#Astrophysics is an active hashtag on Bluesky. In the last 30 days, 110 people shared 229 posts with it — around 8 a day. Activity is up 17% versus the previous week, peaking on Aug 1 with 13 posts.

Posts with #Astrophysics

Admirable Women

@admirablewomen.bsky.social

17 days ago

Astrophysicist Dr. Joan Feynman made foundational breakthroughs in: + Understanding the behavior of solar wind + Predicting sunspot cycles + Mapping the Earth's magnetosphere She died #OTD in 2020. #WomenInSTEM #Astrophysics #SpacePhysics

Color photograph of pioneering astrophysicist Dr. Joan Feynman (1927–2020), renowned for uncovering the physical mechanism behind the auroras. Seated comfortably in a large, dark brown leather armchair, she is positioned slightly left of center. She looks off-camera to the left with an animated, engaged expression and a warm smile. Her short, wavy gray-white hair frames her expressive face. Her hands are raised to chest level, fingertips pressed together in an elegant steeple gesture as if emphasizing a point during an interview. She wears a casual, dark short-sleeved button-up shirt adorned with a subtle pattern, paired with a watch on her left wrist. The warm, softly lit background suggests a scholarly library or study, featuring a wooden bookshelf lined with books on the left and a large, classic vintage globe resting on a wooden stand to the right. The composition projects a warm, intellectual, and inviting mood, reflecting her brilliant legacy in space physics.

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Admirable Women

@admirablewomen.bsky.social

8 months ago

#OTD in 1967, Jocelyn Bell discovered pulsars & changed our view of the universe. 𝘉𝘶𝘵... The #Nobel Prize in #Physics for their discovery went to to her thesis supervisor Antony Hewish & to astronomer Martin Ryle. theconversation.com/fifty…. #WomenInSTEM #astrophysics #MatildaEffect

Split image: Main photo — black-and-white portrait of young Jocelyn Bell Burnell in the 1960s, smiling broadly in front of the large lattice structure at Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory (SW of Cambridge in the UK). Inset (left) — color portrait of Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell today, short graying hair, glasses, and a warm smile, wearing a blue jacket.

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Admirable Women

@admirablewomen.bsky.social

8 months ago

Dr. Nancy Roman 𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱 NASA's space #astronomy program. NASA's first Chief of Astronomy, she established the program from scratch, bringing together scientists/engineers to realize the potential of orbiting telescopes & influencing decades of #astrophysics. She died #OTD in 2018. #WomenInSTEM

A black-and-white photograph of Dr. Nancy Grace Roman smiling while holding a model of the Orbiting Solar Observatory (OSO) in 1962. Dr. Roman, who was NASA's first Chief of Astronomy and is known as the "mother of the Hubble" Space Telescope, is pictured from the chest up and wears thick-rimmed glasses, a light-colored collared shirt, and stud earrings. She is looking towards the camera while holding the satellite model in her left hand. The model features a cylindrical base and a semi-circular top adorned with panels.

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Admirable Women

@admirablewomen.bsky.social

24 days ago

Astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell was born #OTD in 1943. She discovered the first radio pulsars in 1967. The #Nobel Prize in #Physics for their discovery went to to her thesis supervisor Antony Hewish & to astronomer Martin Ryle. #WomenInSTEM #astrophysics #MatildaEffect

Color portrait of astrophysicist Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, who discovered pulsars in 1967. She stands at a three-quarter angle facing left, looking toward the camera with a calm, assured, and slight smile. Her short, textured, wavy gray-brown hair frames a pleasant expression behind delicate gold-framed wire spectacles. She wears a structured, pale gray-blue blazer over a white and dark gray leaf-patterned blouse. The background consists of a soft-focus, desaturated green and white bokeh wash resembling out-of-focus foliage or filtered light, creating a professional and scholarly atmosphere. The cool-toned lighting highlights her face and the crisp lines of her business suit, casting gentle shadows that give the portrait a sense of depth and dignity.

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Tom Gauld

@tomgauld.bsky.social

over 2 years ago

My latest cartoon for New Scientist. #science #astrophysics

Caption: Astrid may not have been the most senior, nor the most eminent astrophysicist working at the institute, but she was undoubtedly the only one orbited by a small, rocky moon.
Image: Astrid walks down a corridor carrying a cup of coffee and her notes. A grey sphere about the size of a basketball circles around her at waist height.

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Admirable Women

@admirablewomen.bsky.social

6 days ago

Paris Pişmiş: 1st professional astronomer in Mexico. + Academic founder of #astrophysics & instrumental to astronomy becoming a professional academic discipline (#Mexico) + Established the 1st formal #astronomy & astrophysics curricula at UNAM Died #OTD in 1999. #WomenInSTEM #WomenAstronomersDay!🔭

Black-and-white photograph of Paris Pişmiş (also known as Paris Pismis or Paris Pişmiş de Recillas), a pioneering Turkish-Mexican astronomer of Armenian descent (1911–1999). She is seated at a desk in a laboratory or office setting with a brick wall background, smiling warmly at the camera while holding a pair glasses in her right hand. A large microscope stands prominently in the foreground on the desk, surrounded by scattered papers, notebooks, books on shelves, and scientific equipment. She wears a dark striped blouse with a bold pattern, a prominent ring on her finger, and has short, neatly styled light hair. Paris Pişmiş was a trailblazing figure in astronomy: the first woman to earn a Ph.D. from Istanbul University's Science Faculty (1937), the first professional astronomer in Mexico, and a key force in establishing modern astronomical education and research at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), where she taught and researched for over 50 years. She discovered numerous star clusters (including compiling the Pismis catalogue of 22 open clusters and 2 globular clusters), contributed to studies of galactic structure and stellar dynamics, published over 120 scientific papers, and mentored generations of astronomers. Recognized for her immense influence, she received awards like UNAM's Science Teaching Prize.

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Admirable Women

@admirablewomen.bsky.social

16 days ago

🔭 Astronomer Dr. Vera Rubin's groundbreaking work provided the first direct, convincing observational evidence for the existence of dark matter. By measuring how galaxies spin, she fundamentally transformed modern #astrophysics. She was born #OTD in 1928. #astronomy #WomenInSTEM (1/2)🧵

A color portrait of pioneering American astronomer Dr. Vera Rubin (1928–2016), whose work proving galaxy rotation anomalies provided the first robust observational evidence for dark matter. Dr. Rubin, a woman with short, styled silver hair and large, clear-framed wire prescription glasses, looks directly at the camera with a gentle, intelligent smile. She rests her chin thoughtfully on her right hand, her elbow resting out of frame, wearing a dark brown blazer or top adorned with a subtle, shimmering beaded metallic necklace. She is surrounded by a dense, warm-toned array of vintage astronomical and terrestrial globes of varying sizes, colors, and textures, creating a shallow-depth background that emphasizes her lifelong dedication to cosmology. The composition places her as the central focus capturing her enduring historical legacy as a champion for women in STEM.

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Luna Rose B.

@whirligig-girl.bsky.social

6 days ago

Commission for @zinzrinz.bsky.social of a Quasistar, a hypothetical early-universe star-like object powered by a central black hole instead of a fusion core. #Quasistar #Astronomy #Astrophysics #Cosmology #Space #SpaceArt #SciArt #BlackHole #Art #Commission

Illustration of a quasistar. It appears as a large glowing off-white sphere with a quadrant cut out of it to show the cross section. A bright six-pointed star shines from the center, this being the Core. Then there is a layer going out to 1000 au of blue-hot swirling turbulent convection cells. Then a layer of taller, broader blue-white convection cells out to 2400 au. Then there is a radiative zone with minimal convection from there to the photosphere or surface at 2500 au. The sphere is surrounded by a glowing accretion disk, blue-white where it strikes the surface of the star and off-white to brown to black as you go further out, from 2500 au to 20600 au.

There is an inset panel, blue, with a black hole surrounded by an accretion disk. It is 3000x the magnification of the rest of the image, with 1 astronomical unit labelled. The label is Black Hole Core (200,000 solar masses).

A couple of dim blue stars are labelled as "Supermassive Star (10,000 solar masses)"

There is a huge 100-au-wide blue star falling into the adiabatic convection zone of the quasistar, with a wake of white-hot turbulence rising up to the surface behind it. It is labelled "Infalling Hypergiant Star (10,000 solar masses)"

At the bottom is a scale, reading 2000 astronomical units, as well as the largest star known shown to scale at 1.5 pixels in diameter, alongside the orbits of Pluto and Sedna. In the upper right corner is the artist's name, Luna Rose Brannon, and the license, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0.

The caption reads: Quasistar. A 1 million solar mass 'star' powered by the radiation pressure of the accretion of a massive black hole. Thought to be the progenitors of the Supermassive Black Holes at the centers of galaxies and the identity of the 'Little Red Dot's found by JWST. Luminosity is 100 Billion times the Sun's.

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Astrophysica

@thephysicsjournal.substack.com

over 1 year ago

Star cluster Pismis 24 hidden in nebula NGC 6357 at bottom. Part of the nebula is ionised by the youngest and bluest stars in Pismis 24. The intense ultraviolet radiation from the these stars heats the gas surrounding the cluster and creates a bubble in the nebula. #space #cosmos #astrophysics

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Dan Cataneo

@dcataneo.bsky.social

over 1 year ago

The Heaviest pair of Supermassive Black Holes, a combined mass of 28 Billion suns, has been discovered at the center of collapsed Elliptical Galaxy B2 0402+379 located 750Million Light Years away. This Binary SBH may be remnant of a Galactic Merger. www.mesonstars.com/space/…. #AstroPhysics

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Olena Shmahalo

@natureintheory.bsky.social

over 1 year ago

Art about hard science (see ALT). I love using magical aesthetics to emphasize the wonder of natural phenomena. #SciArt #physics #astrophysics 🧪 ⚛️ 🔭 🧮

Crop of a painting: Inspired by antique nautical maps depicting monsters in unknown waters, a worn celestial map shows dark matter styled as a draconic serpent wrapping around galaxies. (Dark matter is like a gravitational glue that binds galaxy clusters together, while dark energy pushes them apart.) Imagery and labels on objects around the map (books, papers, photos) suggest dark matter candidates like axions, WIMPs and black holes. #Art by Olena Shmahalo for Scientific American. INFO: https://www.olenashmahalo.com/project/here-be-monsters

Stylized painting of neutrinos traveling from an AGN or supernova and plunging into a dark blue sea, producing Cherenkov radiation (conical blue light) underwater. INFO: https://www.olenashmahalo.com/project/cosmic-neutrinos

By Olena Shmahalo for a Symmetry Magazine article about detecting extragalactic neutrinos using the Pacific Ocean Neutrino Experiment (P-ONE).

Painting of a gold armillary sphere on a beige background, containing a blue galaxy and a spherical black hole at its center. Gears are faintly visible beneath the galaxy. By Olena Shmahalo for Quanta Magazine. INFO: https://www.olenashmahalo.com/project/bh-gyroscope

Painting: a white tower made of blocks with mathematical symbols, floating in the sky. The tower is foundationless and breaking off into pieces towards the bottom, representing mathematics given Kurt Godel's proofs. Obelisks hovering around it represent undecidable problems — statements that can never be proved, thus never reachable from the central structure.

#Art by Olena Shmahalo for an explainer article on Kurt Gödel's incompleteness theorem: "How Gödel’s Proof Works" INFO: https://www.olenashmahalo.com/project/godel-tower

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Dr Adam Sterling

@dr-a-sterling.bsky.social

over 1 year ago

A super-Earth, just 59 light-years away. Discovered by an IAC-led team, GJ 3998 d orbits in the habitable zone of its red dwarf star—six Earth masses, and only 20% more starlight than us. The sky never rushes. It just waits to be read. 🛰️ www.iac.es/en/outreach/... #Exoplanets #Astrophysics #IAC

www.iac.es

IAC discovers a super-Earth in the habitable zone of a nearby red dwarf

An international team, led by a student from Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), has detected a super-Earth orbiting in the habitable zone of GJ 3998, a nearby red dwarf located 59 ly away. Th...

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