It's fun how, even as a pretty senior person, you end up in research projects with PhD candidates or postdocs who assume you an expert while you panicky try to read up on what you are working on and at least understand the basics enough to be able to follow and usefully contribute.
In other news: X-ray polarization is weird.
Back to being part of the NewAthena community science working groups: https://www.the-athena-x-ray-observatory.eu/en/athena-community
π π π
Feels good to be back (I could not be part pf the official community for a bit due to work), Athena was/is such an integral part of who I am as a scientist and where I see the future of astrophysics!
It's not about numbers, but still, they play some role. Here a nice one for me: sometimes during the last week, I've passed the 4000 citations limit.
@elizabethtasker only on mastodon π
Looking forward to read stuff from you on xrism since #XraysAreTheBestRays ;)
A little preview of tomorrow's not-a-surprise-if-you-have-been-following-the-chandra-center surprise
(X-ray) Astronomer's mantra: we don't give up, we calibrate.
(Lovely statement from a colleague... π)
The reason I am in Argentina
More info here: https://congresos.unlp.edu.ar/astralx/
I'm really excited to teach here - I wanted to do one of the capacity building workshops for a while.
Today's exploration: looking at "On the use of C-stat in testing models for X-ray spectra" (Kaastra 17) and how to use it in Sherpa (this is a long-standing issue that I've only got to now).
https://github.com/DougBurke/sherpa-standalone-notebooks/blob/main/Kaastra17.ipynb
I expect this logic will make it into som part of CIAO for the 4.18 release, assuming we are still employed. There are improvements to this work (that is, theoretical statistical work expanding on the Kaastra 17 result, but that's for another day).
In Science News:
My postdoc, Luca Ighina, just published an analysis of a VERY FASCINATING high-redshift quasar. In short, not only is it radio-loud and ___the X-ray-brightest non-blazar at these redshifts___ it seems like it just might be super-Eddington!
Press release here: https://chandra.si.edu/photo/2025/red6/
And, of course, this is a #ChandraXRay result!
#Astronomy #Astrophysics #Astrodon #SciComm #XRaysAreTheBestRays
I miss my high energy astro community here who would find thie final slide of a talk absolutely amusing... πππ
Dr. Victoria Grinberg
Doug Burke
Thomas Connor