Dr Mike Kuhn's Avatar

Dr Mike Kuhn

@mikeakuhn.bsky.social

Astronomer interested in star formation and statistics. Senior Lecturer at the University of Hertfordshire. Formerly Caltech, Universidad de Valparaíso, and Penn State. https://star.herts.ac.uk/~kuhn/

293 Followers  |  337 Following  |  36 Posts  |  Joined: 10.07.2023  |  2.0017

Latest posts by mikeakuhn.bsky.social on Bluesky

I wonder if some of these might be jokes.

28.07.2025 14:34 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

A good strategy is just to pick bright colors, use high contrast, and consider patterns for shading in addition to colour.

static.primary.prod.gcms.the-infra.com/static/site/...

21.07.2025 18:19 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 2    📌 0

Giving a Zoom talk at NAM this afternoon on 'The Imprint of Clustered Star Formation on Kinematics of Young Stars in the Solar Neighbourhood' (room TLC116; Anne Buckner's Star Clusters session)
🔭☄️🧪 #galactic

07.07.2025 10:07 — 👍 9    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0
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🎉 #50YearsOfESA: for half a century, we've been serving Europe as its space agency and inspiring its citizens. Join us this anniversary year to reflect not only on our past achievements, but also on our future perspectives!

30.05.2025 08:01 — 👍 501    🔁 91    💬 7    📌 16
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About The UK & Ireland Discs Meeting 2025

We are hosting the 2025 UK & Ireland Discs meeting at the University of Hertfordshire (8-10 September). Topics include discs of all sorts, but especially protoplanetary discs and white dwarf debris discs.

Abstract submission deadline is 15 May:
ukidiscs.github.io/discs2025/
🔭🧪⚛️☄️

07.05.2025 12:38 — 👍 11    🔁 4    💬 0    📌 0
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Skylarks and other birds (Hatfield, Hertfordshire)

04.05.2025 07:25 — 👍 4    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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The time of year where England turns into fairyland. #Bluebells around the corner from my office at @herts.ac.uk. #uniofherts

15.04.2025 12:52 — 👍 3    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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First bluebells in UH’s coppiced woods.

31.03.2025 17:08 — 👍 8    🔁 2    💬 0    📌 0
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Airplane + internal reflection image of the sun (upside down) from my phone camera 🔭

29.03.2025 11:28 — 👍 18    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0
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Eclipse, as seen using shopping receipts. 🔭

29.03.2025 11:20 — 👍 12    🔁 2    💬 0    📌 0
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Looking forward to a high-resolution view of Tr 14 with JWST pre-imaging.

27.03.2025 23:01 — 👍 2    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0

🔭

15.03.2025 20:39 — 👍 3    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0
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A Deep, High-Angular Resolution 3D Dust Map of the Southern Galactic Plane We present a deep, high-angular resolution 3D dust map of the southern Galactic plane over $239^\circ < \ell < 6^\circ$ and $|b| < 10^\circ$ built on photometry from the DECaPS2 survey, in combination...

Very excited to start using this dust map! You can query it with the dustmaps Python package. #galactic

05.03.2025 08:46 — 👍 11    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0
Their dust map at various different distance ranges. Note how good the angular resolution is.

Their dust map at various different distance ranges. Note how good the angular resolution is.

A top-down view of their 3D dust map, also compared to the Bayestar19 map (which this map complements really well.)

A top-down view of their 3D dust map, also compared to the Bayestar19 map (which this map complements really well.)

A schematic overview of their pipeline. It's cool how much open source software they use!

A schematic overview of their pipeline. It's cool how much open source software they use!

So many cool new #galactic papers came out today! ☄️

Paper #1 on my list is by @catherinezucker.bsky.social et al. They use the DECaPS2 photometric survey to create a massive, 6.1 billion voxel 3D catalogue of dust in the southern galactic plane! It complements the existing Bayestar map really well.

05.03.2025 08:45 — 👍 20    🔁 1    💬 1    📌 0

Here, in the UK, this doesn’t seem to be a (de facto) requirement. We still get lots of applicants, but I can think of many of examples of PhD students who didn’t have papers before starting their PhD. (Possibly because the whole timescale is shorter.)

27.02.2025 19:28 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0
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Full moon from St Albans.

13.02.2025 07:57 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Are these blooming already?

06.02.2025 15:30 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0
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Our next talk on Café Scientifique - Harpenden would be effects of micro-organisms on climate change. Please see the attached flyer for details, and hope that you can join us.

18.01.2025 18:46 — 👍 3    🔁 3    💬 0    📌 0
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P.E.I. homeowner captures sound and video of meteorite strike on camera, and scientists believe it's a first | CBC News A man in Prince Edward Island got doubly lucky last July, recording a meteorite's impact on his home security cameras. The space rock also landed in the exact spot he'd been standing minutes earlier.

"If I'd have seen it, I probably would've been standing right there, so it probably would've ripped me in half."

Wow!

www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

14.01.2025 18:10 — 👍 211    🔁 66    💬 11    📌 24
An artist's impression of the Gaia spacecraft.

An artist's impression of the Gaia spacecraft.

The @esa.int Gaia satellite will take its final scientific measurements on Wednesday. 🔭

This will conclude a 12 year series of continuous observations.

Larger Gaia data releases are still in progress, but Gaia has already had a HUGE impact on our understanding of the #milkyway.

(Image: ESA)

12.01.2025 17:25 — 👍 448    🔁 123    💬 17    📌 27
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Aurora over my building #Hatfield

10.05.2024 22:48 — 👍 22    🔁 4    💬 2    📌 0
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Morning commute. #Herts

02.05.2024 22:26 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Just got my copy of the Protostars and Planets VII book! 🤩

14.02.2024 17:09 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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The 2022-2023 accretion outburst of the young star V1741 Sgr V1741 Sgr (= SPICY 71482/Gaia22dtk) is a Classical T Tauri star on the outskirts of the Lagoon Nebula. After at least a decade of stability, in mid-2022, the optical source brightened by ~3 mag...

A SPICY new EXor outburst!
arxiv.org/abs/2401.09522
One intriguing result is that, while the outburst faded, TiO absorption appeared but then disappeared, a behavior not previously seen. This unexpected finding places strong constraints on where the outburst emission originates.
🔭 🧪⚛️

20.01.2024 15:48 — 👍 4    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Solar, Stellar and Time-domain Physics Star formation and Stellar Evolution PhD Projects.

If you're applying for grad school in astronomy, the University of Hertfordshire (just north of London) is accepting PhD applications (due by the end of the month). I have two projects (linked below), one on mapping the Galaxy and the other on the variability of young stars. 🔭 🧪

08.01.2024 13:34 — 👍 3    🔁 2    💬 0    📌 0

A couple of weeks ago the first paper of the XUE collaboration was accepted 🔭. We are studying the properties of disks in extreme UV radiation environments and trying to figure out what massive stars do to the forming sites of Earth-like planets.

www.mpia.de/news/science...

30.11.2023 09:01 — 👍 9    🔁 3    💬 1    📌 0
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Aardachtige planeten kunnen zelfs ontstaan onder barre omstandigheden

www.astronomie.nl/nieuws/aarda...

30.11.2023 09:56 — 👍 5    🔁 6    💬 0    📌 0
Nuclear Astrophysics – Prof Christian Iliadis
This special talk was given at the UH Centre for Astrophysics Research. For our regular seminar programme, please see: https://www.herts.ac.uk/research/centr... Nuclear Astrophysics – Prof Christian Iliadis

Enjoyed an engaging talk by Prof Christian Iliadis from UNC on experimentation and statistical modelling in nuclear astrophysics. 🔭 🧪

27.11.2023 16:54 — 👍 7    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0

Interested in a PhD in astronomy? Check out the University of Hertfordshire's projects for this year, including several in star formation.

www.herts.ac.uk/research/cen...
Application deadline 1 Feb 2024.
🔭 🧪

24.11.2023 09:29 — 👍 9    🔁 6    💬 0    📌 0

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