A/Prof Natasha Hurley-Walker

A new, expansive view of the Milky Way reveals our Galaxy in unprecedented radio colour - ICRAR Astronomers from the International Centre of Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) have created the largest low-frequency radio colour image of the Milky Way ever assembled.

Or have a play with our interactive optical/radio viewer and watch our video about it here: www.icrar.org/gleam-x-gala...

New images reveal the Milky Way’s stunning galactic plane in more detail than ever before The things we can see with our eyes are just one layer of the richness of the night sky.

Read about it in The Conversation: theconversation.com/new-images-r...

We used the Murchison Widefield Array telescope to make these observations back in 2013 to 2018, but it's taken until the last few years for the computers and algorithms to catch up with the data! This view won't be bettered until the low-frequency part of the SKA observatory is complete.

The map is ten times more sensitive than and covers twice the area of my previous efforts with GLEAM, and was created by my amazing PhD student Silvia Mantovanini! She worked with a supercomputer at @pawseycentre.bsky.social for a whole year of her thesis to create this.

Today in PASA we published a new image of our Milky Way at low radio frequencies, in unprecedented colour and detail. Here's just a tiny piece of it -- the whole thing is ten times bigger!

We're seeing high energy electrons whirl around cosmic magnetic fields from exploded stars, and more!

Congratulations @tamarastro.bsky.social on your election as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science @science.org.au ! #ShineDome25

At the #SKAO 2025 Science Meeting in Gorlitz, Germany. And I'm in the Gods! Enough astronomers to fill a theatre ✨

Tell Congress: Save NASA Science The current administration's 2026 budget request includes a staggering 47% cut to NASA's science programs as part of a 25% cut to NASA overall. This is an extinction-level event for the Earth and spac...

The US budget cuts to NASA and the NSF are horrifying. Anyone in the world can sign this petition to reverse them - consider adding your name? www.congressweb.com/PlanetarySoc...

Last night I found out that the NSF math postdoctoral fellowship I applied for is being deleted because it does not comply with Trump’s executive orders on DEI in the federal government. I’m going to answer some FAQs and share some thoughts about this ordeal in this thread 1/n

Perth folks, I will be chatting with Rachel Rayner, Science Explainer, at the FRINGE Festival! This is a huge first for me -- next year, maybe I can do the same while fire juggling?! In all seriousness come and support me and other scientists :D Tickets here: fringeworld.com.au/whats_on/aus...

The slide with that moon certainly provoked some nervous laughter. A lot of audience members with Majora's Mask childhood trauma 😆

I only had room for the Akkala Ancient Tech lab, but duly noted for next time :D

Loving all the requests for slides and recordings, but it was a very participatory experience, where I had folks make measurements, pitch ideas, and generally argue just like a real academic conference. Happy to run it again -- DM me!

*I* would be interested in the historical influences on video games! I'm sort of embarrassed to say that I learned about the Muslim conquest of Spain in the 700s because I went down an internet rabbithole of trying to find out why the Gerudo Valley theme tune is so amazing.

Not my usual research topic, but a bit of fun for a local SFF convention :) I analysed the astrophysics of the Legend of Zelda games -- using the same techniques real astronomers use! Good fun, educational, and the audience loved it!

Fabulous to see this new long-period radio transient published! The longest period yet -- and it has interpulses, strongly implying a 'lighthouse' of radio waves passing over our line-of-sight.

Is it a selection effect?

May you add me too, please?

Beautiful writing from the wonderful @aussiastronomer.bsky.social. Sort of about our Stargazing Live exoplanet hunt, but also not.

I think I've worked out why the timeline in For All Mankind is divergent -- no, it's not Korolev surviving his surgery. It's that their Moon is completely different from our Moon ;)

It's always reassuring to hear that data reduction rabbitholes are extant all across astronomy and not just one's own domain 😅

Seconded!

Starter packs are such a great way of getting your BlueSky community off the ground! I am so grateful for these as I rebuild from the ashes of Twitter.

Here is a starter pack for female and other minority astonomers 🔭 put together by @kanaya-malakar.bsky.social :

bsky.app/starter-pack...

I was today years old when I realised that NASA/ADS have deprecated the "^" for first author, and it's not just my internet connection.

Looking out across the red desert region of Western Australia. In the distance is a hill, and the ground has a red Earth colour. In the foreground is a large square metal mesh placed on the ground. Atop it are 16 spider-looking dipole antennas, arranged in a 4 x 4 grid. This is one of the MWA stations.

graphic showing a single magnetar that has beams coming from its poles and is surrounded by magnetic field lines

An emerging class of objects in #RadioAstronomy, mostly discovered in the last few years, still can't be explained.

Two new multi-wavelength studies might have answers.

www.spaceaustralia.com/feature/mult... by @cosmicrami.com

#SpaceAustralia 🔭🧪

📸 @colourfulcosmos.bsky.social /MWA/Curtin/ICRAR

This reads like the unit was originally "ferrets" and it has been converted from metric to imperial

Doing media interviews from home while looking after my sick kid... Yes, that's an outdoor trestle table from Bunnings 😂

Haha, this one is definitely a win for #TeamWhiteDwarf ... will #TeamMagnetar strike back soon though? Watch this space ;)

Astronomers have pinpointed the origin of mysterious repeating radio bursts from space By searching sparsely populated regions of the galaxy, astronomers have for the first time found the source of a kind of signal that has puzzled them for years.

Out now in @theconversation.com, I write about our discovery of the first long-period radio transient with an optical counterpart -- our first clue to the progenitors of this mysterious class of objects! theconversation.com/astronomers-...

Hope he covers circumzenithal arcs. My favourite kind of rainbow 🌈