Super neat preprint!

A rare, hot-Jupiter exoplanet orbits the pulsar PSR J2322-2650.

Astronomers used #JWST to observe it across the full orbit, and found its atmosphere rich in carbon AND it having a strong westward wind!

So glad that people are using JWST to look at the pulsar planets, esp. since the pulsar is not going to be visible at the JWST wavelengths.

These things are orbiting so close to the pulsar that they are being ablated (spider pulsar!), and one side of them is gonna glow more than the other side.

The first exoplanets discovered were pulsar planets!

They are, however, extremely rare because to form a pulsar you need a supernova, and so things get messy.

Here's an article I wrote about them a little while back on #SpaceAustralia

https://www.spaceaustralia.com/news/science-talk-what-are-pulsar-planets

So excited for this!

Over last few months I've been planning a special visit from Dr Katie Mack to #Sydney and #Melbourne!

Katie is a fantastic science communicator, renowned cosmologist and of course, author of her internationally acclaimed book, 'The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking)'.

We've got loads of events planned from public talks, science panels, and a queers in science event too.

Check out my article on #SpaceAustralia which lists them all, incl. ticket links. Many are already booking out fast!

https://www.spaceaustralia.com/news/dr-katie-mack-sydney-and-melbourne-july-2025

Big thanks to: University of Sydney, Sydney Ideas, OzGrav, Swinburne University, The Wheeler Centre, and Queers in Science who we've partnered with to make this all happen.

Hope to see you there, and def. bring the kids along to these!

Pass it on!

An Emerging Risk To #RadioAstronomy
Using a prototype SKA-Low instrument, a new analysis from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) has detected Starlink signals leaking into protected radio bands.

Radio frequency interference from Starlink not only spans the narrowband intended emissions, but also broadband unintended emissions too, coming from propulsion and avionics.

This RFI is unregulated and affects key science goals.

Starlink appears in ~30% of all sky images.

This new study, from Dylan Grigg at Curtin University, is not the first to study the impacts of Starlink on #RadioAstronomy, but is the largest of its kind, and quantifies how this type of radio frequency interference - that comes from above - will impact the mega-science SKA project.

My latest piece for #SpaceAustralia

https://www.spaceaustralia.com/news/emerging-risk-radio-astronomy

Astro_Work (supplied) / Griggs et al. 2025

Who Thought It Was a Good Idea to Let Me Drive a Lunar Rover?

They actually let me drive Australia’s Lunar Rover… I still don’t know why.

This all happened at AusSpace 2025 — Australia’s biggest space tech event — where I somehow found myself behind the controls of ROO-VER, the lunar rover being built to drive on the Moon.

Not only did I get to drive the thing, but I also sat down with one of the engineers building it... and then, somehow, ended up interviewing former Prime Minister Scott Morrison (?!). That’s not a sentence I ever thought I’d write.

This trip was insane, full of space tech, mad energy, a few surprises — and, of course, one very confused engineer trying to explain to me how to drive a robot made for the Moon.

So… did I crash it? Did Scott Morrison talk about space chickens? Did I get kicked out of AusSpace?

There’s only one way to find out

#LunarRover #AusSpace2025 #SpaceAustralia #ROOVER #Engineering #MoonMission #SpaceExploration #Astroworx #ScottMorrison #Science #Tech #STEM #Innovation #FutureTech #Robotics #NASA #SpaceX #Australia #BehindTheScenes #Trending #YouTubeShorts #Vlog #CrazyIdeas #WildRide

YouTube: https://youtu.be/hrkSaIBE7dY

A multiwavelength glimpse at a space oddity!

Astronomers from ICRAR have led a global team to reveal new insights into the growing population of Long-Period Transients.

What makes ASKAP J1832-0911 stand out from the rest of the Long-Period Transients is that, for the first time, coincident X-ray emission, along with radio emissions, have also been detected from such an object, thanks to the Chandra X-ray Observatory.

Check out my new article on #SpaceAustralia here:

https://www.spaceaustralia.com/feature/askap-and-chandra-catch-pulses-long-period-transient

ICRAR

Exciting Aussie Space Industry news!

Regulatory bodies have given permission for Gilmore Space Technologies to launch their orbital class Eris rocket from the Bowen spaceport this week!

Window: 0730-1730, 15 May

Eris will be our first orbital rocket for ~50 years, designed/built in Australia.

Eris is a 25m, three-stage rocket and these first flights will be test flights.

The Gilmore team have been working really hard for years and it’s exciting to see this all come together.

We’ve covered their progress on #SpaceAustralia: https://www.spaceaustralia.com/search?search_api_fulltext=Gilmour

Launch won’t be streamed and no visitors but we’ll get a debrief on how it went once the test is completed from Gilmour Space.

Gilmour Space Technologies

Your Smartphone Can Measure Solar Storms!

Industry researchers found a way to provide better global coverage of what dynamics are occurring in the turbulent ionosphere - a region of Earth's atmosphere that is affected by the Sun's activity. They did this by tapping into GPS signals transmitted between smartphones and satellites.

Check out my latest #SpaceAustralia article here: https://www.spaceaustralia.com/news/your-smartphone-can-tell-us-about-solar-storms

Kast, Smith, Google Research Software Engineers

EVERYONE

The SKAO has released some short video of one of the SKA-Low stations (located in Australia) making a pulsar detection.

The SKA won’t be finished until around 2030s but stations will switch on so we’re heading into the early data collection stages.

If you’ve never heard of the SKA, it’s a new instrument being built in Australia and South Africa — and will be the most powerful radio telescope on our planet.

It’s going to change our view of the Universe, and has been decades in the making.

Read more: https://www.spaceaustralia.com/feature/road-leads-square-kilometre-array

More exciting, unexplained science!

An emerging class of objects in #RadioAstronomy, mostly discovered in the last few years, still can't be explained.

Now, two new multi-wavelength studies might have answers.

Wrote about both these Aussie astronomy cases, and how they might be giving us those additional clues, to narrow in on what we are seeing.

Are these an entirely new object all together? OR, do we need to re-think our physics? Both scenarios are fascinating.

My next piece for #SpaceAustralia:

https://www.spaceaustralia.com/feature/multi-wavelength-views-new-galactic-radio-astronomy-mysteries

N. Hurley-Walker /MWA / Curtin / ICRAR

Some exciting results!

Using MeerKAT (super sensitive telescope array) the MeerKAT Pulsar Timing Array (MPTA) team have also found supporting evidence (with their assumptions and models) of the gravitational wave background (GWB) that other Pulsar Timing Arrays (PTAs) announced last year. This is further independent verification!

The Universe rattles!

I had a chat with Dr. Matt Miles from Swinburne Uni / OzGrav about his lead-author paper and results: https://www.spaceaustralia.com/feature/mpta-finds-evidence-gravitational-wave-background

But the fun doesn't stop there! An additional paper, co-authored by Rowina Nathan, used the MPTA data to make the most detailed map of the GWB, and found an intriguing anisotropy (though, statistically, could be insignificant). If it turns out to be true it shows the GWB is not isotropic, and we could be seeing a unique system or some unknown cosmology. Rowina wrote a piece in #SpaceAustralia about this too: https://www.spaceaustralia.com/feature/mapping-gravitational-wave-universe

Very cool science that take pulsars and turn the Galaxy into a detector.

C. Knox/Swinburne/OzGrav/SARAO

1 in 100 billion! (well, so far ....)

There is one, and ONLY one of these systems we know about. It features two neutron stars, both pulsars. In even better news, both of these pulsar beams shine in our direction - so we can study the light of one as it passes through the powerful magnetic field of the other.

That's what Dr Marcus Lower from Swinburne University of Technology and his team did - they used the extremely sensitive MeerKAT telescope in South Africa to study the light, and polarization of one pulsar's beam as it passed through the magnetic field of the other.

This is extreme astrophysics at its best.

There is very much likely more double pulsars out there, but maybe only one beams at us, or none beam at us.

So, this is the only one we have so far ....

My latest for #SpaceAustralia

https://www.spaceaustralia.com/feature/unveiling-extreme-physics-galaxys-only-double-pulsar-system

M. Kramer/MPIfR

NASA’s latest audacious planetary mission, Europa Clipper, has launched and started its five-and-a-half-year journey to the Jovian system. The target of this mission is the small, icy moon Europa, a world that offers a tantalising possibility that it may be habitable.

Dr. Helen Maynard-Casely examines the path that led to the agency’s largest interplanetary spacecraft to date, and how insights from four historical missions built the case for studying this moon in particular.

https://www.spaceaustralia.com/news/europa-clipper-sailing-new-discoveries-habitability

#SpaceAustralia #EuropaClipper #Astrodon #SpaceExploration #Europa

New Horizons/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

Very excited to see a southern hemisphere photographer and photo take out this win!

Also, we really need to appreciate our magnetic field more IMO. Not only does it protect us, it plays a role in us seeing these beautiful curtains of light!

Nice write-up here from Helen Manyard-Casely for #SpaceAustralia about Larryn Rae’s spectacular shot of the red aurora which took out the best in category at the Astronomy Photography of the Year awards - first for Aurora Australis.

https://www.spaceaustralia.com/news/aurora-australis-has-its-moment

One of the most common questions I get is "What's the best entry-level telescope I should buy?"

People often see the beautiful images we share online from the cosmos, but traditionally, #astrophotography has been expensive, complex and requires a commitment to a steep learning curve.

Now, smart telescopes are breaking down these barriers, making the sky more accessible to wider audiences.

I've got both the Seestar S50 and the traditional setup and did an astrophotography comparison, so wrote up my thoughts in this #SpaceAustralia article: https://www.spaceaustralia.com/news/democratising-astrophotograpy-seestar-s50

With Christmas around the corner - don't waste your money on cheaper alternatives, the Seestar S50 is the best entry-level telescope for any person - esp. those with zero prior knowledge of astrophotography or astronomy.

Check out my compared pics below.

A new long-period radio transient! The population grows!

GLEAM-X J 0704−37 has a period of 2.9 hours (longest period yet detected!) and is linearly polarized ... and ... it likely has an identified companion (an M3 Dwarf).

Discovered in the archival low-frequency data from
the MWA.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.15757

The reason I am excited about these is because we don't know what they are as yet! Pulsars have periods that are much smaller (faster rotators) than these things.

So we are seeing a new population of slower rotators emerging. Read more about it here: https://www.spaceaustralia.com/index.php/feature/population-strange-slow-rotating-astrophysical-objects-grows

Also chatted with @stilgherrian about this in the recent pod if you prefer to listen: https://stilgherrian.com/edict/00228/

*** SCIENCE GOODIE***

A few weeks back wrote an article about the news of the Intermediate-Mass Black Hole inferred at the centre of Omega Cent. and wrote how we can use millisecond pulsars to really zone in on it.

https://www.spaceaustralia.com/news/omega-centurais-monster-black-hole

Well, a team did this & say it might NOT be an IMBH!

https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.00939

This is very cool and I hope it evolves into a fun, science battle!

ESO

I think it is 'bout time we declared today (Aug 6) International Pulsars Day since today was the day that Dame Prof. Jocelyn Bell Burnell (aka Queen JBB) discovered them!

I write about #Pulsars a lot (as it is my field of study) so here are a few #SpaceAustralia links if you wish to read more about them:

https://www.spaceaustralia.com/feature/55-years-pulsar-science

https://www.spaceaustralia.com/index.php/feature/closing-earths-closest-millisecond-pulsar

https://www.spaceaustralia.com/feature/australian-scientists-help-uncover-cosmic-gravitational-rumblings

https://www.spaceaustralia.com/index.php/news/science-talk-what-are-pulsar-planets

https://www.spaceaustralia.com/index.php/news/catching-spider-pulsar-act

I've also included a couple of graphics to celebrate (and in the next post too) that you are more than welcome to use with creditation.

Astronomers: Omega Centauri - a massive globular cluster orbiting our Galaxy - likely has a 20,000 solar mass black hole in its core.

The globular cluster, which contains approx. 10 million stars is thought to be the remnant core of a former dwarf galaxy, now cannibalised by the Milky Way.

These new findings might provide the 'missing link' between stellar-mass black holes and supermassive black holes.

I had a chat with The University of Queensland Dr Holger Baumgardt who played a direct role in providing the theoretical modelling and investigations into the stellar velocities around the monster black hole. My latest for #SpaceAustralia

https://www.spaceaustralia.com/news/omega-centurais-monster-black-hole

ESO / ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. Häberle (MPIA)

New Reads!

Australian astronomers have used Murriyang (Parkes radio telescope) data to make the most precise measurements of the nearest millisecond pulsar to Earth.

This new data was then used by researchers using the NICER telescope aboard the International Space Station to help further constrain the mass, radius and equations of state of matter of the brightest millisecond pulsar in the sky.

Wrote a little article outlining these new results on #SpaceAustralia

https://www.spaceaustralia.com/feature/closing-earths-closest-millisecond-pulsar

C. Knox/OzGrav/SwinburneUni