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Dr Becky Smethurst
@drbecky_
Astrophysicist researching how supermassive black holes affect galaxies (s/h). I get overly enthusiastic about space on YouTube: youtube.com/drbecky
Oxford, England
Joined March 2009
Posts
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    It’s publication day 🥳 my new book “A Brief History of Black Holes” is now out in the world! It covers many common misconceptions around black holes by using the history of our understanding. Here’s a sneak peek! Grab a copy (hardback, audio, ebook): hyperurl.co/DrBecky
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    I can't stop flipping back and forth between the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescope images of the Carina Nebula. In the Hubble image the dust is just this wall that looks solid, and JWST has revealed the structure in that dust that has remained hidden for so long.
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    An astrophysicist’s nervous live reaction to the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope from a kitchen cooking a Christmas turkey in Lancashire, England - we like the word NOMINAL! 🥳 #JWST #JamesWebbSpaceTelescope #UnfoldTheUniverse @NASAWebb @ESA_Webb
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    My favourite fact about the BIG gravitational wave news, is that it was only made possible because we finally know the precise position of Jupiter! 🤯 Thanks to @chrislintott for flagging this cool fact #pulsartimingarray #nanograv #GravitationalWaves @NASAJuno
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    CAN'T. STOP. WATCHING. Comparison of JWST resolution (70 mas, 0.00002°) compared to Spitzer (2as, 0.0005°) a space telescope that also viewed the universe in infrared light
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    On the NASA live stream, they just said that the resolution achieved with JWST was 0.0000194° (i.e. the smallest thing they can spot spans 0.0000194° of 360° round the sky). 28 TIMES BETTER THAN Spitzer (also an infrared space telescope) which had a resolution of 0.00056°
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    An astrophysicist’s live reaction to the reveal of the image of the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy, the Milky Way 😍🥳😱@ehtelescope #EventHorizonTelescope
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    BIG NEWS IN PHYSICS! The first ever evidence for light year long gravitational waves that *might* be due to merging supermassive black holes. All possible thanks to pulsar timing arrays, explained in this video 👇 #GravitationalWaves #NANOGrav #pulsars
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    🤯🤯🤯 It’s like the Hubble Ultra Deep Field turned up to 11! The sheer number of galaxies in this image is astounding (image size is same as a grain of sand at arms length!) - PLUS LENSES! No doubt the most distant galaxy ever found is in there I bet 100+ new papers just here
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    Number 23 on trending on YouTube?!?! That’s never happened before! 🥳🥳🥳 plus I just passed 400,000 subscribers 🤯 Thanks all for being as excited about the James Webb Space Telescope as I am! @NASAWebb @ESA_Webb youtu.be/1nOX66G5q9E
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    For everyone like me who's excited for JWST to observe the 7 planet system TRAPPIST-1 - it did so yesterday morning for over 5 hours 👀 From the published JWST observing schedule here: stsci.edu/files/live/sit…
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    I am absolutely THRILLED that I have been awarded the @RoyalAstroSoc's Winton Award for research by a post-doctoral fellow in astronomy whose career has shown the most promising development
    Replying to @RoyalAstroSoc
    The 2022 Winton Award for Astronomy is awarded to Dr Rebecca Smethurst (@drbecky_) of @OxfordPhysics for making major advances in the field of galaxy formation and evolution.
    Image of Dr Rebecca Smethurst with text reading "Winton Award for Astronomy 2022". RAS logo in top right corner.
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    I cannot stress how incredible this is. They detected the tiniest bit of starlight that came from the star and then passed through the planet’s atmosphere on its way to us; then managed to detect the tiny bit in the light that was absorbed by the water in that atmosphere🤯#k218b
    So we found water vapor in the atmosphere of a 9 Earth-mass exoplanet in the habitable zone! After observing 8 transits of K2-18b with HST/WFC3, we (led by Björn Benneke) find a significant water feature: arxiv.org/abs/1909.04642
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    There's a pseudo-science article that's gone viral recently claiming that JWST images are showing the Big Bang "didn't happen". It’s all complete tosh. More on this in Thursday's Night Sky News video about what JWST data is actually showing and what it means 👍
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