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zoë hackshaw

@theastrozo.bsky.social

UTAustin Astronomy Ph.D. candidate & investigator of Galactic origins🔎💫🔭🧘‍♀️🤠🪩 ig: theastrozo 🫶🏼 zoehackshaw.github.io

36 Posts177 Follower76 Folgt
zoë hackshaw@theastrozo.bsky.social · 4w ago

we sayyyy we are all made of star stuff, but how do we really know that’s true? it all comes back to sunshine & rainbows🌈 (ok, starlight and spectra but you get my point) starting to share more things on my ig!! theastrozo

pink striped background with purple text “how can we tell what stars are made of? A picture of me opening the dome with text bubble that reads “first, we observe stars with telescopes. The light from these stars is run through a spectrograph, which splits light up into its components like…” A picture of a prism with text “a prism!” electromagnetic spectrum drawing with text “this creates a spectrum of the light of a star”pink striped background with purple text “how can we tell what stars are made of? Text: this is where the sun happens: different elements reflect and absorb unique wavelengths (or frequencies) of light A picture of me with text box “that means with the spectrum of a star, we can tell what that star is made of if we look at where different “absorption lines” are” NASA depiction of a sodium absorption spectrum with text “in this example of a spectrum below, we can see dips in light around 500bm. These are sodium lines! Meaning whenever we see this line we know there is Na in a starpink striped background with purple text “how can we tell what stars are made of? Plot of the Eu 4129 line from my 2026 paper showing an Eu detection of 0.57. There are cutouts that read “these black dots are our data points. The points at ~0.95 represent the background “rainbow” of our star” and “these back dots down here [~0.85] are our Eu absorption line” “This is how stellar astronomers typically visualize the spectra of stars,with flux (the amount of light) on the y axis, and wavelength (unit of distance) on the x axis” pink striped background with purple text “how can we tell what stars are made of? Answer: by looking at the light (or spectrum) that we get from stars!” Me with text bubble “but how are those absorption lines even created in stars? And why are we seeing absorption, but not emission? Stay tuned for answers!”
Dr. Caprice Phillips@capricephillips.bsky.social · 2mo ago

#Exo6 check out my poster on stellar abundances of FGK hosts of wide orbit brown dwarf companions. We use high resolution (R ≈ 130,000) spectra from PEPSI to characterize 32 stars to report C/O, [Fe/H], and Mg/Si and MORE to predict cloud species in the BD companions. Poster #34. Topic 4! 🤓

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Prof Stephen Serjeant@stephenserjeant.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Don’t trust LLMs with your literature searches. Horrible gender biases as found in this paper (from later in the thread below) arxiv.org/abs/2508.02740 🧪🔭

Who Gets Cited? Gender- and Majority-Bias in LLM-Driven Reference Selection

Large language models (LLMs) are rapidly being adopted as research assistants, particularly for literature review and reference recommendation, yet little is known about whether they introduce demogra...

arxiv.org

Mel Andrews@bayesianboy.bsky.social · 3mo ago

When utilized in literature review, LLMs consistently 1. fail to mention female authors in female-led literatures, 2. insist that men are more influential or more heavily cited when this is contradicted by objective citation counts, and 3. attribute women’s work to hallucinated male scholars.

Huei Sears, PhD 🌟@starlights.bsky.social · 4mo ago

very cool thing I saw on arXiv is an @astrobites.bsky.social linked on the arXiv page of the paper [click “1 blog link”]  !!! I’ve been pushing for this for the past few years, and I’m excited to see it live — big thanks + congrats to the team that made this happen !!!! 🧪🔭 arxiv.org/abs/2501.09580

An Intermediate-mass Black Hole Lurking in A Galactic Halo Caught Alive during Outburst

Stellar-mass and supermassive black holes abound in the Universe, whereas intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) of ~10^2-10^5 solar masses in between are largely missing observationally, with few case...

arxiv.org

Astrobites@astrobites.bsky.social · 5mo ago

From Tori Bonidie and Skylar Grayson: The president’s budget requests for NASA and the NSF were released last week. We summarizes the major cuts and their impacts while providing resources to help fight back against this attack on science. ⚛️ 🔭 ☄️ 🧪 astrobites.org/2026/04/16/budget-request-fy2027/

Back to work to save science funding! All you need to know about the FY2027 Budget Request

The president’s budget requests for NASA and the NSF were released last week. We summarizes the major cuts and their impacts while providing resources to help fight back against this attack on science...

astrobites.org

Alex Ji@alexji.bsky.social · 6mo ago

🔭 Paper day! Ani Chiti + MAGIC discovery the first highly carbon-enhanced star in an ultra-faint dwarf galaxy. We suggest most CEMP stars form in such places. News article: news.uchicago.edu/story/ancien... Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41... Arxiv version (updated soon): arxiv.org/abs/2508.04053

Ancient star opens window to early days of the universe

Still in its original galaxy, a rare holdout from the second generation of stars sheds new light on the origins of the elements—and how massive supernovae reshaped the cosmos

news.uchicago.edu

UNIDIA obspm@unidia-obspm.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Congratulations @theastrozo.bsky.social, on your paper! It's always great to see a Gaia Data-related paper. With the PISI team dedicated to it, this means a lot to us at UNIDIA. It is especially meaningful here, given that P. Panuzzo, the main author and discoverer of BH3, is part of the team.

zoë hackshaw@theastrozo.bsky.social · 9mo ago

A red giant star orbiting a black hole 33 times the mass of our Sun... why? ... HOW? In my most recent paper, we try to answer this question using chemistry. Follow along on a Detailed Chemical Analysis of the Red Giant Orbiting Gaia BH3: From Lithium to Thorium➡️ iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...

Figure 1. Similar to Figure 3 from Gaia Collaboration et al. (2024), the radial velocity evolution of Gaia BH3. A blue line shows the radial velocity evolution predicted by the Gaia combined binary model and the Gaia RVS epoch data are shown in black. We combine our RV points spanning 11 nights into three epochs (purple stars). Our RV observations agree quite well with the expected radial velocity evolution.
Cassandra Paul@cassandrapaul.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Proud of the work I published with @djphysicswebb.bsky.social . Gender Gap in intro physics is eliminated when employing retake exams because women do better on the FIRST try - suggesting exam STAKES (not differences in preparation/understanding) explain gender gap. 🧪 link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/...

High-stakes exams inflate a gender gap and contribute to systematic grading errors in one introductory physics series

A study in introductory physics suggests high-stakes exams are causing a gender gap, rather than measuring it.

link.aps.org

Elise Cutts@elisecutts.bsky.social · 12mo ago

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin ✨ figured out what stars are made of ✨ when she was just 25. 🔭🧪 Her PhD thesis basically established the Harvard astro department — at a time when Harvard didn't officially allow woman students. I wrote this little profile to mark the 100th anniversary of her thesis:

How a Harvard maverick forever changed our concept of the stars

At just 25, Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin applied quantum physics to a treasure trove of astronomical observations to show that stars are mostly hydrogen and helium.

sciencenews.org

Sarah Tuttle@niais.cryptoanarchy.network · 12mo ago

Wait a minute. Why aren't we celebrating the hundredth anniversary of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin's dissertation.

zoë hackshaw@theastrozo.bsky.social · last yr.

finished project hail mary by andy weir! i loved it! &as someone that doesn’t consume astrophysical fiction ✨ “Do you believe in God? […] I think He was pretty awesome to make relativity a thing […] The faster you go, the less time you experience. It’s like He’s inviting us to explore the universe”

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

Heard the latest news from the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration? We detected the collision of the most massive pair of black holes so far: #GW231123 weighing in at ~137 + ~103 times the mass of the Sun! So to celebrate, here’s a handy chart ✨ Just how chonky are these black holes? 🤔

An infographic titled "How BIG are the BLACK HOLES we find with GRAVITATIONAL WAVES?" by @astronerdika. The graphic displays a range of black hole masses detected via gravitational waves, categorized by their size in solar masses (mass of the Sun) and represented with playful cat-like black hole illustrations. The categories from left to right are: 1. "<5 times the mass of the Sun" - Labeled "smol" - Very small black hole illustration represented by a curled up black cat - Arrow pointing left: "THIS WAY TO NEUTRON STARS" - Example: "Big component of GW230529 (~3.6 times the mass of the Sun)" 2. "~10 times the mass of the Sun" - Labeled "basic" - Slightly larger black hole cat illustration - Caption: "LOTS OF BLACK HOLES" 3. "~35–45 times the mass of the Sun" - Labeled "hefty" - Bigger black hole cat illustration - Continues the idea of a populated range 4. ">60 times the mass of the Sun" - Labeled "chonky" - Large black hole cat illustration - Caption: "FORBIDDEN TERRITORY? (can these even be made from the collapse of star cores?!)" - Example: "Components of GW190521 (~85 + ~66 times the mass of the Sun)" 5. ">100 times the mass of the Sun" - Labeled "oh lawd" - Very large, curled-up black hole cat illustration - Arrow pointing right: "THIS WAY TO INTERMEDIATE MASS BLACK HOLES" - Example: "Components of GW231123 (~137 + ~103 times the mass of the Sun)" Below the categories is a stylized black curve representing the inferred population of black holes detected by LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA. It rises sharply in the "basic" range and falls off toward the "hefty" and "chonky" ranges, with a note reading: "this curve is an artistic representation of the black hole population inferred by LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA." This infographic draws from the “Chonky Cat” meme.
Sloan Digital Sky Surveys@sdssurveys.bsky.social · last yr.

Today is a big day for us: it's DATA RELEASE DAY!!! And to celebrate our nineteenth data release, we have not one, but two papers for you to read all about our data: we have a DR19 paper (arxiv.org/abs/2507.07093) and an SDSS-V Overview paper (arxiv.org/abs/2507.06989) #DR19

Sloan Digital Sky Survey-V: Pioneering Panoptic Spectroscopy

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey-V (SDSS-V) is pioneering panoptic spectroscopy: it is the first all-sky, multi-epoch, optical-to-infrared spectroscopic survey. SDSS-V is mapping the sky with multi-object...

arxiv.org