Sophia Lilleengen
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sophialilleengen.bsky.social
Sophia Lilleengen
@sophialilleengen.bsky.social
Astrophysicist in Durham working on the Milky Way and dark matter 💫 she/her
Reposted by Sophia Lilleengen
Aaand our next Aeos paper is out as well!!

Jennifer Mead leads the paper, finding feedback blows out all metals from early halos until they reach a mass of about 10^7 Msun. Read it here: arxiv.org/abs/2411.14209
November 22, 2024 at 4:13 PM
Reposted by Sophia Lilleengen
Very excited to see my student Tariq Hilmi submit this paper https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.02953 with the S5 team. We explored how well we can recover subhalo properties from a realistic stream model. TLDR: we can do it pretty well for a 10^7 Msun perturbed even with present-day observables 1/ 🔭🧪
Inferring dark matter subhalo properties from simulated...
In the cold dark matter paradigm, our Galaxy is predicted to contain >10000 dark matter subhaloes in the $10^5-10^8M_\odot$ range which should be completely devoid of stars. Stellar streams are...
arxiv.org
April 5, 2024 at 10:46 AM
Reposted by Sophia Lilleengen
It's paper day!!✨Very happy to announce that my first paper is (finally) on the arXiv today! Check it out if you want to find out how we can use stellar streams living in the outskirts of galaxies to learn about their dark matter halos! 🔭🧪 arxiv.org/abs/2402.13314
Probing the dark matter haloes of external galaxies with stellar streams
Stellar streams have proven to be powerful tools for measuring the Milky Way's gravitational potential and hence its dark matter halo. In the coming years, Vera Rubin, Euclid, ARRAKIHS, and NGRST...
arxiv.org
February 22, 2024 at 10:58 AM
Reposted by Sophia Lilleengen
Excited about near-field cosmology, Galactic dynamics, and Rubin/LSST? Apply for a postdoc in my new group at the University of Washington! Please spread the word to interested applicants, reach out if you have questions, and/or come find me at AAS! 🔭

Due: Jan 15
jobregister.aas.org/ad/82a47f8f
January 5, 2024 at 11:31 PM
Reposted by Sophia Lilleengen
Had extra fun at work yesterday 🖤
October 28, 2023 at 12:58 PM
Had extra fun at work yesterday 🖤
October 28, 2023 at 12:58 PM
Reposted by Sophia Lilleengen
Most matplotlib plotting functions (like plt.scatter) can take an optional keyword argument `rasterized`. 🔭

Set `rasterized=True` and it will rasterize *only* that part of the plot - so you can save everything else as vector graphics, but massively reduce file size of the scatter parts!
Caffein-deprived hot take: for the love of the skies, please rasterise your figures with thousands of points if you want anybody to actually read your paper. If I have to wait 5 minutes for it to load, I may forget that I wanted to read it in the meantime.
September 19, 2023 at 7:37 AM
Reposted by Sophia Lilleengen
Reposted by Sophia Lilleengen
Very cool (and potentially exciting) result!

And a good reminder that if (/when?) extraterrestrial life is discovered, it will most likely be just like this: a weird chemical balance in an exoplanet atmosphere, seen via some wiggly lines in a spectrum, subject to extensive expert debate. 👽🧪
Oooh, a hint of dimethyl sulfide has been found by JWST in an exoplanet atmosphere! This molecule is only produced by life on earth, so if verified is a huge result. The planet in question is likely an ocean world. Cool stuff! 🧪🔭 www.theguardian.com/science/2023...
Nasa says distant exoplanet could have rare water ocean and possible hint of life
Space agency said potential finding of dimethyl sulfide on K2-18 b, produced only by life on Earth, is yet to be confirmed
www.theguardian.com
September 12, 2023 at 11:40 AM
Reposted by Sophia Lilleengen
Oooh, a hint of dimethyl sulfide has been found by JWST in an exoplanet atmosphere! This molecule is only produced by life on earth, so if verified is a huge result. The planet in question is likely an ocean world. Cool stuff! 🧪🔭 www.theguardian.com/science/2023...
Nasa says distant exoplanet could have rare water ocean and possible hint of life
Space agency said potential finding of dimethyl sulfide on K2-18 b, produced only by life on Earth, is yet to be confirmed
www.theguardian.com
September 12, 2023 at 6:09 AM
Reposted by Sophia Lilleengen
I’m hiring PhD students and postdocs to my new extragalactic stellar streams group U. Copenhagen. Please reach out if you have any questions and share this if you know anyone who might be interested.

PhD link: jobregister.aas.org/ad/e9fe0095

Postdoc link: jobregister.aas.org/ad/8218d16b
September 5, 2023 at 12:20 PM
Reposted by Sophia Lilleengen
Here's an excellent article on bullying in academia by Wyn Evans in yesterday's THES www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/bull...

This part seemed very familiar
August 31, 2023 at 7:56 AM
Reposted by Sophia Lilleengen
Check out this paper! ✨

This research is outside my usual bubble, but is something I’m passionate about: #ScienceEducation and #WomenInSTEM

We did a study and found a clear gender bias in senior high school science curricula across Australia 😱

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
August 30, 2023 at 9:25 AM
Reposted by Sophia Lilleengen
Why do we call them the Magellanic Clouds anyway? Magellan didn't discover them, didn't document them, and didn't make it back to Europe to tell people about them. Dennefeld (arxiv.org/abs/2009.04973) goes into great detail on the history behind the clouds and the name #arxivoftheweek 🔭
August 24, 2023 at 12:39 PM