Alexis Quintana

We do love our long train journeys, so that's one way of keeping us busy 😁

A glimpse of the senior academic life? 😁

Star Formation Newsletter #398 - The Star Formation Newsletter Since 1992, The Star Formation Newsletter has been the premier destination for keeping up with news from the star formation community. This is its 397th edition, covering new research postings in Janu...

Want to catch up on the latest news in star and planet formation?

The February issue of the Star Formation Newsletter is out! 🔭☄️

Superbe image 😍

Par contre, je ne vois pas vraiment de "poulet qui court", je me demande d'où le nom vient 😅

This week I'm visiting MPIA at Heidelberg! I am very excited because I've been wanting to visit this institute for a while now. A great opportunity to present my work and meet researchers!

#astronomy

A gas cloud full of wispy filaments that shine brightly in shades of pink and orange. A higher concentration of stars is visible in the lower-right part.

A cosmic hawk and its starry eyasses 🐦

What looks like a hawk spanning its wings above massive newly born stars is the RCW 36 nebula.

Astronomers used the, yes, HAWK-I instrument on the VLT to study the hidden brown dwarfs: https://www.eso.org/public/images/potw2609a/

🔭 🧪

TESS confirms what we saw with Kepler and K2 - on average, ***every single small red star has a planet around it***! And a short-period one at that (<30 days).

And you know what the galaxy is mostly made of?

Small red stars.

PLANETS. PLANETS EVERYWHERE!!!

Happy weekend pondering that, everyone.

Congratulations!! 😄

A cluster of blue stars is seen against a starfield of brown and clumpy dust. The stars illuminate some of the nearby dust which causes the dust to glow blue. Please see the explanation for more detailed information.

🔭 Pleiades: The Seven Sisters Star Cluster

Image Credit & Copyright: Kamil Fiedosiuk

apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap26022...

Pour son séjour dans l'ISS, Sophie Adenot peut compter sur son collègue astronaute Raphaël Liégeois, qui ira dans l'espace en 2027 (abonnés) : https://www.cieletespace.fr/article/raphael-liegeois-astronaute-de-l-esa-mes-collegues-et-moi-assurons-le-relais-au-sol-pendant-la-mission-de-sophie-adenot

Highlight: The superclouds of the local Milky Way
by Lilly A. Kormann, João Alves, Michelangelo Pantaleoni González, Cameren Swiggum, Torsten A. Enßlin, Gordian Edenhofer 2026, A&A, 706, A161
www.aanda.org/2026-highlig...

The programme of EAS 2026 is now available! 🔭 #galactic

This year, @emily.space, Josefa Großschedl, and I are chairing a special session! We are co-organising it with notably @mac0598.bsky.social on the topic of young stars, clusters & association in the Milky Way!

#EAS2026Lausanne

Why do we do astrophysics? At time of writing, large language models (LLMs) are beginning to obtain the ability to design, execute, write up, and referee scientific projects on the data-science side of astrophysics. What implic...

David Hogg has written a white paper on doing astrophysics in the age of LLMs. It looks to be thought-provoking. My initial reaction is that either LLMs will destroy the field or they will force a reckoning with and re-imagining of the current system that often prioritizes output over quality. 🧪

Today I've presented my work during a seminar at ICCUB (University of Barcelona). This was a great networking opportunity with exciting scientific discussions, where I met various experts in Gaia and Star Clusters!

#astronomy

I usually don't write book recommendations here, but this time it's about academia! I've just finished Katabasis from Rebecca F. Kuang and it was such an excellent novel. An engaging satire about academia with a relatable protagonist, and an important read for me, often but emotional to its core.

find collaborators whose idea of a productive meeting is 2-3 hours of science chat followed by a 2-3 hour Spanish lunch.

A wide-field astronomical image showing a glowing pink and red nebula surrounded by countless stars against a dark sky. The nebula has a bright core and clouds of gas and dust spreading outward.

A feast for the eyes 🤩

This gorgeous starscape is a vista of the Lagoon Nebula. See the dark patches scattered all over it? They're huge, collapsing clouds of gas and dust that will soon give birth to clusters of young stars.

Read more: https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso0936/ 
🔭

📷 ESO

A glowing nebula with clouds of pink, purple, and blue gas and dust, illuminated by a cluster of bright stars at its centre. Smaller stars are scattered across the surrounding dark space.

At the very heart of the Orion Nebula we find the Trapezium, a group of four very hot stars.

They are the brightest of an extended cluster of several thousand young stars, many of which lie unseen within the opaque gas and dust: www.eso.org/public/image...

🔭 #flashback

The SFN is back! 🎉

Abstract submission is open until the 3rd March!

eas.unige.ch/EAS2026/sess...

The programme of EAS 2026 is now available! 🔭 #galactic

This year, @emily.space, Josefa Großschedl, and I are chairing a special session! We are co-organising it with notably @mac0598.bsky.social on the topic of young stars, clusters & association in the Milky Way!

#EAS2026Lausanne

Don't forget to record the proper motions so that the clustering algorithm can provide more coherent clusters 😁

Cassiopeia A, a supernova remnant. This is a circular-shaped cloud of gas and dust with complex structure. The inner shell is made of bright pink and orange filaments studded with clumps and knots that look like tiny pieces of shattered glass. Around the exterior of the inner shell, particularly at the upper right, there are curtains of wispy gas that look like campfire smoke. The white smoke-like material also appears to fill the cavity of the inner shell, featuring structures shaped like large bubbles. Around and within the nebula, there are various stars seen as points of blue and white light. Outside the nebula, there are also clumps of yellow dust, with a particularly large clump at the bottom right corner that appears to have very detailed striations. The background of space is black.

Cassiopeia A has been observed by astronomers since its discovery in 1948. Its close distance and brightness help telescopes like #NASAWebb see intricate details in the supernova remnant, informing astronomers about how its progenitor star exploded: https://bit.ly/4rGZQ1v

The Astrosky Ecosystem: An independent online platform for science communication and social networking While almost everything that astronomers study occurs in the vacuum of space, astronomy itself does not `happen in a vacuum'. Interactions between scientists, as well as outreach to members of the pub...

"While almost everything that astronomers study occurs in the vacuum of space, astronomy itself does not 'happen in a vacuum'.

Interactions between scientists, as well as outreach to members of the public, improve extensively from access to good communication tools."

Paper day! ⤵️

I've had a fun couple of weeks working on resurrecting this newsletter with @joaoalves.bsky.social & @lillykormann.bsky.social!

I built a brand new website from scratch with JS+SvelteKit, which can link with forms & the arXiv API to look up papers and build a monthly newsletter automatically 👀

Excellent news!! Excited to see the next newsletters! 🔭 🌟

#stellarastronomy

Today I've presented my work for a seminar at the Astrophysics Laboratory of Bordeaux (LAB in French). Insightful exchanges and scientific discussions, I enjoyed my visit there 😁

#astronomy

So rare to see my home town on BlueSky 😄

I was too curious so I searched and also found an arxiv paper 😁

arxiv.org/pdf/1312.7128

Again I'm in the minority I believe because writing papers is actually one of the favourite parts of my job!

Writing proposals, on the other hand... That's another story 😅