentangles the true gravitational-wave signal from distortions introduced by the detector response.

More Detectors = Better Localisation

Infographic explaining how adding more gravitational-wave detectors improves sky localisation. On the left, two detectors (Livingston + Virgo) localise a source to a large ring-shaped region on the sky. On the right, adding Hanford creates overlapping rings from different detector pairs (H+L, H+V, L+V), shrinking the possible source location to a much smaller region.

Astrophysical calibration was needed to use Hanford data

Christopher Berry @cplberry.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I love these infographics by @astronerdika.bsky.social! So colourful And a wonderful explanation of the new science from @ligo.org @egovirgo.bsky.social & KAGRA 🐚

LIGO Scientific Collaboration@ligo.org · 3mo ago

LIGO Scientific Collaboration @ligo.org · 3mo ago

Our latest discoveries—two of the loudest gravitational-wave signals ever: #GW240925 and #GW250207 Using these signals, and our understanding of binary black holes, we can verify that our detectors are correctly calibrated ligo.org/science-summ... 🧪⚛️☄️🔭

The gravitational-wave events GW240924 (top row) and GW250207 (bottom row) as observed by the LIGO Hanford (left column), LIGO Livingston (middle column), and Virgo (right column) observatories. The plots, called spectrograms, show the power spectrum (energy at different frequencies) as a function of time. The signals can be seen as the increase in energy over time (in seconds) and at specific frequencies (in hertz), represented by green and yellow bands. Their shape follows the characteristic chirp pattern produced by gravitational-wave signals. The thickness and brightness of GW250207 shows just how loud it was!

Shanika Galaudage @astronerdika.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Happy #BlackHoleWeek! 🖤 My black hole chonk chart is back, now with real LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA data ✨ More gravitational-wave detections are on the way, so this chart may need another update very soon. 😎 #BlackHoles #GravitationalWaves #SciComm @ligo.org @egovirgo.bsky.social

An infographic titled “How BIG are the BLACK HOLES we find with GRAVITATIONAL WAVES?” by @astronerdika. The graphic is a playful “black hole chonk chart” showing black hole masses in units of solar masses, written as M☉, where M☉ means the mass of the Sun. The top half categorises black holes by mass, with each category shown as a curled-up black cat that grows larger from left to right.

The categories from left to right are:

1. “<5 M☉”

* Labeled “smol”
* Tiny curled-up black cat
* Arrow pointing left: “THIS WAY TO NEUTRON STARS”
* Example on the graph: “Big component of GW230529 ~3.6 M☉”

2. “~10 M☉”

* Labeled “basic”
* Small curled-up black cat
* Annotation: “LOTS OF BLACK HOLES” with an arrow pointing to this range
* The population curve rises steeply and peaks around here

3. “~35–45 M☉”

* Labeled “hefty”
* Larger curled-up black cat
* Sits near a smaller bump in the population curve

4. “>60 M☉”

* Labeled “chonky”
* Large curled-up black cat
* Nearby annotation: “FORBIDDEN TERRITORY? can these even be made from the collapse of star cores?!”
* Example: “Components of GW190521 ~85 M☉ + ~66 M☉”

5. “>100 M☉”

* Labeled “oh lawd”
* Very large curled-up black cat overlapping the panels
* Arrow pointing right: “THIS WAY TO INTERMEDIATE MASS BLACK HOLES”
* Example: “Components of GW231123 ~137 M☉ + ~103 M☉”

Below the categories is a graph of the inferred black hole population. The horizontal axis is labeled from 3 M☉ to 120 M☉. The vertical axis is labeled “log scale.” The population rises sharply around 5–10 M☉, peaks in the “basic” range, then declines toward higher masses, with a smaller bump around the “hefty” range. Dashed pale pink lines show an uncertainty band.

Text along the curve reads: “Real data from the LVK collaboration! Check out the paper: arXiv:2508.18083.” The style is hand-drawn, humorous, and inspired by the “Chonky Cat” meme.

ESA Space Science @science.esa.int · 3mo ago

Welcome to #BlackHoleWeek! 🕳️ Time to catch up on the latest discoveries made by our space missions about these mind-blowing cosmic objects 👇 1/4 🔭 🧪

Shanika Galaudage @astronerdika.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Did folks know it’s #BlackHoleWeek?! Resharing this to celebrate! Follow the journey from theory to discovery 😎 #Astrophysics #BlackHoles

Shanika Galaudage@astronerdika.bsky.social · last yr.

Yes I know… #BlackHoleWeek is over 😞 but that won't stop me from yapping about black holes! 😂 Here’s a set of infographics highlighting some of the key findings by scientists that helped us get to our understanding of black holes today! ✨ #Astrophysics #BlackHoles

The title card for a set of Infographics that says “the history of black holes: from theory to discovery” there is a illustration of distorted space time for a singularity.

Christina Jewett @by-cjewett.bsky.social · 3mo ago

SCOOP: The F.D.A. blocked the release of studies finding that Covid and shingles vaccines were safe. In the case of Covid, FDA staff had to withdraw studies heading toward publication: www.nytimes.com/2026/05/05/u...

F.D.A. Blocked Publication of Research Finding Covid and Shingles Vaccines Were Safe

nytimes.com

Megan Watzke @mwatzke.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Martin Weisskopf, who helped shape modern X-ray astronomy and was the Chandra Project Scientist for many years, died last week at the age of 84. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that people write letters of support to sustain the mission. www.berryhillfh.com/obituaries/m...

Martin Charles Weisskopf Obituary May 2, 2026 - Berryhill Funeral Home & Crematory

View Martin Charles Weisskopf's obituary, send flowers, find service dates, and sign the guestbook.

berryhillfh.com

Shanika Galaudage @astronerdika.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Just a snippet of the seminar I gave at Cardiff Uni! ✨ Great to see some of my colleagues and friends face-to-face again. Massive stars are very cool, and I use black holes to study them 😎 #Astrophysics #Postdoclife

Science Magazine @science.org · 3mo ago

U.S. President Donald Trump has fired all 24 members of the National Science Board, the body that oversees the National Science Foundation. https://scim.ag/4cxQWhl

Trump fires NSF's oversight board

Dismissal of the National Science Board is widely seen as latest move to erase NSF’s independence

scim.ag

Shanika Galaudage @astronerdika.bsky.social · 4mo ago

I’m at @issibern.ch this week! 😎 An intl. team has gathered to discuss all things SPIN about stellar mass black holes. I haven’t met most of the team before, so excited to form new collaborations! #Astrophysics #Research

Photo taken from a seat in a meeting room, with a laptop in the foreground showing an ISSI webpage titled “What are the spins of stellar-mass black holes?” Presentation slides are projected at the front, and a few attendees are seated in the room.

Shanika Galaudage @astronerdika.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Was GLUED to the livestream of the lunar flyby while on a 10hr flight ✈️ These brave astronauts will be home soon. Integrity, you’ve got this! 💪 #Artemis #Astronaut #Moon #NASA

Photo taken from a plane window during sunset, showing the aircraft wing and a iPad screen playing a livestream of Artemis 2 astronauts inside their spacecraft. Text on the image says, “Me: 11 km above the Earth. Them: 406,740 km above the Earth,” capturing the feeling of watching the Artemis lunar flyby while flying on a plane.

Shanika Galaudage @astronerdika.bsky.social · 6mo ago

It’s been 10 years since the discovery of GWs was announced to the world! ✨ It’s also Intl Day of Women & Girls in Sci 💜 Here’s something to celebrate both—a symposium ft. women in GW science! 👩‍💻 Register here: indico.global/e/glorious-w... #InternationalDayOfWomenAndGirlsInScience #GW10Years

Katharine Hayhoe @katharinehayhoe.com · 6mo ago

Bluesky is the new science Twitter, new study by @whysharksmatter.bsky.social and Julia Wester concludes! "Results show that for every reported professional benefit that scientists once gained from Twitter, scientists can now gain that benefit more effectively on Bluesky than on Twitter."

Scientists no Longer Find Twitter Professionally Useful, and have Switched to Bluesky

Synopsis. Social media has become widely used by the scientific community for a variety of professional uses, including networking and public outreach. For

academic.oup.com

The Gravitational Wave Solidarity Committee @gwsolidarity.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Sign and share our open letter urging the LVK to take action against the destruction of Gaza! Anonymous option available. Read: bit.ly/GWSol-OpenLetter Sign : forms.gle/qfhrF8KEkYdp...