@taramurphy.bsky.social
Professor and Head of School of Physics at the University of Sydney. Radio astronomer looking for transients and gravitational wave events. OzGrav CI. Teaching physics and the apocalypse. https://taramurphy.github.io Views expressed here are my own :)
Reposting in #RadioAstronomy!
26.02.2026 08:48 — 👍 2 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
The full scientific article is here:
ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2026arXi...
Published in the Astrophysical Journal.
ASKAP keeps finding transients :)
Interesting result from my talented @ozgrav.bsky.social + @sydney.edu.au PhD student Ashna Gulati.
Strong evidence for radio detection of an orphan afterglow from a gamma-ray burst
OR...
a tidal disruption event from an intermediate mass black hole.
🔭 ☄️ 🧪
theconversation.com/a-cosmic-exp...
Illustrated graphic with the boot-shaped Rubin Observatory atop its site on Cerro Pachón beneath a sparkling night sky and the glowing band of the Milky Way stretching from lower left to upper right. Sprinkled throughout are many "Data alert!" popups, labeled with icons that represent supernovae, asteroids, hungry black holes, and more.
A 3-by-4 grid of grayscale astronomical images zoomed in on single objects. From left to right, the columns are labeled Template, New image, and difference. From top to bottom, the rows are labeled supernova, variable star, active galactic nucleus, and solar system object.
The largest spot-the-difference effort EVER has begun!🚨
On the night of Feb 24, NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory officially released its first ~800,000 public alerts of detected changes in the night sky!🔍
A new era of discovery is here✨ 🔭🧪☄️
🔗: rubinobservatory.org/news/first-a...
A new map offers new perspective on the city, revealing the steady, ever-present natural radiation emerging from the ground beneath our feet.
👉 Read the full story: theconversation.com/the-gro...
Radiation dose rate map for metropolitan Sydney. Colour scale from dark blue (low) to yellow (higher). Original image is in the paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0265931X2600024X
A map of radiation levels across Sydney
⚛️
The full scientific article is here:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Cartoon summarising a new article about radioactivity levels in Sydney, by physicist Laura Manenti. The full article is: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0265931X2600024X
A very interesting article about radioactivity levels in Sydney (mainly due to the different rock types underneath the city).
Mapped in detail for the first time by Laura Manenti @sydney.edu.au and undergraduate students Tengiz Ibrayev and Matilda Lawton.
www.smh.com.au/national/nsw...
⚛️
VLITE Marks 11 Years of Capturing the Dynamic Radio Sky
A collaboration between the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and the NRAO celebrates over a decade of commensal observing with the NSF Very Large Array. @usnrl.bsky.social
#Astronomy #RadioAstronomy
Tomorrow marks the 10th anniversary of the announcement of our first detection!
Back in 2016, excitement was building with everyone getting into the spirit with #ChirpForLIGO (thank you @astrokatie.com!)
Reminisce with this supercut www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uzi...
#GW10Years ⚛️🧪🔭
This is fun, and I am... in my expected location, amongst #Astronomy people.
Two of my closest neighbours are @astrolaura.com and @cosmicpudding.bsky.social - very appropriate!
And is that @funfactscience.com just out of view...
🔭 ☄️ 🧪
Astronaut Bruce McCandless about 100 yards from the space shuttle during an EVA, with no tether. The Earth is bright and blue below him, with a scattering of feathery white clouds across the surface. McCandless is suspended above, small and white against the black backdrop of space.
In this photo, taken #OTD in 1984, Bruce McCandless is an *football field away from the space shuttle with no safety tether.*
No astronaut, before or since, has been that far away from their ship while in orbit. (2/n)
Astronaut Bruce McCandless about 100 yards from the space shuttle during an EVA, with no tether. The Earth is bright and blue below him, with a scattering of feathery white clouds across the surface. McCandless is suspended above, small and white against the black backdrop of space.
Another shot of Bruce McCandless during an EVA, this time much closer to the shuttle. The Earth below him is covered in clouds. Space above the Earth is black and featureless; any stars that would be visible are washed out by the bright surface below. McCandless is in his white, clunky spacesuit with its reflective copper-colored visor and a large, blockish maneuvering unit on his back.
Bruce McCandless and Robert Stewart, mission specialists on the Space Shuttle Challenger during STS-41-B, used nitrogen-propelled maneuvering units to perform the first untethered spacewalks #OTD in 1984. 🧪 🔭 🚀
(1/n)
Images: NASA
Thank you! It’s a pity we don’t know more about which books were in the Austen family library
02.02.2026 18:34 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
And the full scientific article:
iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...
"Linda Losurdo, ... has done exactly that, producing cosmic dust in the lab from scratch. It is a feat she hopes will help shed new light on how life began on Earth."
More information in this news story:
www.theguardian.com/science/2026...
Linda Losurdo, a PhD student who is working on reverse-engineering cosmic dust in the University of Sydney lab to shed light on the building blocks of life. Photograph: University of Sydney
Picture of plasma in a tube - pink and purple on a black background. Photograph: University of Sydney
Reverse engineering cosmic dust in the lab...
Interesting new result from @sydney.edu.au plasma physics PhD student Linda Losurdo and supervisor David McKenzie.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nwvp...
⚛️ ☄️🔭 #WomenInSTEM
In today’s issue of Astronomy & Geophysics, the Royal Astronomical Society share the story of accidentally discovering a lost photograph of Carrington – bringing to light the only known photograph of the most iconic figure in solar astrophysics.
31.01.2026 22:20 — 👍 23 🔁 5 💬 1 📌 0
BREAKING: This is Richard Carrington, the first person to document solar flares on the Sun & suggest their influence on aurora at Earth. The largest solar storm on record, the Carrington Event, bares his name. But, there has been no photograph available of Carrington – until now!
31.01.2026 22:20 — 👍 80 🔁 22 💬 5 📌 9
Interesting new model for Long Period Transients, observed with three #RadioAstronomy telescopes - ASKAP, MeerKAT and the VLA!
theconversation.com/puzzling-slo...
☄️ 🔭 🧪
"While almost everything that astronomers study occurs in the vacuum of space, astronomy itself does not 'happen in a vacuum'.
Interactions between scientists, as well as outreach to members of the public, improve extensively from access to good communication tools."
Paper day! ⤵️
The night sky looks steady. It's not. 💥
In the night sky, asteroids drift. Stars pulse and flicker. Distant galaxies flare when something dramatic like a supernova is happening inside them.
The Universe is constantly changing, even when our eyes can’t see it. 🔭🧪☄️
While enjoying some stellar music, the audience will become familiar with these extraterrestrial vibrations and gain insight into how asteroseismologists measure the sizes, masses and ages of stars.
🔭
The life of stars is directed by the physical processes happening deep inside them. In this Stibbs Lecture, Professor Conny Aerts will explain how asteroseismologists peer beyond the external layers of these gaseous rotating hot balls of fire to decode the tiny stellar vibrations within.
🔭
A slide advertising the Stibbs Lecture at University of Sydney. The key information is: Join us for the 2026 Stibbs Lecture - Deciphering the Music of the Stars: Asteroseismology, presented by renowned astrophysicist Professor Conny Aerts. See main post for registration link.
Join us @sydney.edu.au for the annual Stibbs Lecture.
Deciphering the Music of the Stars: Asteroseismology, presented by astrophysicist Professor Conny Aerts.
Listen to the music of the stars, and see them in a whole new way!
Thurs 12 Feb 6pm.
Register: www.sydney.edu.au/science/news...
🔭 ⚛️ ☄️ 🧪
Welcome to Thomas Ohki, appointed Professor of Practice @sydney.edu.au #Physics!
Prof Ohki is a leader is commercialisation of quantum technologies and will (among other things) be helping train our students for the rapidly growing quantum tech industry.
www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion...
⚛️ ⚛️ ⚛️
#RadioAstronomy (well radio telescope, silhouetted against the aurora)
20.01.2026 20:26 — 👍 15 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
Transient phase space showing radio luminosity versus the product of timescale and observing frequency for different transient source classes, following Cordes et al. (2004). This is a figure from Murphy & Kaplan (2025) published in PASA. See the paper text (Figure 1 caption) for a full description.
The final version of our Dawes Review on the Dynamic Radio Sky is now published!
doi.org/10.1017/pasa...
Everything you need to know about what causes radio transients: how we detect them, the history of radio transient surveys, and what new widefield radio telescopes will do.
#RadioAstronomy 🔭☄️🧪
Transient phase space showing radio luminosity versus the product of timescale and observing frequency for different transient source classes, following Cordes et al. (2004). This is a figure from Murphy & Kaplan (2025) published in PASA. See the paper text (Figure 1 caption) for a full description.
The final version of our Dawes Review on the Dynamic Radio Sky is now published!
doi.org/10.1017/pasa...
Everything you need to know about what causes radio transients: how we detect them, the history of radio transient surveys, and what new widefield radio telescopes will do.
#RadioAstronomy 🔭☄️🧪
@scixcommunity.bsky.social - any thoughts on this? I'd like to switch over from ADS but at the moment I find it less comfortable to read.
12.01.2026 10:13 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
