Over the last two weeks I had the pleasure of attending the Harley Wood School of Astronomy in Kioloa Australia, as well as the ASA’s Annual Scientific Meeting at ANU! ✨ Highlights: great people, talks from Nobel prize laureate Brian Schmidt and dinner at the National Museum! 🌌🦖

Bit of a controversial one this month but had a lot of fun writing it!

Astrobites@astrobites.bsky.social · 4w ago

From @jaydewst.bsky.social: Little Red Dots have been thought to be mysterious early universe objects but today’s bite tells us that they could exist much closer to home. ⚛️ 🔭 ☄️ 🧪 astrobites.org/2026/07/09/backyard-lrds/

Last week, I spent three nights awake from 10 pm to 3 am to attend a global online conference on Little Red Dots. Despite the late hours, it was an incredible experience and I even had the opportunity to give a short presentation on some of the work I'm currently undertaking as part of my PhD. 🌌 🔭 🔴

Its that time again: go check out my latest Astrobite 🤩

Astrobites@astrobites.bsky.social · 2mo ago

From @jaydewst.bsky.social: GW231123 defies our best models, hosting two black holes that shouldn’t exist. A new paper proposes a radical solution: these monsters may have been born in the early universe as primordial black holes. ⚛️ 🔭 ☄️ 🧪 astrobites.org/2026/06/13/gw231123-as-primordial-bhs/

Low key love doing a little bit of work at the airport. I’m sure everyone else loves overseeing my coding escapades. ✈️ 🔭

Ever wondered what an Australian Masters of Research Programme is like? Well i finally wrote a blog post on my website about it! 🔭🌌 jaydewillingham.github.io/Rd2Dr_Pages/MRes_Thesis.html

Was so fun being among the first people to present in Swinburne’s Virtual Universe! I had the great opportunity last week to show a group of work experience students what amazing things they can see and learn in Astrophysics. 🔭🌌

One of the best parts of working in astro is that you never really have to say goodbye to friends. Yes, you may move for this that or the other but likely a conference will come up where you both get to meet again. 5 stars to see you later. 👋 🌌

In honour of my very first paper going live on the journal website, I have made annotated version of the paper! 🌌 🔭 Checkout the official version of the paper here: doi.org/10.1017/pasa... And the annotated version here: drive.google.com/file/d/18tCUE9Rrloppf7DJyV0QPKngZ1pnLvmt/view?usp=sharing

Day in the life of an astrophysicist: Sat down to finally catch up on papers and the literature… only to discover I’ve somehow accumulated twice as many new ones to read in the process. 🌌 😅 🔭

Masters Degree ✔ Last week I trekked back to Sydney to collect my Masters of Research Degree and officially graduate! I am continuously grateful for the time spent at Macquarie, exploring the universe from my computer.

From Ryan White @astroryan.bsky.social and Jayde Willingham @jaydewst.bsky.social : Literally and figuratively, Australia is closing its eyes to the future of astronomy. Where does that leave its next generation of students? ⚛️ 🔭 ☄️ 🧪 astrobites.org/2026/05/01/a...

Australia is closing its Very Large eyes to the Universe

Literally and figuratively, Australia is closing its eyes to the future of astronomy. Where does that leave its next generation of students?

astrobites.org

Found out that the Euclid team needs help classifying some gravitational lensing through @mpe-garching.bsky.social. This was much better than looking at my emails while I had my coffee. (60 done today - i'll update my stats as I go on). 🔭 🌌

Every person ever when you first start reading papers says to just look at the plots... well what do you do when they need Fort Knox level knowledge to decipher? Read my newest astrobite, that's what!

Astrobites@astrobites.bsky.social · 4mo ago

From @jaydewst.bsky.social: Ever been confused by a plot online or in a paper? This post decodes the secret language of astrophysics plots so you can finally read the universe like a pro. ⚛️ 🔭 ☄️ 🧪 astrobites.org/2026/04/17/secrets-of-plots-in-astro/

This is doing something for the existential dread (good or bad I have yet to decide)

Astronomy Picture of the Day 🪐@apod.shinyakato.dev · 4mo ago

🔭 Artemis II: Flight Day 6 Image Credit: NASA, Artemis II ap260411

fun perk of working on simulations of the universe: increase in existential dread. 😅

This was certainly interesting to be involved with 😂

Astrobites@astrobites.bsky.social · 4mo ago

There is a tradition in Astronomy to post silly science papers to the arXiv on Aprils Fools day. We’ve collected them all for 2026 and provided some “peer review”. astrobites.org/2026/04/06/april-fools-2026/

Are we totally wrong about how much dust there is at high redshifts? 🌌 🔭 ☄️ ...You'll have to read my very first paper to find out! It just became available on arxiv, but I'll be posting a simplified annotated version and a blog post in the coming weeks too. arxiv.org/abs/2603.17429

EMU/GAMA: Refining Dust Extinction Corrections for Hα Luminosity Functions Using Radio-Based Calibration

We present a novel approach to correcting H$α$ luminosity functions for dust extinction by calibrating against radio-based star formation rates (SFRs), using data from the Evolutionary Map of the Univ...

arxiv.org

Growing up is realising that my 2016 galaxy leggings were in fact 2016 nebula leggings.

From @astroryan.bsky.social: There’s no sugar on this doughnut – might we need to ditch tori for large nuclear disks around active galactic nuclei? Today’s authors peer deep into NGC 4151 to find out! ⚛️ 🔭 ☄️ 🧪 astrobites.org/2026/03/17/ngc-4151-with-my-binocular-eyes/

I spy with my large binocular eyes: a dusty torus around a supermassive black hole?

There’s no sugar on this doughnut – might we need to ditch tori for large nuclear disks around active galactic nuclei? Today’s authors peer deep into NGC 4151 to find out!

astrobites.org

I bought these freeze dried strawberries to try but good to know that the US government hasn’t cut funding to space food. 🛰️ 🔭 😂

Idk if these big guys are real but they are part of my research 🔥

Trying to explain my Monday work to my family: I’m running a simulation that is in a virtual box with side length approx 10000000000000000000000000 kilometres to see how many black holes I find. Surely that makes sense 😅

I've recently started making little astro images to procrastinate reading 70+ page review papers. If you want to see more, like this post 🔭🌌 ☄️

I think my biggest compliment while teaching came when I was running a physics unit for environmental science students. I showed one student some Excel hotkeys and they said: “Wow, you’re a weapon, miss!” 💪 When I'm struggling with some code I think: No, You're a weapon Jayde.

Okay now I can reveal the exciting news that this year i became a part of the @astrobites.bsky.social writing rotation, that means you can see writing from me on the internet every few weeks. And the first one has just come out!

Astrobites@astrobites.bsky.social · 5mo ago

From @jaydewst.bsky.social: So we have a pretty good idea of how old the Universe is right? Well according to JWST data, maybe not? Rest assured, today’s bite gets to the bottom of the debate. ⚛️ 🔭 ☄️🧪 astrobites.org/2026/03/05/how_old_is_the_universe/

I believe my complaints about the lack of rain has backfired because I saw no glimpses of a super epic blood red lunar eclipse last night. However, I will always have the The Twilight Saga: Eclipse 🐺🦇

The three books i'm begging my Sci-interested folk to read 🔭👽🚀

Everyone told me when I moved to Melbourne to get ready for the rain. Joke’s on them — I love the rain. Joke’s on me — the forecast keeps promising rain and then… no rain.

the world is making me sad again and i need some space from it all.