Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans

Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 18:20 UTC

🙏

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 17:58 UTC

🪼Jellyfish Graveyard 🪼 Portobello beach, Edinburgh 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 05:03 UTC

You can always rely on CountBinFace who, this year, ran on the policy that he would bring into law that 99's (vanilla ice-cream in a cone with a chocolate flake) should cost 99p. 🍦🍦

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 09:42 UTC

Disappointing, but maybe we can forgive her given all the other excitement in her life right now :)

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 05:39 UTC

🔊Sisters across the UK - it's voting day! Get out and vote. Exercise the right that our great-great-(great) grandmas fought so hard for. #UKElection

Suffrage procession, Princes Street, Edinburgh, 1909
🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿"A gude cause maks a strong arm"
🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿"Better say that it is than it was or it will be"

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 20:09 UTC

🤣

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 08:38 UTC

GitHub Copilot seems better than ChatGPT as it works step by step: e.g add the comment

# Now use astropy to read the contents of this fits file

& it fills the next line to do just that

There is an art in it that we can teach to our students (see @joezuntz.bsky.social thoughtful thread)

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 05:23 UTC

I have just watched a video of a jumping bloodsucking leech. Not sure that was the best way to start my day 😳

🎥: youtube.com/shorts/wk9iP...
ℹ️: www.scientificamerican.com/article/thes...

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 02, 2024 at 17:00 UTC

🙏

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 02, 2024 at 10:32 UTC

👍 - thanks for this - you've got me thinking which is a good thing!

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 02, 2024 at 10:31 UTC

Interesting - 🙏James! I use GitHub co-pilot now all the time - it feels like it actually knows me as it's learnt so much about how I code from my whole repository. But you're right that it is also learning from all of the other GitHub users and it's unclear who has consented to that.

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 02, 2024 at 10:23 UTC

Also 🙏for the Forbes link. What I can't immediately assess is whether the efficiencies of running a faster less energy-intensive AI-improved piece of software outweighs the energy used for the AI query in the first place 🤔. This definitely needs more thought though so thanks for raising it!

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 02, 2024 at 10:19 UTC

🙏Anke! On theft, I see a distinction between AI for creative content(art, stories etc - a hard no) and AI for software. In programming there is a strong tradition of open access & sharing - using AI to parse the back catalogue seems a natural evolution to the process?

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 02, 2024 at 09:11 UTC

Has anyone out in BlueSky academia looked into incorporating AI programming assistants in their comp-sci courses? My excellent chum @joezuntz.bsky.social is re-designing the Edinburgh physics computer programming course to do just that (see 🧵👇).
All thoughts/advice most welcome! 🧪🔭💻👩‍🔬

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 30, 2024 at 15:30 UTC

Yes, complete denial among many who have “strange summer flu” or “hay fever for the 1st time in my life” 🤦‍♀️ In fairness to my fellow Scots though, it is super hard to find tests in the shops these days, and when you do find them they’re very expensive 😕

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 30, 2024 at 12:31 UTC

My first child arrived when we lived in Canada, and her formative years were spent singing this 🇨🇦 nursery rhyme.

A gift for you Max of a lovely new whale-spotting earworm - you're most welcome. 😇

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yUd...

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 30, 2024 at 12:26 UTC

Well I never thought I'd see the day when the Sunday Times (centre-right) endorsed the Labour Party (centre-left). #UKElection

In other news our beach is covered in 1000's of see-through baby #jellyfish ....surely a joke in there about the Tory's also being dead in the water....?

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 27, 2024 at 19:35 UTC

I was quite surprised he knew who the FM was to be honest! Apparently they’ve been learning all about the different political parties in class ahead of July 4th which I think is really great education. Good to get them thinking about politics young!

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 27, 2024 at 19:15 UTC

Door slams...the 11yo is home from school "Nice day?" "Yeah, cool, played football with the First Minister" 🤔 "He was talking politics on the beach, so we challenged him to a game" <checks google - sure enough my boy & the 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿FM> "Super nice guy - not great at footy though" 📷: Inverness Courier

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 25, 2024 at 17:50 UTC

It’s a really good learning experience for the students. There is of course the potential for exploitation by bad supervisors, but if we ignore the rare bad apples this approach is definitely recommended!

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 25, 2024 at 06:14 UTC

Touchdown! Huge huge congratulations to the Chinese Space Agency. The successful end of a 53-day mission to the moon and back, returning the first ever samples from the far side of the moon! 🔭🧪🛰️

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 25, 2024 at 06:00 UTC

Parachutes!!! 🧪🔭🛰️ Chang'e lunar probe 🥳

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 25, 2024 at 05:53 UTC

Skip re-entry phase: the first far-side lunar samples incoming

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 25, 2024 at 05:42 UTC

The re-entry capsule carrying the lunar sample has successfully separated from the Chang'e-6 orbiter and is falling down to Earth! 🧪🔭🛰️

🍿: English language live feed from the China Global Television Network: www.youtube.com/live/WLmKmo5...

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 24, 2024 at 21:03 UTC

Note the Chinese Space Agency don't publish timings of mission events in advance, so we only know Chang'e-6 will return on the 25th June. Space News thinks it will be around 0600 UTC though, based on airspace closures! 🧪🔭🛰️

spacenews.com/change-6-hea...

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 24, 2024 at 21:00 UTC

Excited about the Chang'e-6 lunar probe landing in Inner Mongolia in the coming hours? 🔭🧪🛰️
👇fab paper on what they hope to learn: age of the largest impact crater on the moon, composition of the lunar mantle (does it match Earth?), evidence of volcanic activity....🤓 www.cell.com/the-innovati...

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 24, 2024 at 16:11 UTC

Masks work! Great that your wife managed to avoid it, and hoping her friend is doing well again now 🤞

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 24, 2024 at 13:08 UTC

To my clinically vulnerable & LongCovid friends: tighten your masks! About a 1/3rd of my friends/fam have covid right now 😭 And to anyone with "hay fever", who has never had hay fever before: there is a good chance it's not hay fever. Rest and recuperate!

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 20, 2024 at 05:59 UTC

Ah, that statistic comes from the RAC: 6 potholes per mile of road....
www.rac.co.uk/drive/advice....

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 19, 2024 at 15:57 UTC

Ha! I had never heard of this Beatles reference before recording the show. The presenter Tim Harford is a fan though so ended the show by estimating 10 million potholes, would fill the Albert Hall, by volume.

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 19, 2024 at 15:45 UTC

A reckless extrapolation of the count down to ~1m lunar craters and you're in the region of 10's of billions to 10's of trillions of potholes on moon. Hoping this ends all election potholes > craters statements to bed! 🧪🔭

Huge 🙏 to @planet4589.bsky.social for e-help and advice on this Q.

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 19, 2024 at 15:34 UTC

One monumental paper (Robbins 2019) manually counts craters in high-res imaging, finding 1.3 million craters with diameters > 1km, already more than the ~1 million potholes in the UK with diameters less <1m.

��️: agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 19, 2024 at 15:29 UTC

In fairness to the Labour Party, there are more potholes in the UK than *named* craters on the moon.

The IAU @astro4edu.bsky.social has official names for 9176 lunar features, many of which date back to👩‍🔬Mary Blagg's catalogue from 1913. 🔭

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Ad...

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 19, 2024 at 15:22 UTC

UK Election campaigning hits "silly season" with #Labour stating "the roads have more potholes than the moon has craters" 🧐

I set the record straight on BBC 'More or Less': way, way more craters than potholes. Still great if Labour is going to fix them tho! 🧪🔭
📻 www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 19, 2024 at 13:41 UTC

Physics in action! Sunlight broken up by the shiny grooves on the rim of my new e-bike wheel 🌈 🥰

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 17, 2024 at 08:14 UTC

🥳

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 16, 2024 at 08:16 UTC

Come to Scotland - home of the square sausage morning roll

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 13, 2024 at 10:23 UTC

🙏 I love Mama Quilla 😍

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 13, 2024 at 10:21 UTC

And if you're wondering, what is a Quasi-moon? It's a sneaky asteroid that looks like it's orbiting us, like a proper moon, but it isn't really because it's just orbiting the Sun in a funky way. 🔭

This NASA-JPL video explains all:
🎥: www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE4S...

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 13, 2024 at 10:13 UTC

🔊Your chance to officially name one of Earth's quasi-moons!

Sadly the name has to be a mythological, so "Moony-McMoonface" is already out of the running. Get your thoughts in, deadline: 30th Sept 24. 🧪🔭

ℹ️: woobox.com/wc2qxd

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 10, 2024 at 15:48 UTC

A local school is recording their own version of this planet rap this week - they wanted to "fact-check" it with me. I love it! Full marks to the StoryBots.
#scicomm 🔭👩‍🔬
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHAq...

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 06, 2024 at 17:16 UTC

Astro-friends, how did I not know about the Tokyo Atacama Observatory (TAO)? A brand new 6.5m optical/IR telescope just opened at an altitude of 5640 m in the Atacama Desert. It's so high/dry there the IR imaging & spectroscopy becomes super efficient 😮🥳🔭

ℹ️: www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/focus/en/pre...

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 04, 2024 at 21:14 UTC

🤩🔭

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 04, 2024 at 14:25 UTC

Could have put money on you raising the Everett alternative 🤗. Thanks so much for the answer though - much appreciated!

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 04, 2024 at 14:24 UTC

Thanks Sean. My worry-heckles were raised by sound being a travelling wave and always thinking of a quantum wave function as a standing wave. But for an analogy you're right that shouldn't be a problem.

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 04, 2024 at 06:19 UTC

Part of me loves this analogy: it's visual & easy-to-grasp. Part of me is unhappy tho: a voice creating a travelling sound wave is v different from the wave function of an electron.
@astrokatie.com @seanmcarroll.bsky.social - thoughts? Is this a good analogy to use, or would it mislead?

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 04, 2024 at 06:13 UTC

Analogies for Quantum physics:"wave function collapse". Is this genius or misleading?🤔

"imagine..speaking to a crowd...In the quantum world..as soon as one person [hears], the sound wave would concentrate [in that]..ear, & no one else would hear it"🧪⚛️

www.scientificamerican.com/article/quan...

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 03, 2024 at 16:40 UTC

For your timeline: the most beautiful bunch of flowers courtesy of the fabulous @astroalexamon.bsky.social who is visiting from Princeton 🥰

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 03, 2024 at 15:10 UTC

🤩

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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social [ View ] Jun 02, 2024 at 17:25 UTC

He was the absolute best wasn't he - just the kindest gentleman and always your greatest supporter. Whenever I'm doubting myself, I often think "what would Jasper do right now?" 🤗

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