The VISTA 4MOST, a large, intricate astronomical device, housed inside an industrial facility. The structure features a prominent circular component with visible wiring and metal framework, supported by a sturdy blue frame with stairs and a raised platform for access.

The VISTA mountain top observatory stands on rocky terrain under a clear night sky, with the Milky Way stretching across and a bright planet shining above.

Revolutionary new space telescope @4most-eu.bsky.social has captured its first data from the universe.

Our scientists are part of the team behind the super-scope and say it’ll reveal how galaxies and black holes formed.

Read more 👉 tr.ee/ba4NEs

Lates: Unveiling a universe full of black holes Supermassive black holes weighing millions to billions of times the mass of our Sun, are among the most fascinating astronomical sources in our Universe. In ...

Supermassive black holes weighing millions (or billions) the mass of our sun, far from being rare, are in fact everywhere in our universe. Professor Manda Banerji explores how we are uncovering these giants and what they're telling us about the cosmos: #SummerScience www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fxll...

Could the first images from the Vera Rubin telescope change how we view space for good? The new observatory can take very high resolution images of distant objects in space.

Could the first images from the #VeraCRubin telescope change how we view #space for good?

Read what our experts @mandabanerji.bsky.social and @astro-pwise.bsky.social think in our latest ‪article on @uk.theconversation.com 🚀🌌☀️

theconversation.com/could-the-fi...

Thank you… more than 15 years of being excited about Rubin for me and the same for Catherine Heymans being a total inspiration! Hope I was able to channel even a morsel of your usual enthusiasm and flair. As always you continue to lift others up with you and open up opportunities for us all.

An absolute privilege to represent the @lsstuk.bsky.social
team on the iconic BBC breakfast couch this morning showing off stunning images from @vrubinobs.bsky.social
This is just the beginning of our quest to #CaptureTheCosmos and bring the night sky to life. Stay tuned - so much more to come!!

The glowing band of the Milky Way emanates from Rubin Observatory's boot-shaped silhouette at lower left. The brighter, dense stars of the Milky Way are crisscrossed by clouds and lanes of dark dust. The lower left horizon has an orangey hue, while the pinpricks of stars speckle the rest of the sky.

If there's one thing you should know about NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory, it's this:

✨It's going to build the greatest time-lapse movie of the cosmos ever made✨

And tomorrow is the world's first preview of how Rubin will #CaptureTheCosmos in the coming decade! 🔭🧪

Delighted to be part of the Royal Society summer science exhibition this year. Come hear me speak about finding black holes with big telescopes and how collaborative research and diverse perspectives drive new innovation in astrophysics. Tue 1st July: 6:15pm in London (and streaming on YouTube)

A great week in Munich discussing all things black holes and galaxies and how the current ‘golden era’ of large astronomical surveys will advance our understanding of these systems. Leaving with lots of ideas for new projects and collaborations.

Also my favourite April 1st paper this year (perhaps ever?!). A+ for the brilliantly sarcastic writing, the excellent figure choices and the frankly genius acronym

So many fantastic results already from just 0.4% of the Euclid sky. Looking forward to continuing to explore the Euclid sky with an amazing team of early career researchers at Southampton @ec-euclid.bsky.social @eucliduk.bsky.social #ESAEuclid #Q1release

The world’s largest digital camera is almost set to open its eyes to the sky! Excited about the amazing scientific discoveries this experiment will enable and actively planning what we will lead and deliver as part of @lsstuk.bsky.social

As one of the many international researchers personally invested & ultra proud of what the US Vera Rubin Observatory has and will achieve this👇 is not OK. My heart is sinking for my amazing 🇺🇸-based colleagues. For decades you've led the way for STEM DEI initiatives - time for Europe to step up. 🧪🔭👩‍🔬

When you turn it on and it works spectacularly!

The Rubin team has successfully completed the first on-sky engineering tests using the 144-Mpx engineering camera. Up next: installing the largest digital camera in the world, LSST Camera! 🔭🧪

rubinobservatory.org/news/rubin-completes-comcam-tests

Big Rockets, a Big Telescope and Big Changes in Space Await in 2025 Here are some key events to look forward to in space and astronomy in the year ahead.

Good to see @vrubinobs.bsky.social listed among the @nytimes.com key events in space and astronomy for 2025: www.nytimes.com/2025/01/01/s... 🔭

2025 is the year of Rubin first light! It is an amazing, groundbreaking experiment as @astroroyalscot.bsky.social explains. I’ve been hearing about Rubin since my PhD days and cannot wait to work with my wonderful research team on the brand new data from this fantastic observatory.

Thank you VISTA for 15 years of incredible science! Very fortunate to now also be heavily involved in the next adventures for this telescope as the infrared camera makes way for a brand new spectrograph that will enable yet another step change in survey astronomy over the next decade

And with my current research team at Southampton we are creating a unique legacy dataset combining VISTA survey data with other astronomical surveys. This is one of the UK’s in-kind contributions to the Vera Rubin Observatory earning UK scientists data rights on this amazing new facility

VISTA featured heavily in the research proposals that earned me my two independent long-term fellowships marking my transition from a postdoctoral researcher to a research team leader

I then had the opportunity to lead my own large public survey with VISTA spanning 3 years (including over the pandemic) and involving hundreds of international collaborators from all around the globe

The amazing data we got enabled my most exciting scientific discoveries - hidden quasars, rapidly growing supermassive black holes that are enshrouded in dust and that appeared to be far more numerous than we had previously imagined

My first postdoctoral position began as the telescope saw first light. I was responsible for planning and executing the largest all-sky infrared survey to be conducted with VIRCam

The first paper from my PhD forecasted how the near infrared camera about to go on the telescope (VIRCam) would improve our ability to measure distances to galaxies based on their colours

The Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA www.eso.org/public/teles...) 🔭

is 15 years old this December! It’s a particularly special telescope to me having spanned and shaped my entire research career. Some personal highlights in this thread:

Agreed! That’s why I usually schedule send at random times rather than first thing on Monday morning. 😊 I also do this more with professional services staff I work a lot with and less with academic colleagues as email culture seems to be quite different for the two communities

Please share widely: Fantastic opportunity for UK Black and mixed-Black students to pursue PhDs. Additional Black Futures scholarships also available to support research in Engineering, Physical and Mathematical Sciences with bespoke training and support

www.southampton.ac.uk/study/fees-f...

I schedule send emails and my email signature specifies that I do not expect a response out of hours. But I also feel the concept of “core working hours” needs to evolve with flexible working becoming the norm post pandemic. I stop work for school pick-up and then start again when kids are in bed.

Some fantastic Astro PhD opportunities available at Southampton this year and we have fee waivers for EU/Horizon students as well as new scholarship opportunities for UK Black students!

Come join our fantastic team at Southampton. We have an opportunity for a research software engineer to work on infrastructure for the Rubin Observatory and Euclid mission. 🔭

jobs.soton.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx...

Always such a privilege to be at The Royal Society, this time talking to new Research Fellows about what to expect from their fellowships. A fantastic, inspiring day hearing about exciting research, listening to great speakers and enjoying amazing food & wine!

I know there are people thinking about this and we have initiatives like double-blind reviewing etc. but I still worry about this ballooning in proposal numbers and the system still favouring allocations to large groups with lots of funding and enormous amounts of privilege