A huge congratulations to Dr Madeline Howell and Dr Thomas Maunder on their PhD graduations! 💫 Maddy has gone onto a postdoc job in the US and Tom is doing data science in industry. We couldn’t be prouder!!

Front page news! 📰 Monash PhD researcher Christian Adamcwicz leads new LVK results revealing the mysterious 40 M☉ gap in black hole populations. Exciting clues about how the universe’s heaviest stars live and die! #BlackHoles #LVK #Astrophysics www.theaustralian.com.au/science/grav...

Monash Astrophysics was well represented at GR24 & Amaldi16 in Glasgow! 🖤🌌 Our PhD students & postdocs presented cutting-edge research on gravitational waves, black holes, and fundamental physics at this major international conference. #GR24 #Amaldi16 #GravitationalWaves

Great to see so many Monash researchers sharing their work at the ASA in Adelaide this week. Great science and great conversations all around.

Monash researchers have simulated one of the lightest neutron stars ever—just 1.192 solar masses—bringing us closer to solving a key astrophysics puzzle. A leap forward for supernova science. 🌟🧠 #NeutronStars #Astrophysics #Supernova #MonashScience

Today our first year astros did some solar observing 🌞 Lucky for them the Sun is near the peak of its 11 year cycle so we were able to spot some beautiful Sunspots. 🔭😮 Swipe to see them for yourself! ➡ #sun #telescope #space #monash

Monash University takes all three prizes at the OzGrav bingo ice breaker activity at the 2024 retreat! @ozgrav.bsky.social

Coverage in The SMH! www.smh.com.au/national/a-s...

‘A ship on the ocean of reality’: New maps show universe is even weirder than we thought

A decade ago, astronomers observed gravitational waves for the first time. What has emerged since is a picture of the universe as a vast ocean – dark and powerful.

smh.com.au

Exciting news! Monash University’s, Rowina Nathan, has authored a groundbreaking study using the powerful MeerKAT telescope to create the most detailed map of the gravitational wave background to date: shorturl.at/KRXKj Check out an article on Rowina’s work: shorturl.at/oS3G1

Optimist: The cup is half full Pessimist: The cup is half empty Astronomer: There are Type I cups and Type II cups but clearly this is a rare transitional Type 1.5 cup.

Emily Hunt@emily.space · 2y ago

Optimist: The cup is half full Pessimist: The cup is half empty Astronomer: In this work, we propose HoFITCh (HOw Full Is That Cup), a Bayesian model for sampling the fullness of cups from imaging data and prior beliefs. We sample the posterior of our model, and find that the cup is 50±2% full.

What is the difference between gravitational-wave signals measured by LIGO and pulsar timing arrays? Well lots of things, but mainly the mass of the black holes. This infographic summarises the differences. 👀🕳️💫

How can pulsars be used to detect gravitational waves? Ripples in spacetime affect the path of light! I'll be posting some fun infographics in the lead up to my paper release on December 3! Follow along so you're ready for the release 🌟 @ozgrav.bsky.social

~Infer gamma-ray burst jet physics with this one weird trick!~ A population of neutron star-black hole mergers might let us discover new physics about GRB jets. 🔭 🧪 Check out my brand new paper with @plasky.bsky.social and Eric Thrane to find out more. arxiv.org/abs/2411.07035

Huge congratulations to Tom who submitted his PhD thesis “Multi-Dimensional Radiative Transfer Calculations for Asymmetric Stripped-Envelope Supernovae” today ✨🎉💥

Almost forgot! Oct 31 is the anniversary of Murriyang starting operations in 1961! 63 years of operation, and it’s still giving us solid science/discoveries. Iconic Aussie astronomy infrastructure. Wrote some words on this a few years back: www.spaceaustralia.com/index.php/fe... 📸 CSIRO 🔭📡

A spooky pulsar, jack-o-lantern binary carved pumpkin 🎃 Happy Halloween from Monash Astrophysics ✨ #science #space #spooky #halloween

I talk about the artificial objects you might see streaking through the skies #SpaceJunk 🧪 www.abc.net.au/news/science...

Reports of 'fireballs' streaking overhead are becoming more common. Here's why

Social media reports of fireballs lighting up the night sky seemingly pop up very regularly — just this week hundreds of people saw one over the US and Canada. Are they becoming more frequent or are w...

abc.net.au

Congratulations to Monash Astrophysicist Dr Fan Liu who was awarded the Monash Faculty of Science Publication Award for their paper At Least One in a Dozen Stars Shows Evidence of Planetary Ingestion, Nature (2024).

Today we had our beyond third year event, to encourage undergraduate students to consider further study in physics and astronomy. 🪐 🧲 Students mingled with potential supervisors and we are looking forward to welcoming them next year! ✨

Fingerprints of 1M stars reveal Milky Way's history! The Aussie-led GALAH project releases data from the AAT’s 50th birthday. Monash astrophysicist Madeline Howell contributed key spectroscopic data on M4, an ancient globular cluster that holds clues to our Galaxy's formation. shorturl.at/HwXng

Almost a million stars mapped by Anglo-Australian Telescope

Follow the latest news headlines from Australia's most trusted source. Read in-depth expert analysis and watch live coverage on ABC News.

shorturl.at

New research shows that unusual binary systems containing a magnetar and an unlucky companion star can explain the bumps in the light curves of certain supernovae. aasnova.org/2024/09/11/e... 🔭🧪 @monashastro.bsky.social

Evaporating Stars, Magnetars, and Bumpy Supernova Light Curves - AAS Nova

New research shows that binary systems containing a magnetar and an unlucky companion star can explain bumps in supernova light curves.

aasnova.org

GRB optical catalog with contributions from S. Belkin @monashastro.bsky.social "rivals Messier catalog"; sure, but Messier objects just sit there waiting for you to observe them at your leisure, not like GRB optical counterparts which disappear in <~ 1 day! ras.ac.uk/news-and-pre...

Huge gamma-ray burst collection ‘rivals 250-year-old Messier catalogue’

Hundreds of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) have been recorded as part of an enormous global effort so extensive it "rivals the catalogue of deep-sky objects created by Mess...

ras.ac.uk

🎉 Huge congratulations to our talented Honours student, Amber Tilly, for being the Regional Winner of the 2024 Global Undergraduate Awards for her report on modelling disk kinematics in protoplanetary disk AS209! 🏆✨

New research from Monash Astrophysicists shows how next-gen gravitational-wave detectors will revolutionise our understanding of neutron stars. They could measure neutron star radii with 10x better precision than LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA! 🌌🌠 #GravitationalWaves shorturl.at/hRMxZ

On Friday Maddy and Giulia submitted their PhD theses and went on the famous walk to the graduate research office to collect their pens. We’re proud of their hard work and excited for the bright futures ahead. Congratulations Maddy and Giulia!

From 8-12 of July the ACES: Advances in Cool Evolved Stars conference ran at Monash in hybrid format. The conference was organised by Taïssa Danilovich with assistance from Amanda Karakas, Zara Osborn, Maddy Howell, Alex Wallace, Yoshi Mori, Fan Liu and Carolyn Doherty.

New research from Monash University explains the mysterious bumps in superluminous supernovae. A "magnetar-star binary engine" could be the key, where a magnetar evaporates its companion star, causing the unique light curves. More details: shorturl.at/RwguZ

Monash Physics and Astrophysics students go beyond theory—they code in various languages, simulate galaxies, and analyse data to bring the universe into the classroom. Professor Daniel Price energised a second-year coding session, making physics come alive! 🚀

I spoke at Monash Uni about my team's project to map electromagnetism’s strength across our Galaxy. We're testing fundamental physics where dark matter is most concentrated, near our Milky Way's centre. Thanks @monashastro.bsky.social for hosting & recording! 🧪🔭 youtu.be/LMsvwRilpyk

Is there an underlying connection between dark matter and electromagnetism - Testing stellar twins?

YouTube video by MonashPhysicsAndAstronomy

youtu.be

A new paper by Lewis Picker explores the role of convection as a dominant form of energy transport in massive stars. It highlights how the convective mass of stars changes throughout their evolution and the impact this can have on binary star systems.https://shorturl.at/PSI6y