Marcus Lower
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astromelow.bsky.social
Marcus Lower
@astromelow.bsky.social
720 followers 63 following 120 posts
Astrophysicist | ARC DECRA Fellow at Swinburne | Timing pulsars & magnetars | Coffee enthusiast

Website: https://mlower.github.io
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astromelow.bsky.social
What babysitting a telescope the size of Australia looks like #RadioAstronomy
Image of a computer screen filled with windows that show various telescope diagnostics and pictures of where they are pointed.
August 31, 2025 at 9:10 AM
astromelow.bsky.social
One of the more interesting conference venues!
#SKAO2025 #RadioAstronomy
June 16, 2025 at 7:31 AM
astromelow.bsky.social
Even managed to find some (VERY) good coffee! ☕️
June 15, 2025 at 3:36 PM
astromelow.bsky.social
Been a good couple of days in Germany so far
June 15, 2025 at 3:36 PM
astromelow.bsky.social
Sneak preview of what I’ll be talking about at the upcoming SKA Science Meeting in sunny Görlitz next week!!
#RadioAstronomy #DoublePulsarIsTheBestPulsar
Title slide for a presentation. Background shows two pulsars surrounded by donut-shaped magnetic fields with beams of light emanating from above their magnetic poles. A distorted grid with ripples radiating away from the pulsars is shown behind them. Title text says “Shining a light through a neutron star magnetosphere”.
June 12, 2025 at 12:53 PM
astromelow.bsky.social
Coffee days ☕️
A plain croissant sitting on a white ceramic plate, next to a cup of filter coffee A cup of filter coffee with a card explaining the kind of beans used to make it. Card says “Uganda Wine Process — Single origin, Ethiopia / Anaerobic natural guji, uraga, oromia — Winey, berry candied fruits, chocolate
May 24, 2025 at 3:31 AM
astromelow.bsky.social
Not-so fun fact: we looked *really* hard for pulses from the alleged pulsar in the Snake, and didn’t find any…

BUT we did find a millisecond pulsar embedded in different filament right next door! ☄️🔭

iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...
Image showing a brightly glowing filament of radio light. Next to it is a much fainter structure with a bright point of radio light embedded in it, labelled “PSR J1744-2946”.
May 17, 2025 at 4:54 AM
astromelow.bsky.social
Turns out the radio emission and spin-down rates of pulsars aren’t anywhere near as stable as we like to think! And it could even explain the “weirdness” seen in the apparent gravitational-wave background signal!!

Results from the Parkes Young Pulsar Timing programme: doi.org/10.1093/mnra...

🔭🧪☄️
Two panel plot. Upper diagram shows a squiggly line, representing how fast a pulsar is spinning down over time. Lower diagram shows changes in the observed radio emission as different colours. Plot of pulsar spin period and spin-down rate. The black dots represent the pulsars that were looked at in this study. Many squiggly black lines, representing the variable spin-down rates of many pulsars Plot of many points, demonstrating the correlation between pulsar spin-down rates, and how variable their spin-down is over time. Different coloured points come from different studies, with the dark blue of this study dominating the diagram. A pink trace and shaded region represents a power-law fit to the data
April 9, 2025 at 12:07 PM
astromelow.bsky.social
And the pulsar astronomer becomes a radio-imaging astronomer!

First time running my own observation with ATCA and making an image from the data 😄

Can you spot the pulsar?

#Astronomy #RadioAstronomy
Photograph of a computer screen with many windows open, some of which show colourful squiggly lines indicating how well a radio telescope is performing. Colourful radio image containing an extended fuzzy blob near the bottom and a faint point near the upper-middle.
February 6, 2025 at 5:36 AM
astromelow.bsky.social
Comet C/2024 G3 ATLAS as seen on Jan 18 from Bacchus Marsh, Australia! Could easily be seen unaided as a point of light at the head of a pencil-like tail.

☄️🔭
Portrait photo of a comet setting near the dusky orange horizon, over a wind farm Wide-angle photo of a comet setting near the dusky orange horizon, over a wind farm. The lights of cars and houses can be seen in the foreground Zoomed in landscape photo of a comet setting near the dusky orange horizon, over a wind farm Gre scale image of a comet setting over a wind farm. The tail of the comet is quite long
January 19, 2025 at 3:36 AM
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Sneak peek 👀
Photo of a DSLR camera screen, showing an image of a comet set in a blue-orange sunset above a wind farm
January 18, 2025 at 12:21 PM
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I am looking to hire a PhD student at Swinburne University to study the links between pulsars, magnetars and fast radio bursts!

If you or anyone you know may be interested, then please feel free to reach out to me via email.

#Astronomy #RadioAstronomy

astronomy.swin.edu.au/study/phdpro...
Artists impression of a magnetar: a compact spherical star surrounded by twisted magnetic field lines and glowing plasma.
January 7, 2025 at 6:05 AM
astromelow.bsky.social
2024 was peak chaos. Job applications, rejections, heartbreak…

But also many exciting discoveries and amazing adventures!

Here’s hoping for a much less stressful (but still fun) 2025
Person wearing an orange t-shirt, standing by the ocean. The famous, flat-topped Table Mountain is in the background Oxford University’s Radcliffe Camera illuminated at night Person wearing a hat and sunglasses with stunning mountains in the background Symmetric, cone-shaped volcano reflected in a pool of water.
December 31, 2024 at 11:39 PM
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And to top off the holiday in New Zealand, I was treated to an amazing display of the Aurora Australis while staying at Lake Taupō!
October 18, 2024 at 11:06 AM
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Almost feels like a dream that I spent two weeks bouncing between volcanoes dotted around the North Island of New Zealand. And that I actually managed to complete the Tongariro Alpine Crossing!!

Definitely need to go back sometime soon…
Person with crossed arms posed in front of Mount Taranaki, a giant, cone-shaped stratovolacno Succession of three volcanoes. Mount Tongariro’s Red Crater with contrasting yellow, red and black rocks is in the foreground, filled by the cone-shaped Mount Ngauruhoe with patches of snow on its flanks. In the background is a snow-capped Mount Ruapehu Jets of superheated water and steam shooting out of the Pohutu Geyser. Hot water cascades down silica terraces in the foreground Extremely turbulent rapids of turquoise coloured water rushing down the steps of Huka Falls
October 18, 2024 at 11:05 AM
astromelow.bsky.social
Ever wondered what happens when the radio beam of a pulsar passes through the magnetic field of another pulsar? Well, wonder no more!

arxiv.org/abs/2410.12510

Our observations also directly confirm that neutron star magnetic fields are filled with electrons and their anti-matter counterparts!

🔭🧪📡
A four panelled figure, where each sub-panel shows the changing polarisation characteristics of a radio pulsar as it is eclipsed by the magnetic field of its companion. The different polarisation properties are represented by coloured lines and dots. Six paneled figure showing the observed polarisation properties of a pulsar getting eclipsed by its companion as grey/black lines and dots. A red trace is over plotted, which was generated by a simulation of how the radio waves from the pulsar interact with the plasma-filled magnetic field of the companion pulsar. The agreement between the data and simulation is excellent.
October 18, 2024 at 1:08 AM
astromelow.bsky.social
I’m going on an adventure!

SYD 🛫 —> 🛬 AUK
Person holding a boarding pass in front of a window. Outside is a plane View of a jet engine cowling through a rain covered airliner window
September 26, 2024 at 8:45 PM
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For reasons that will be clear on Monday, I am drinking this tonight
Photo of a bottle of champagne
August 23, 2024 at 9:23 AM
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The first Galactic Centre millisecond pulsar, located in the “Sunfish” filament!

arxiv.org/abs/2404.09098 🔭🧪
Greyscale image of wispy tendrils. A big blue, dashed circle indicates the field of view of a radio antenna. While a small red circle, centered on a dark blob indicates the position of a pulsar Technical graph showing the residuals of when the pulses from a pulsar arrived at the Earth after subtracting out a best fit model. The lower panel shows the effect of not correctly accounting for a binary companion A three panel plot showing the average radio pulse from a pulsar
May 2, 2024 at 12:20 PM
astromelow.bsky.social
And in case you needed a some pictures:
1. Perhaps the greatest figure I’ve ever published .
2. Murriyang, the CSIRO Parkes radio telescope that made this work possible.

🔭🧪
A set of graphs that display the frequency dependent conversion of linearly polarised radio waves into circularly polarised waves Giant radio telescope pointing up and to the right
April 8, 2024 at 11:34 AM
astromelow.bsky.social
And the 2024 month of travel comes to an end. Goodbye Oxford, hope to be back soon!

LGW 🛫 —> 🛬 DXB 🛫 —> 🛬 SYD
Cylindrical sandstone building (Radcliffe Camera) at night
March 22, 2024 at 7:34 PM
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The Bodleian Library at Oxford is pretty neat
An empty room with black wooden benches off to the side and a pale, stone roof Bookshelves and reading desks in a library Rows of bookshelves in a library Looking up at the Radcliffe Camera, a cylindrical stone building
March 18, 2024 at 9:07 AM
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Nice to be back in the wonderful city of Oxford. A little bit colder than last time.
February 25, 2024 at 1:33 PM
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MeerKAT@5 was awesome! It was great to hear not only about all the amazing science being done with this incredible instrument, but also the history of radio astronomy in South Africa.

Next stop: Oxford!

CPT 🛫 —> 🛬 DXB 🛫 —> 🛬 LHR
Panorama of a semi-arid valley Happy astronomer posing with their poster Astronomer pointing at a slide being shown on a projector Several sleepy lions lounging next to a rock
February 24, 2024 at 9:08 AM
astromelow.bsky.social
The month of travel, revamped!

Starting out this time with the MeerKAT@5 conference in Stellenbosch, South Africa!!

SYD 🛫 —> 🛬 JNB 🛫 —> 🛬 CPT
February 17, 2024 at 5:05 PM