🔭 ✨Boring Astronomy: A Very Exciting Week in Astronomy! ✨🔭
Behind the Scenes of the Science of the Cosmos
I am Alessandro. I have been in astronomy since 2002.
If you are eager to have a playful attitude towards astronomy; you want to grow your interest in this science and you want to know how astronomy works “behind the scenes”, this is the place for you.
I am planning on sending this Newsletter every Sunday.
Mistakes will be made; I count on your feedback to make this newsletter a better place and provide you with increasingly better content.
You can follow my vlog on TikTok or my YouTube Channel .
You can find Boring Astronomy’s material on Etsy.
📰 This week in Astronomy
There are weeks when things seem nice and calm and there are weeks when everyday there is something massive happening. This week belonged to the latter group.
On Monday, there was the publication of the LSST Data Preview 1. On Wednesday, we heard about the new interstellar object passing through the Solar System. All this while conference season is at full swing.
This time, cutting through the hype is going to be hard.
And what best way to cut through the hype than start a newsletter dedicated to AI in Astronomy? The first publication will be on Wednesday. Are you going to miss it?
I3/ATLAS: a comet from outside of the Solar System
This made it even to mainstream news outlets: the ATLAS collaboration has discovered a new object which is coming from outside of the Solar System.
I3/ATLAS (hurray for astronomical naming schemes!) was discovered when it was still beyond the orbit of Jupiter. It will not really get close to the Sun. In fact, it may barely cross the orbit of Mars but the parameters of the orbit are still being determined.
The best source of information is from people actively working in the field and is nicely gathered here: Discovery and Preliminary Characterization of a Third Interstellar Object: 3I/ATLAS
LSST Data Preview 1
Only one week ago, we saw the first images from the Large Survey of Space and Time. "Boring Astronomy" was born exactly with the idea that, yes, pretty pictures are pretty but the interesting stuff is something else.
On Monday, 30th June 2025, the LSST team shared the interesting stuff: the Data Preview 1. This is not done with the final camera but the camera is the only difference. The data are accessible here and some papers have already appeared on arXiv:
Variability-finding in Rubin Data Preview 1 with LSDB
An outer-disk SX Phe variable star in Rubin Data Preview 1
47 Tuc in Rubin Data Preview 1: Exploring Early LSST Data and Science Potential
The last is one particularly interesting because it shows the performance of the system in terms of image quality and depth.
📚😃Astronomical paper of the Week
Everyday, I check the papers which are published on astro-ph.
This is a good way to keep in touch with the latest news.
A word of caution: many of the papers published there have not passed the refereeing process.
In this section, I pick a paper for you.
If you want me to comment on a paper, just send it to me by the Friday prior to the publication of the newsletter.
Here is a series of papers which nearly made it to "astronomical paper of the week":
This week’s paper is "Envisioning the Distance Ladder in the Era of the Habitable Worlds Observatory (Anand et al.)"
🤩Why is it interesting?
The second most difficult thing to do in astronomy is measuring distances. We have several methods, each with pros and cons. During my PhD, John Danziger developed a course showcasing 24 different ways to measure distances!
The concept of "distance ladder" is that you can use the overlap between methodologies to get a continuous distance system.
The Hubble Space Telescope was named after Hubble because it was to be used to measure cepheids (pulsating stars whose period is related to their intrinsic brightness). It ended up being instrumental in the study of thermonuclear supernovae (another distance indicator).
🤨 What is the paper about?
The Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO, I am sure it will change name at least another time in the next 20 years) is a project proposed for the 2040s. It is expected to observe in the same wavelengths as Hubble but with a much larger primary mirror.
Having a large mirror in space allows you to do two things: collect a lot of light and have sharper images.
The following figure shows what can be expected: resolving individual stars at 100Mpc! For comparison, this is more than 1000 times the distance of the Andromeda galaxy.
The paper is not particularly difficult to read and it discusses nicely the limitations of the current instrumentation as well as the opportunities given by new projects like the HWO.
🤖🖥AI in Astronomy
Artificial Intelligence is entering all aspects of our lives. In this section, we try to share useful prompts, use cases, and reflections which may help you using AI in a constructive and engaging way.
Two more papers about using AI in astronomy:
Atmospheric model-trained machine learning selection and classification of ultracool TY dwarfs
Extraction of Physical Parameters of RRab Variables using Neural Network based Interpolator
The first one uses different ML algorithms to study cool stars. It is a fascinating approach to try to squeeze the sauce out of the data.
The second is perhaps more focused in scope and the use of neural networks in time-domain astrophysics is very interesting because there are complications which are inherent to the data.
There may be another two which I skipped but I think it gives a feeling of what is brewing.
You may also want to check this video from Andy Stapleton:
I may disagree on a minor part but the main arguments are very important and I agree 100%.
As commented above, more news about artificial intelligence, machine learning and astronomical data will be in a new publication. It will be an occasion to dive in new ways to analyse astronomical data and take full advantage of new technologies.
📈📊Astronomy tip of the Week
This week's tip is inspired by a conversation which I had with a younger colleague.
The best way to keep track of what is going on in astronomy is checking astro-ph every day.
I have been doing it since I started my master thesis, back in 2001.
It can be daunting having to check about 100 astronomical papers every work day.
There are two easy tricks:
register to receive the list of new papers via email; it makes it easier to keep track, especially if one is travelling or, God forbids, on holidays
if you are starting, just skim quickly through the titles; look for the topic you are really interested in and ignore everything else
Can one do it with a "ctrl+F"? Just check for one or two keywords? Yes, but it narrows down the search very much.
Can one do it with AI? Certainly and I am testing it. It is a good approach if you only care about a specific topic.
To explore different topics and to have a didactic approach, I still pick the "astronomical paper of the week" by hand. It gives me the freedom to be curious.
🫣❓What is on the horizon?
Big conferences, big news or big events.
Brazilian Astronomical Society Scientific Meeting, Caxambu (MG), 28 Sep - 2 Oct 2025