Shashank Dholakia

If you're on the postdoc market for exoplanet/ML applications--strong recommendation to apply for this job at Macquarie, Ben is great!!

What’s the (Lagrange) point? There are a few locations in the solar system where the push and pull of gravity mellows out and you can orbit in (relative) peace. Read all about these islands of tranquility we call Lagrange points!

From Ryan White @astroryan.bsky.social : There are a few locations in the solar system where the push and pull of gravity mellows out and you can orbit in (relative) peace. Read all about these islands of tranquility we call Lagrange points! ⚛️ 🔭 ☄️ 🧪
astrobites.org/2026/01/29/w...

Stories from #SpaceAustralia in 2025:

Checking out the God of Chaos — Apep — using JWST and the VLT.

This unique triple stellar system is wild!

Some nice work on one of the papers here led by fellow Macquarie University student Ryan White!

🔭

6 days of sunspots evolution.
AR4296 and AR4294

OK, this is getting really tricky to arrange. :-}

#astronomy #astrophotography

Tiger spider (Trichonephila plumipes) (7/N)

Unknown, probably a moth caterpillar of some kind (6/N)

Cuckoo wasp (genus Primeuchroeus) (5/N)

Variable lynx spider (4/N)

Australasian swamphen (3/N)

Eastern treerunner mantis (2/N)

Jumping spider with four big eyes visible inside a webbed cave

One thing I will miss about UQ is the incredible biodiversity on campus. Thread of all the animals I photographed yesterday along one stretch of railing about 10m long.

(warning to the squeamish about bugs)

Starting with this bronze hopper (Helpis minitabunda): (1/N)

#bugsky #nature #spidersky 🌿

A starfield has a large and unusual red and orange nebula in the middle. The nebula seems to contain not only swirls but also nearly transparent shells. Please see the explanation for more detailed information.

🔭 Apep: Unusual Dust Shells from Webb

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, JWST; Science: Y. Han (Caltech), R. White (Macquarie U.); Image Processing: A. Pagan (STScI)

apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25112...

I love this way of explaining papers!! Check this out by @astroryan.bsky.social !

Webb First to Show 4 Dust Shells 'Spiraling' Apep, Limits Long Orbit - NASA Science NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has delivered a first of its kind: a crisp mid-infrared image of a system of four serpentine spirals of dust, one expanding

Very excited to share the NASA/ESA/STScI press release of our team's work on Apep! It's a terrific writeup, complete with a brand new beautiful visualisation of the nebula geometry.
1/? ⚛️🔭🧪
science.nasa.gov/missions/web...

More h-alpha solar timelapses. Here's a loop of plasma twisting off AR4247 from yesterday around 21:30UTC. This might have been part of a small C-class flare. I think it looks like a tornado on the Sun!

🔭 #astronomy #astrophotography

This is exactly the reason every mission and scientist should have a wide-open data policy! PUNCH has specific science objectives (looking at the solar wind) – but in the right hands the data can reveal amazing things NOT part of our original science. Giving those hands access is best for all. ☀️🔭🧪

I think he refers to her at his Fuhi which (in gujarati) is part of a whole vocabulary of extended family relations that doesn't translate well and gets compressed into aunt/uncle

I'm still confused by the cousin-x-removed in English tbh

Absolutely delighted to read this news after an anxious wait - Christian Schwab and I will be looking for a postdoc on extremely precise radial velocities at Macquarie soon!

Congratulations to everyone on what looks like an unusually large haul of projects for astronomy.

Just after sunset to the west! The star Alphecca (alpha CrB) is in this photo, so it's quite close to the constellation corona borealis

Forgot the astrophoto tag!
#astrophotography

Really cool astrobite about a really cool paper!

My attempt at Comet A6 Lemmon from subpar conditions last night. Wispy clouds still visible in the final image. Was surprisingly bright, p sure I could see it with the unaided eye! Easy through binocs.

Canon R5, RF100mm f2.8
19 images, ISO 800, 30s f3.2

🔭 #astronomy #comet

I took this w a monochrome camera & refractor w H-alpha etalon (Daystar Quark). 800 frames every 30s, best 5% stacked. Autostakkert, ImPPG for alignment, Wavesharp for sharpening and final warp stabilizer in Premiere. Humans have poor acuity in the real deep red H-alpha so colored orange instead.

1.5 hour timelapse of the Sun in hydrogen-alpha. I set this up quite late in the day and the Sun was pretty quiet so I was surprised how much evolution is visible in the prominences, granulation and the active region. I'll have to try more of this.

Video is set to loop forwards, then in reverse

🔭

Image reconstruction with the JWST Interferometer Flying on board the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) above Earth's turbulent atmosphere, the Aperture Masking Interferometer (AMI) on the NIRISS instrument is the highest-resolution infrared interfer...

In a companion paper, PhD student @maxecharles.bsky.social applies this to reconstructing complex images, not just fields of dots. We apply a regularised maximum likelihood method to restore clean, diffraction limited imaging by fitting directly to pixel level data.

AMIGO: a Data-Driven Calibration of the JWST Interferometer The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) hosts a non-redundant Aperture Masking Interferometer (AMI) in its Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) instrument, providing the only dedicate...

In the first paper Louis Desdoigts (ex PhD in my group, now Leiden postdoc) learns a model for the entire AMI system's optical physics together with a neural network 'effective detector model' the sensor, which suffers from a serious 'brighter-fatter effect' that blurs images at the pixel level.

How we sharpened the James Webb telescope’s vision from a million kilometres away The only Australian hardware on board the legendary telescope is starting to fulfil its duties.

Thrilled to have two years' of work out, in a pair of papers led by @gradientrider.bsky.social and @maxecharles.bsky.social.

We've built a data-driven calibration of the James Webb Interferometer to near its fundamental limits for high-res imaging - explainer at @aunz.theconversation.com!

Scientists develop first ‘accurate blood test’ to detect chronic fatigue syndrome Research could offer hope for ME patients – but some experts urge caution and say more studies needed

ME/CFS is a devastating condition that has long been denied, dismissed, psychologised and underdiagnosed. Research is at last starting to catch up with it, with glimmers of hope for those who have been left untreated for so long.
There's a huge BUT coming ...🧵
www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

Rotation Periods for Stars in Open Cluster NGC 6819 From Kepler IRIS Light Curves We present an updated catalog of stellar rotation periods for the 2.5 Gyr open cluster NGC 6819 using the Kepler IRIS light curves from superstamp data. Our analysis uses Gaussian Process modeling to ...

Okay people, welcome my new paper into the world!!! With Isabel Colman and @farrwill.bsky.social

arxiv.org/abs/2510.02255

Yeah, it was labor intensive for sure. 15 mins for each video plus >100gb, but I'm a grad student so I've got time 😆