Jen Gupta

I'm terrible at being online these days but last year I somehow persuaded STFC (the UK astrophysics research funding council) to give me one of their Leadership Fellowships in Public Engagement and today I had my first project meeting with my team and I'm very excited!

Honoured and excited to have been elected President of the Society for Popular Astronomy this afternoon, taking over from the wonderful Prof Lucie Green! The SPA is the UK's leading entry-level astronomical society, find out more at www.popastro.com

Watching astronauts Suni Williams and Nick Hague work on repairs of our baby, X-Ray 🔭 NICER!!

streaming live from space:
www.youtube.com/live/RYPk8fz...

🧪

I talked about SaxaVord and UK vertical launches and the possibility of the first launch happening this year on the radio yesterday and then this news comes out today! It feels like there's so much happening in the space sector right now, it's hard to keep up!

ICYMI … the NRAO is on The Sky!

[radio astronomy is slowly taking over the socials and this is the future envisioned dot tumblr]

Also doing the radio today made me realise how much I miss doing this kind of thing! Hit me up if you too need an enthusiastic astronomer to nerd out about space on your show!

A photo of me in the radio studio with Chris Jarvis the presenter. We are standing next to each other in front of a BBC Radio Solent background and smiling at the camera. Chris is on the left of the photo in a blue t-shirt and black trousers. I'm on the right of the photo wearing a red and black check shirt over a black t-shirt and blue jeans. The radio desk is in the foreground of the photo with a purple BBC Radio Solent microphone hanging down.

I had a blast talking to Chris Jarvis (of Cbeebies fame!) on BBC Radio Solent this morning about lots of exciting things that are happening in space this year. Putting this photo out there for when they get us to do the next series of Cbeebies Stargazing together 😉

A photo of the outside of the BBC Southampton building with a big black sign on the wall that has the BBC Radio Solent logo on it.

At the BBC Radio Solent studio this morning to talk about space in 2025. Think I'm on around 11.10, UK peeps should be able to listen online!

Spending a bit of time reading up on highly protected marine areas and I think this is another entry to "things I never thought would form part of my future job when I did a PhD in astrophysics"

A photo of a brilliant blue sky with a faint gibbous moon visible in the bottom right quadrant between phone lines. There are house roofs visible at the bottom of the photo.

A proper daytime moon spotted on today's lunchtime dog walk 🤩

(link to buy here - www.dunelm.com/product/satu...)

A photo of a Saturn shaped lampshade hanging from the ceiling. It's made from rattan. The sphere of the planet is a natural light brown wood colour and the ring is a dark green/black colour.

The perfect ceiling lampshade doesn't exi-

Cold nights = clear skies! Driving to get the kids and spotted a gorgeous crescent moon with an incredibly bright Venus nearby, then Jupiter above Orion who's just peeking up over the horizon.

My aurorawatch notifications have been pinging this afternoon - completely cloudy here (and possibly too far south) but if you're in the north and have clear skies it might be worth keeping an eye out!

A photo taken from the floor looking up at the underneath of a top bunk bunk bed. There's a black Institute of Physics lanyard looped around the railing with a colourful Christmas stocking attached to the other end.

When your kid has a different bedroom setup since last year and you suddenly realise you have nowhere to hang the stocking - it's an Institute of Physics lanyard to the rescue!

Aw thanks! ❤️

...I can't wait to get stuck into things in 2025 but first a much needed break for 2 weeks where I'm going to switch my brain off!

(only joking, I've got a super exciting secret freelance thing to work on over the Christmas break!)

A selfie of me outside my office building. I'm to the left of the photo wearing a Christmas jumper with a black jacket over it. You can see the building behind me with a sign that says "Dennis Sciama Building" and "Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation".

And that's me done with work for 2024! It's been quite the year - a challenging time for the UK higher education sector with redundancies and cost saving measures all over the place, but also a brilliant year personally for me as I grew my team and won grants to do exciting projects...

A photo of a mini Mars Rover model on a wooden desk.

A photo of a strip of coloured LED lights snaked around on a grey carpet. The first LEDs at the top are off and then the LEDs go from blue to orange as they go down.

Last week of work and everyone seemed to get their toys out! A mini Mars rover and a work in progress from @trayford.bsky.social

I love the work that my colleague @trayford.bsky.social is doing with the sonification of astronomical data! Truly groundbreaking stuff. You can read more about it in the blog post he links in his post.

I think I'm going to have to look into something like this, thanks for the recommendation!

Yeah I do the former for internal one-on-one but this often happens when trying to arrange meetings with externals and/or when my team have looked at our availablity first and then are offering times we can all do. Will look into fantastical, thanks!

Thank you! I was beginning to doubt myself - it's happened twice this week already!

OK friends, can someone please tell me how to say in an email when I'm free so people actually understand me?? I say I'm free apart from 2-3pm, they send me an invite for 2pm. I say I'm free 9-11am or 12-5pm they ask to meet at 11am. I give up!

Co-presented our internal seminar on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion yesterday & it dredged up a memory of the time I was in the pub during my PhD and our visiting colloquium speaker (a senior academic) became convinced I was Latina and wouldn't let it go as if I didn't know my own heritage 🙃

A photo looking down at a wooden advent calendar in the shape of a rocket, with two packets of small chocolates next to it on the right. The rocket is green with a glittery red top and fins. Most of the rocket has drawers on it which are either green or white with Christmas designs on them.

It's the 30th November which means it's time to refill the most excellent advent calendar that has ever existed! 🚀

Oh man I didn't know that! It's been years since I've been up there, might have to drag the family out one weekend!

I had no idea about this - just up the road from where I am in Winchester! Will have to go see it next time we're in Andover!

Ah I should have! I went straight for the rough number in the observable universe instead - 100,000,000,000 stars in a galaxy multiplied by 100,000,000,000 galaxies in the observable universe (based on Hubble Ultra Deep Field)

Spending the morning in a school with a bunch of 9/10 year olds talking about space is one of my all-time favourite things to do. Questions today included "what happened before the Big Bang?" "how can birds fly if gravity is pulling them down?" and "how many stars are there in space?" 🤩