Dr Becky Smethurst’s Tweets

Royal Astronomical Society

Mar 22

I am absolutely thrilled to announce that I’ve been awarded the 2022 RAS Research Fellowship! In my 3 year term I’ll be continuing my work studying the growth of supermassive black holes in the absence of mergers (and the resultant AGN feedback). I can’t wait to get stuck in 💪

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@RoyalAstroSoc

· Mar 22

The Royal Astronomical Society is pleased to announce that Dr Rebecca Smethurst has been awarded the 2022 RAS Research Fellowship! Congratulations, @drbecky_

ras.ac.uk/news-and-press

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And my reaction

Another fun video for #WorldQuantumDay by

@Sci_Phile

and ft.

@quantum_spiros

for all of us Marvel fans! “Why Doctor Strange is a Quantum Computer�? - so much info in this video, love it!

youtube.com

Why Doctor Strange is a Quantum Computer

NEW MERCH DROP OUT NOW! https://shop.kylehill.net/

JOIN [THE FACILITY] RIGHT NOW for members-only live streams, behind-the-scenes posts, and the officia...

It’s #WorldQuantumDay! Even though I think astrophysics >>> quantum physics 😜 our knowledge of the quantum structure of a hydrogen atom does allow us to work out how much the light from a galaxy has been redshifted & so how far away that galaxy is. I guess I should be grateful!

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Apr 13

MIRI (one of the James Webb Space Telescopes detectors) is now cooled enough to start detecting infrared light! 🥳 another big milestone passed for JWST

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· Apr 13

Cool news! Webb’s MIRI instrument recently passed through its critical “pinch point�? and cooled to just a few kelvins above absolute zero, which is the coldest you can go: go.nasa.gov/3M6MbeJ Wondering why MIRI is extremely chill? Thread

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This image shows the cryocooler for the Webb telescope's Mid-Infrared Instrument, or MIRI. The cryocooler, a silver metallic device, is a special refrigerator to cools MIRI down to less than 7 Kelvin. This photo was taken after the cryocooler had completed testing, and was taken out of the test chamber in preparation for being placed into its shipping container.

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The (new) April Fools Peer Review Process

Apr 5

Absolutely love this from the graduate students over on

@astrobites

- a "peer review" of all the astronomy April Fools papers published this year. I particularly enjoyed the paper on exoplanets with exomoons which could sustain a werewolf population 😂

astrobites.org

There is a tradition in Astronomy to post silly science papers to the arXiv on Aprils Fools day. We've collected them all and provided some "peer review"

Topics to follow

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The Farthest Star Sheds New Light on the Early Universe

Conor Tobin

@ConorJTobin

Apr 2

“It could prove this one last piece of this theory of nucleosynthesis—how elements come to be formed in stars… or at what point you start getting planets and the early conditions for life.�? -

@DrBecky_

, on #Earendel. ✨🌞🔭

wired.co.uk

A cosmic fluke helped Hubble spy Earendel, a giant star at the edge of the known universe that could tell us more about what happened after the Big Bang.

Apr 1

Now let's get in formation 😎 3 out of #NASAWebb's 4 instruments have been successfully aligned to its mirrors! This concludes the 6th stage of its 7 mirror alignment phases to create the most accurate & focused images possible: go.nasa.gov/36HQaPV #UnfoldTheUniverse

Group photo of some James Webb Space Telescope project members with the complete Integrated Science Instrument Module, where all 4 of Webb's science instruments are contained and packaged together, inside the NASA Goddard cleanroom. All project members are fully suited in cleanroom gear.

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Congrats

on observing the farthest star ever seen! 🔎 We can’t wait to study this star in even more detail with Webb's infrared capabilities — and potentially find even farther stars! go.nasa.gov/3tRj5cP

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Hubble

@NASAHubble

· Mar 30

RECORD BROKEN: Hubble observed the farthest individual star ever seen! This extraordinary new benchmark detected light from a star that existed within the first billion years after the universe's birth in the big bang. Find out more: go.nasa.gov/3tRj5cP

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Mar 30

The Hubble Space Telescope has spotted the light from an individual star 12.8 billion light years away - thanks to a neat trick of gravity causing the magnification of light! It could be one of the first stars to ever have formed in the Universe 🤯

@NASAHubble

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The

team are announcing what's been described as a "record-breaking" discovery today (11am EDT) which is supposedly important for JWST too. No idea what, but my money is on a the most distant (highest redshift) galaxy found yet More info: svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14124

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Mar 22

For those who aren’t familiar with how academic jobs work, after a PhD, postdoc jobs usually have funding for 2-4 years. My current funding at

@ChCh_Oxford

runs out in September after 4yrs. This RAS research fellowship means I can continue my work for another 3 years 🥳

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My recent work has shown that unlike previously thought, the majority of supermassive black holes grow due to processes internal to a galaxy, but we still don’t understand how that happens yet! So I’m ready and raring to get stuck in and find out how during my RAS fellowship.

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Speaker @ #TED2022: Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

@IBJIYONGI

Mar 21

Good morning! As we continue #WomensHistoryMonth I’d like to encourage you to buy a SIGNED copy of my history-making, award-nominated Black queer feminist particle physics book for general audiences from a Black queer woman owned bookstore

@Loyaltybooks

loyaltybookstores.com/book/978154172

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Paul Byrne

@ThePlanetaryGuy

Mar 20

Take thirty seconds and watch Europa and Io serenely sail by, massive Jupiter their background. Imagine seeing this with your own eyes. Envy those who, in the future, will. Animated composite of Cassini images by

@kevinmgill

; credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/CICLOPS/Kevin M. Gill

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Nate Byrne

@SciNate

Mar 17

What's better than one science nerd getting excited about James Webb's first picture? TWO! (And

knows how to make sense of what we're seeing, rather than JUST being an excited kid about it!) 😜🤩

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News Breakfast

@BreakfastNews

· Mar 17

NASA's new space telescope is in operation- and has captured an image of ancient galaxies over 2,000 light years away! That has got scientists around the world buzzing with excitement. One of them is @drbecky_ and she spoke to @SciNate on the show today.

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Mar 17

CAN'T. STOP. WATCHING. Comparison of JWST resolution (70 mas, 0.00002°) compared to Spitzer (2as, 0.0005°) a space telescope that also viewed the universe in infrared light

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gbrammer

@gbrammer

· Mar 17

#JWST is looking awesome

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Get excited about the James Webb Space Telescope w/ Astrophysicist Dr Becky Smethurst

"look at the galaxies in the background you can already see the shape of ..."

Dr Becky Smethurst and NASA Webb Telescope

📺 youtu.be/1nOX66G5q9E #JWST #UnfoldTheUniverse #JamesWebbSpaceTelescope #WomenInScience

Astrophysicist Dr Becky Smethurst pointing at computer screen that shows a bright star image.

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Astrophysicist Dr Becky Smethurst points to a galaxy on an image. We see a finger and a bright yellow and orange shape on a darkbackground.

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Astrophysicist Dr Becky Smethurst points to a galaxy image on a computer screen and shows the different between the existing image and the new image.

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Mar 17

Number 23 on trending on YouTube?!?! That’s never happened before! 🥳🥳🥳 plus I just passed 400,000 subscribers 🤯 Thanks all for being as excited about the James Webb Space Telescope as I am!

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I feel like this is the one moment where yelling "ASTRONOMERS ASSEMBLE" is appropriate. Everyone digging to find out more info about the

alignment field

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Grant Tremblay

@astrogrant

· Mar 16

Here's more info on the @NASAWebb field. Can ID only one galaxy at z=0.285, the rest don't have spectroscopic redshifts. Deepest optical image I can find is Pan-STARRS. The milky way star distance is 1,995 light years from @ESAGaia. I've added some labels for @marinakoren et al.

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Sarah Kendrew

@sarahkendrew

Mar 16

It’s just so beautiful. Massive kudos to the teams who built the telescope and developed the techniques and algorithms to perform the phasing & alignment of the mirror. I’ve been blown away on a daily basis by their progress updates over the past weeks.

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· Mar 16

Small adjustments, major progress! Having completed 2 more mirror alignment steps, #NASAWebb’s optical performance will be able to meet or exceed its science goals. Now that’s good optics!

go.nasa.gov/3KMV1gW #UnfoldTheUniverse Curious about this image? Thread

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An engineering image from Webb which shows a bright star in the foreground with small galaxies and stars in the background. The bright objects in this photo are reddish, a color chosen to optimize visual contrast. Credit: NASA/STScI

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On the NASA live stream, they just said that the resolution achieved with JWST was 0.0000194° (i.e. the smallest thing they can spot spans 0.0000194° of 360° round the sky). 28 TIMES BETTER THAN Spitzer (also an infrared space telescope) which had a resolution of 0.00056°

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Mar 16

This is the same star as seen by the Digitized Sky Survey, just to give you context for the amount of DETAIL the James Webb Space Telescope will give us. It spots much fainter objects and at greater resolution #unfoldtheuniverse [Note this doesn't cover the same field of view]

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Have you ever seen such beautiful diffraction spikes �? that star is so faint and yet for JWST, the amount of light it detects is so much that the light bleeds into neighbouring pixels to give you that 6-pointed "star" shape #jameswebbspacetelescope

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OH MY DAYS THERE'S EVEN GALAXIES IN THE BACKGROUND ALREADY �?

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· Mar 16

Look how far we've come: We started with 18 scattered dots — 18 reflections of the same star, one from each of Webb’s primary mirror segments. These dots were then re-arranged, stacked, and fine-tuned, setting the stage for our first science images this summer! #UnfoldTheUniverse

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Mar 16

This is the crossover I never knew I needed 😂

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NASA Exoplanets

@NASAExoplanets

· Mar 15

Four thousand, nine hundred and forty planets

4940 planets so far How do you discover, discover a world? In transits, in wobbles, in tiny pixels With gravity and science and lots of math!

go.nasa.gov/3IfP1vB

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Mar 14

LATEST IMAGERy?! �?

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· Mar 14

Watch our virtual media briefing at noon EDT (16:00 UTC) on March 16th on nasa.gov/live to see a progress update on Webb’s mirror alignment! Experts will discuss the latest imagery. Use #UnfoldTheUniverse to ask questions. Media RSVP info: nasa.gov/press-release/

An image of Webb at Northrop Grumman. The golden mirror has its wings folded back into launch configuration. Image credit: NASA/Chris Gunn

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Mar 14

I just remembered that this GIF of Perseverance and Ingenuity on the surface of Mars exists, and it really perked up my Monday morning. 📷 by

@NASAPersevere

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Royal Astronomical Society

Mar 11

We’re doing galaxies next week on the Supermassive Podcast! One of my specialities too, so I’m very excited 😅 drop your questions in reply to this tweet by the

@RoyalAstroSoc

and I might answer them in the next episode!

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@RoyalAstroSoc

· Mar 11

Curious about galaxies? Have you ever wondered how they form, and how they get their fascinating structures? Reply to this tweet with your questions and the #RASSupermassive team might answer them in the next episode!

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OxfordSparks

@OxfordSparks

Mar 8

Leavitt's Law laid the foundation for many #astronomical discoveries, allowing distances in other #galaxies to be measured as early as 1912 🔭🌌 But who was the woman behind it? We asked

. Who was Henrietta Leavitt? #InternationalWomensDay pod.fo/e/a2f5e

Replying to

and

This one I'm proud of. It's a 9-photo panoramic. This was taken in an abandoned mine, also in San Luis, Argentina.

Move over JWST! 5 new telescopes to get excited for

SKA Observatory

@SKAO

Mar 4

🎥 Got 15 mins? Watch astrophysicist

@DrBecky_

spotlight the big astronomical observatories to get excited about in the next five years. Spoiler alert: one of them is the SKAO! #WeekendWatching

The James Webb Space Telescope might be getting all the media attention right now, but there's 5 more BIG astronomical observatories to look forward to in th...

Replying to

Andromeda galactic core with an iPhone, my eyes struggle to pick it up but the tiny phone lens manages

Mar 4

Did you know you can get amazing photos of the stars with just your phone? I took this one on Sunday morning of the 🌙 and the Milky Way with my iPhone 13 In my latest 🎥 I’ve got 3 tips for how to to do this for beginner astrophotographers👇 youtu.be/ToN15U6dy1Q

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Mar 2

I’m excited to be talking at

@newscientist

LIVE in Manchester (and streamed online) all about my research on how supermassive black holes grow, next Sunday 13th March. I’ll be doing a Q&A and a book signing too. See you there! Get your tickets here:

live.newscientist.com

A superhero who bases their aesthetic on my beloved Toenail Moon? 🌙 I’m there!

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Marvel Entertainment

@Marvel

· Feb 13

See the all-new Big Game TV Spot for Marvel Studios’ @MoonKnight

, an Original series streaming March 30, only on @DisneyPlus.

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Feb 14

Love this opening slide in today’s astrophysics colloquium

@OxfordPhysics

being given by Dr. Anna Franckowiak from the

@uw_icecube

observatory. Can’t wait to hear about doing astronomy by detecting neutrinos

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Feb 11

I just went live on YouTube to share my excitement about the first image from the James Webb Space Telescope!!! And explain why it looks a bit naff (it’s supposed to😅) youtu.be/6v72L_1L4lQ

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Feb 11

I JUST filmed my Night Sky News video for next week in the past hour and meanwhile NASA GOES AND DROPS THIS! First photons of light detected by the James Webb Space Telescope (currently a bit cross eyed, without its mirrors aligned so there’s 18 dots where there should be one)

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