The University of St Andrews Observatory Open night last Saturday was a success with the clouds clearing in time for the event! Several hundred visitors were able to see the planet Jupiter through small telescopes as well as some deep sky objects with the James Gregory Telescope.
🚨 Job vacancy!
We are recruiting a Computing Officer for the School of Physics and Astronomy at St Andrews ⚛️🔭
High-Performance Computing is critical to our work on understanding the Universe, including the search for life on other planets. 🪐🧑💻🖥️
www.vacancies.st-andrews.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/...
Exhibition of paintings inspired by @sdssurveys.bsky.social plug plates happening at UW in Seattle next month: uwplanetariumarts.myportfolio.com/constelacion... 👩🔬🔭
📃Check out this paper:
"Unified Spectrospatial Forward Models: Spatially Continuous Maps of Weak Emission Lines in the Rosette Nebula with SDSS-V LVM" (ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2026ApJ....)
if you want to see spectrospatial models applied to LVM data of the Rosette Nebula ✨🔭
📃Check out this paper:
"SDSS-V LVM: Collisionless Shocks in the Supernova Remnant RCW86" (ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2026ApJ....)
if you want to learn about shocks in RCW 86 with LVM ✨🔭
Save the date: The St Andrews Observatory will open its doors and domes for its annual Open Night on March 14th, 6-9pm. All welcome, entry free. All telescopes will be in action, and we will try to observe, if the weather is clear.
At our Documentation workshop (DocuCharm) in Baltimore. The power going into typing away at webpages, wikis, GitHub, etc could power a small city
Come work with me!
I'm hiring a postdoctoral research fellow to work on the link between large scale structure and galaxy evolution using DESI data. The position is for 3 years, starting Oct 1st 2026. Details in the link below.
www.vacancies.st-andrews.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/...
Graduate Trainee positions at @science.esa.int !
We are looking for 4 early career artists, based in Scotland, to create new work in collaboration with 4 quantum physics PhD students. Submission deadline 27th Feb. To apply and for more information, please go to: observatory.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/quantum-dial...
📃Check out this paper:
"SDSS-V LVM: Resolving physical conditions in the Trifid Nebula"(www.aanda.org/articles/aa/...)
if you want to learn about resolved and integrated electron densities, temperatures and oxygen abundances in the Trifid Nebula with LVM ✨🔭
We welcome applications for consideration for this year's UKRI Future Leaders Fellowships. Internal deadline is 2nd Feb. Please email physdor@st-andrews.ac.uk for the UstA UKRI Future Leaders Fellowships application form. Call details are on: www.ukri.org/what-we-do/d...
📃Check out this paper:
"SDSS-V LVM: Detectability of Wolf-Rayet stars and their HeII ionizing flux in low-metallicity environments: I. The weak-lined, early-type WN3 stars in the SMC"(ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2025A%26...)
if you want to learn about Wolf-Rayet stars with LVM ✨🔭
🔊Announcing a new Physics/Astro PhD scholarship scheme in Edinburgh, for students from a Black heritage, inc mixed Black background. Please help me spread the word. The scholarship covers all tuition fees, living costs & research travel. #blackinSTEM 🔭👩🔬⚛️
ℹ️: www.ph.ed.ac.uk/studying/pos...
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CHILES X: Molecular and atomic gas at intermediate redshift. Kelley M. Hess et. al. https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.07966
📃Check out this paper:
"SDSS-V Local Volume Mapper (LVM): revealing the structure of the Rosette Nebula"(ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2025MNRA...)
if you want to see the Rosette Nebula with LVM ✨🔭
I'm hiring at Haverford - a 2 year NASA funded postdoc to work on Galaxy Zoo with Roman Space Telescope Data: www.haverford.edu/human-resour... 👩🔬🔭
We welcome applications for consideration for this year's Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship scheme. Internal deadline is 3rd Nov. Please email physdor@st-andrews.ac.uk for the UstA Leverhulme ECRF application form. Call details are on: www.leverhulme.ac.uk/early-career...
The little Twin Dome is now on a road trip back to the big Twin Dome in St Andrews. Starting at the shore in Cellardyke
Currently recruiting
wahl.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/2025/08/21/currently-rec...
Also, check out his amazing video visualising the @milkywaymapper.bsky.social survey on our YouTube Channel, by Szabolcs Mészáros of the MWM Survey Calibration working group: www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5w2...
🔭LVM is a robotic SDSS facility at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile’s Atacama Desert mapping the interstellar medium of the Milky Way and nearby galaxies✨
Get an eye on LVM with our image gallery: www.sdss.org/science/imag...
The SDSS-V DR19 is now online at www.sdss.org 🎉
For the first time, LVM data is released.
Get a sneak peak into LVM data and download our amazing LVM tile of the Helix Nebula!✨
A tutorial showing how to access, read in, and work with the data is available here: www.sdss.org/dr19/lvm/tut... 💻
This image shows the Orion Nebula as observed by Local Volume Mapper, and published in Kreckel et al. 2024 (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2024A%26A...689A.352K/abstract). Different emission lines (hydrogen, silicon and oxygen) are represented with different colour, tracing the ionisation structure of the nebula, carving a bubble in the surrounding dense gas shown by WISE 12micrometer imaging. The ionized gas emission traces wispy, filamentary structures and dusty eroding clouds and clumps. Figure taken from https://www.sdss.org/dr19/lvm/about/.
@localvolumemapper.bsky.social is an integral-field spectroscopic survey of the Milky Way, the Magellanic Clouds, and other Local Volume Galaxies. Read more about what they are doing here: www.sdss.org/dr19/lvm/abo... #DR19
This image shows the location of Black Hole Mapper targets on the sky, with each purple point depicting an object. All fields are in the North taken with the Sloan Telescope at Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico, US. Fields in the South by the du Pont Telescope at Las Campanas Observatory will be part of the next data release, DR20. There is a pink blob around right ascension = 9 hours, which are the eFEDS fields (eROSITA Full Equatorial Depth Survey) released in DR18. Figure taken from https://www.sdss.org/dr19/bhm/
@blackholemapper.bsky.social had already released a few spectra in DR18, but they are going all out for DR19, with lots of galaxy and quasar spectra #DR19
The figure is the banner from the SDSS website www.sdss.org. In the middle it has an image of the Milky Way, showing the bulge, disc and dust lanes. On the left we see an stylised version of the Hertzsprung Russel diagram, while on the right the image transforms into the cosmic web. This image showcases the range of science covered by the three mapper programs in SDSS-V.
Yesterday we released our nineteenth data release into the wild: www.sdss.org/dr19, let’s now take a closer look on what is in this data release. #DR19
We have a data release! Check out sdss.org/dr19 for all the data that just became publicly available with our 19th data release #DR19
Today they trusted me with the @sdssurveys.bsky.social account to post about Data Release Day! It's the nineteenth already, and you can read all about it already in the DR19 paper here: arxiv.org/abs/2507.07093. And more on SDSS-V in the Overview paper here: arxiv.org/abs/2507.06989 #DR19
Still more little squares of brass for the installation #BeingSunny at the Twin Dome. A long way still to go
New work under construction for the twin dome #BeingSunny in collaboration with @amweijmans.bsky.social and tracking research at @sdssurveys.bsky.social under the #curious banner of the Royal Society of Edinburgh