Emily Hunt
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emily.space
Emily Hunt
@emily.space
Postdoc @univie.ac.at
Researches the Milky Way & star clusters with machine learning
Founded the Astronomy feeds (@astronomy.blue)

🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ (she/her), Ⓥ
Website: https://emily.space
GitHub: https://github.com/emilyhunt
Pinned
If you like astronomy posts, then you'll probably really like the astronomy feeds!

If you didn't know, Bluesky gives you direct control over your social algorithm. Instead of doomscrolling, look at space instead:
Reposted by Emily Hunt
Help us to build the Astronomy feeds and The Astrosky Ecosystem! 🔭 ☄️ #astrophotography

We'd especially like to find >1 frontend dev to help work on replacing @bot.astronomy.blue with a simpler web interface, but we have some backend & devops needs to fill too.

More details in the post below ⬇️
We're looking for new developers! - Blog - The Astrosky Ecosystem
We'd like to expand our team to include new devs. We'd especially love to hear from you if you're a frontend developer.
astrosky.eco
November 6, 2025 at 10:31 AM
Reposted by Emily Hunt
Great piece by astronomer and SETI leader Jason Wright on the endless, exhausting claims about 3I/Atlas by Avi Loeb.

"zero planetary scientists give Avi’s claims any credence... because he’s demonstrably wrong"

sites.psu.edu/astrowright/...
Loeb’s 3I/ATLAS “Anomalies” Explained
Avi Loeb continues to claim that 3I/ATLAS has many anomalous behaviors that lead to the conclusion that it “might” be an alien spacecraft.  He carefully hedges the probability that it is a spacecraft ...
sites.psu.edu
November 10, 2025 at 9:49 PM
Reposted by Emily Hunt
The Double Cluster Caldwell 14 in Perseus, about 7,500 ly away is best observed early November.

▼ Vixen VC200L | Canon EOS R(a) '24
© Thomas Hanrath '25 · CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

astrocamp.eu/en/caldwell-...

#astrophotography #astroimaging #astronomy #nightsky #clearsky #photography #nature #deepsky
November 10, 2025 at 5:47 PM
I saw a colleague use Google to search for something today, and I forgot how much easier it is (thanks @kagi.com!) when you don't have to scroll through a sloppy AI answer & loads of sponsored links to get what you need 😬

Stop using Google! There are better alternatives. See e.g.:
From the degoogle community on Reddit
Explore this post and more from the degoogle community
www.reddit.com
November 10, 2025 at 5:46 PM
Reposted by Emily Hunt
“The elites are ecstatic about imagining a vast, uneducated, and unproductive population forced to pay companies like OpenAI to access the written word and to approximate thought.”

Must read piece by Noah McCormack with too many quotaboe lines to select one! thebaffler.com/salvos/we-us...
We Used to Read Things in This Country | Noah McCormack
Technology changes us—and it is currently changing us for the worse.
thebaffler.com
November 2, 2025 at 5:12 PM
Reposted by Emily Hunt
So it turns out... the US air travel system was incredibly, deeply dependent on federal funding to just run day-to-day all this time, to the benefit of private airline shareholders, when everyone thinks that state-run trains are leeching off the government. Weird!
November 9, 2025 at 12:10 AM
Reposted by Emily Hunt
pre-writing a devastating obituary for your enemy is god-tier hating of a kind you don’t often see anymore. renaissance haterism. beautiful stuff.
A Sharon Begley byline, almost 5 years after her death.

Upon hearing the news James Watson had died, a STAT reporter said in our Slack, "I wish I could read what Sharon would have written."

Incredible news: Sharon in fact did pre-write a Watson obit. And it is masterful and excoriating.
🧪🧬🧫
James Watson, dead at 97, was a scientific legend and a pariah among his peers
James Watson, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA who died Thursday at 97, was a scientific legend and a pariah among his peers.
www.statnews.com
November 9, 2025 at 12:55 AM
average band:
"We are SO excited to announce our new EU🇪🇺/UK🇬🇧 tour! We'll be playing at:
- London, UK
- Bristol, UK
- Manchester, UK
- Birmingham, UK
- Swindon, UK
- Milton Keynes, UK
- Dull, UK
- Nottingham, UK
- Sheffield, UK
- Penistone, UK
- Berlin, DE
- Newcastle, UK
- Leeds, UK
- Botallack, UK
November 7, 2025 at 2:51 PM
• asked not to get layers in my hair at my latest haircut
• the hairdresser persuaded me to get layers anyway
• they then proceeded to cut 15cm long layers (!!!) into my hair, which looks insanely thin at the ends now

love paying money for something I could've done better myself 🫠
November 7, 2025 at 2:42 PM
The most satisfying thing about teaching so far this semester has been seeing how students have responded to difficult but interesting problem sets! #astroedu

I've had them using real data from surveys like Gaia, and they've done so well! I think working with real data makes it a lot more fun
November 7, 2025 at 8:12 AM
See below if you're interested in doing a PhD on stars or clusters! Trumpler 14 is an especially awesome cluster in the Carina Nebula, and doing your PhD on it (or star cluster formation more generally) would be tons of fun 😉
The @herts.ac.uk astronomy MSc and PhD applications are open.

I'm offering PhD projects on JWST spectroscopy of young stars in Tr 14 and star-cluster formation.

I'm also offering an MSc project on variability of YSOs.

www.herts.ac.uk/research/cen...

#galactic #stellarastro #astro #Physics
Solar, Stellar and Time-domain Astrophysics
Star formation and Stellar Evolution PhD Projects.
herts.ac.uk
November 7, 2025 at 8:03 AM
Reposted by Emily Hunt
Hi friends, enemies, and casually contemptuous acquaintances! I'm looking for an astronomer/planetary scientist who studies late-stage evolution in planetary systems around low-mass stars. In particular, examining the question of whether Sun-like stars nom their planets up, Cookie Monster-style. 🧪🔭
November 6, 2025 at 2:50 PM
Reposted by Emily Hunt
Everybody - AND I MEAN EVERYBODY - should read this investigation into that hell hole Twitter and how this nine-month study and in-depth analysis found that it amplifies right-wing and extreme content (aka, the Nazi bar)

This is *very* good investigative journalism and should ring alarm bells.

🚨🚨🚨
Elon Musk is boosting the British right - and this shows how
Elon Musk is boosting the British right - and this shows how
news.sky.com
November 6, 2025 at 10:07 AM
It took until two months after I moved out for my old landlord in Germany to send me a letter (internationally, no less) saying that they need my IBAN for them to pay my deposit back.

Worse: I have to send them a letter back, hand-signed, with my IBAN. Emailing just isn't good enough in 2025!
November 5, 2025 at 9:53 AM
my fiancée knows me well 🥺
November 4, 2025 at 6:44 PM
Reposted by Emily Hunt
The countdown is ON. ⏳

We’re one year from launch — and kicking off the Ready, Set, Roman! Training Series!

First up: Tools for Exploring Roman’s Core Community Surveys Nov 4 (Tomorrow!) • 1 PM EST

Get hands-on with the data that will shape a decade of discovery.
bit.ly/4oP3c06
November 3, 2025 at 7:50 PM
Reposted by Emily Hunt
“We are told that AI is inevitable, that we must adapt or be left behind. But universities are not tech companies. Our role is to foster critical thinking, not to follow industry trends uncritically.”
November 1, 2025 at 10:45 PM
Reposted by Emily Hunt
Today is World Vegan Day! If you are concerned about climate change, reducing meat and dairy in your diet is one of the most powerful individual actions you can take.

"The effect of our modern meat production on the environment is truly terrifying." Jane Goodall news.janegoodall.org/2017/04/28/w...
Why I Went Plant-Based (And Why We Should All Eat Less Meat)
Dr. Goodall went plant-based after confronting what that meat represents: pain. Since, she learned more reasons why the work to #eatmeatless is important.
news.janegoodall.org
November 1, 2025 at 4:15 PM
Reposted by Emily Hunt
We are pleased to announce our discovery of #GW241011 and #GW241110

Both come from binary black holes where one black hole is much larger than the other. The larger black holes have large spin. Could these black holes have formed in a previous merger?

ligo.org/science-summ...

#O4IsHere 🔭🧪⚛️☄️
October 29, 2025 at 1:58 PM
For astronomy PhD students, this is a really amazing opportunity to hone your craft at scientific writing! Can highly recommend! 🔭☄️
November 1, 2025 at 8:13 AM
Reposted by Emily Hunt
4️⃣0️⃣
October 31, 2025 at 6:34 PM
Is there a good FOSS alternative for photo and/or vector graphics editing?

I sometimes use gimp, but it's just so dated. I'm so pissed that the #1 Adobe alternative just got enshittified, though
I need someone to talk me through the Affinity announcement .........

Here's what I have so far:
We can't own an instance of the software anymore
We only pay if we want to use AI features
There's only one program now
We have to use a Canva account to access the software
We can save our undo history
October 30, 2025 at 9:06 PM
I'm actually really doubtful on this. Estimating the uncertainty of even a simple ML model is a challenging problem. Doing it for an entire LLM? Good luck...

Machine learning has always struggled with model (i.e. epistemic) uncertainty estimation, and building it into LLMs will be very hard
October 30, 2025 at 5:12 PM
I feel like my experience of posting on the internet is 90% just shitposting, 9.9% attempts at actual science communication, and then 0.1% accidentally going viral big time and not knowing what button i pressed to cause it, but going along with the ride anyway I guess
October 30, 2025 at 2:07 PM
wtf, my little blog post about uv is third on hacker news right now
October 30, 2025 at 1:57 PM