The StarXiv ✨ podcast
A podcast where Payel Das (@payeldas.bsky.social) and Michelle Collins (@runningastronomer.bsky.social) discuss papers from astroph
Starxiv.com
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- Michelle's final paper focused on the observations of a pseudo-little red dot! A red, compact source at the heart of a lensed star bursting dwarf galaxy. It shares some properties with Little red dots, but not all. Could it be an LRD in waiting? arxiv.org/abs/2601.11466 🔭☄️
- Michelle's second paper showed the discovery from the fabulous new WEAVE instrument in the Canary island. This IFU found a surprising bar of iron in the centre of the ring nebula. It doesn't seem to be a jet feature, so what is it?!? 🔭 ☄️ arxiv.org/abs/2601.10635
- Nicole’s second paper reports the first CEMP stars ever found in the LMC, 5 extremely metal-poor giants with strong carbon enhancement, revealing that early carbon production operated even in this massive dwarf. arxiv.org/abs/2601.10514 ☄️ 🔭
- Nicole’s first paper confirms that the retrograde groups Rg8 and Rg9 are a single, very metal-poor halo substructure - Thamnos. High-resolution abundances show coherent chemistry and no α-knee, pointing to a progenitor quenched early after falling into the Milky Way. arxiv.org/abs/2601.09796 ☄️🔭
- Michelle started us off with a response to last years claim that Supernova Ia aren't as reliable as we thought as cosmic probes. This work by Phil Wiseman et al. steps through the claims and shows that these ARE the dark energy tracers we are looking for. ☄️ 🔭 arxiv.org/abs/2601.13785
- Episode 29 – Exploding stars, carbon stars, and starbursting pseudo little red dots In this episode, Michelle and Nicole explore recent findings on Thamnos, carbon stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud, Supernova Type Ia as cosmic probes, and an intriguing object identified as a 'pseudo little red…
- Sound the klaxon! The latest StarXiv has dropped. Tune in to hear about Supernovae, carbon stars, Thamnos, the Ring nebula and more as we delve into the last 2 weeks on astro-ph. 🔭 ☄️
- Michelle's final paper studies the use of autoencoders and dimension reduction for detecting anomalous features in exoplanet atmospheres. It can be quick and accurate, great for future exoplanet missions like ESA Ariel. 🔭 ☄️ arxiv.org/abs/2601.02324
- Finally, Payel gave a quick shout out to what seems like an incredible piece of work recommending best practises for improving the situation for minorities in Astronomy. 🔭 ☄️ arxiv.org/abs/2512.24465
- Michelle's second paper focused on an unusal, thin gravitational arc around the near-Einstein ring around JVAS-1933+666. When inferring the mass profile of the perturber, it is much more dense than expected from cold or warm dark matter if its a subhalo. 🔭 ☄️ arxiv.org/abs/2601.02466
- Payel's second paper talked about the incredible prospect of chemical signatures in host stars resulting from engulfing planets! Cool that this is even possible. 🔭☄️ arxiv.org/abs/2601.00949
- Payel's first paper looked into another case of a star seemingly about to explode as a supernova, but a little further afield than Betelgeuse - a companion star seems again to blame! 🔭☄️ arxiv.org/abs/2601.02057
- Michelle's first paper focuses on her all time favourite star, Betelgeuse! Recent work has shown that it likely has a little companion orbiting it, and this paper searches for (and finds) evidence of its wake! 🔭☄️ arxiv.org/abs/2601.00470
- Our latest episode is live! Tune in on our website or wherever you get your podcasts! Today, Michelle and Payel are back together, discussing unusual variable stars and their compansions, signatures of exoplanets on their host stars and problems for dark matter. 🔭☄️ starxiv.com/2026/01/12/e...
- Episode 28 – Fading stars, digesting planets and dark matter conundrums In this episode, Michelle and Payel explore intriguing astronomical findings, including the search for Betelgeuse's companion star and the effects of consumed and transiting stars on host spectra. They also discuss a curious…
- Payel's second paper is about a potentially new exciting method for finding dwarf galaxies and better understanding hierarchical galaxy formation at the low mass end. arxiv.org/abs/2512.09174
- Nicole’s second paper shows a Milky Way–mass FIRE-2 galaxy forms an α-bimodality without major mergers or strong radial migration! Dilution events and inside-out growth open the gap, hinting the Galaxy’s chemical split may stem from quiet evolution. arxiv.org/abs/2512.14897 🔭☄️
- Payel's first paper discusses new observations of radio emission in Omega Centauri - another search for the elusive intermediate mass black hole! Tune in to this week's Starxiv podcast to find out more. arxiv.org/abs/2512.09649
- Nicole’s first paper uncovered the chemical DNA of the oldest SMC stars, where heavy elements show huge star-to-star scatter and the r-process dominates entirely. The presence of r-II stars point to rare, early explosive events and inefficient mixing in the young SMC. arxiv.org/abs/2512.13789 🔭☄️
- Episode 27: Making a Milky Way, searching for dwarfs, and elusive black holes In this episode, Michelle and Payel explore various astrophysical topics, including the Solar birth cluster, young stars, the formation of intermediate mass black holes, and the universe's decelerated expansion. They…
- Payel's second paper looked at the correlation between starspots and flares in stars beyond our solar system. Even though they're correlated for our Sun, they don't seem to be stars further afield. Listen in to find out more. You can find the paper here arxiv.org/abs/2512.01051
- Nicole’s third paper digs into the UFD Boötes I with JWST + HST, uncovering a steep metallicity distribution and a surprisingly normal binary fraction, showing that even in a tiny, ancient, dark-matter-dominated relic, stars formed and paired much like elsewhere. arxiv.org/abs/2512.01547 🔭☄️
- Nicole’s second paper probes how low-mass galaxies grow from their centres to their halos, finds universal metallicity gradients but no clean link to mass, plus U-shaped age profiles and halo metallicities set by when satellites fell in, not how many. Find out more here: arxiv.org/abs/2511.20806 🔭☄️
- Nicole’s first paper shows the young protostar [BHB2007]1 isn’t forming in isolation, ALMA finds a misaligned, bound western streamer feeding the disk, while two symmetric N-S tails arc outward at unbound speeds, likely relics of past interactions. arxiv.org/abs/2512.00295 🔭☄️
- Payel's first paper was on the topic of Little Red Dots again! But this time multiply imaged by gravitational lensing AND with a blue companion. That's a lot of excitement. Tune in to find out more. You can find the paper here: arxiv.org/abs/2512.02117
- Episode 26: A tail of tales, little galaxies, and starspots In this episode, Michelle and Payel explore various astrophysical topics, including the Solar birth cluster, young stars, the formation of intermediate mass black holes, and the universe's decelerated expansion. They also discuss strong…
- Payel's second papers uses 16.7 years of Fermi Large Area Telescope (Fermi-LAT) data to establish galaxy mergers as a new class of HE γ-ray sources. Exciting stuff! 🔭☄️ arxiv.org/pdf/2511.13818
- Michelle's second paper discussed whether theoretical dark matter powered stars in the early Universe could act as the seeds for supermassive black holes. The authors study the evolution of these 'dark stars' and determine they could! arxiv.org/abs/2511.08578 🔭 ☄️
- Nicole’s second paper shows that an ultra-faint dwarf’s chemical fingerprints need to be treated carefully, they shift depending on assumptions about Type Ia supernova timing, massive-star yields, and stochastic sampling. arxiv.org/abs/2511.05695 🔭☄️
- Payel's first paper finds compelling evidence for an off-axis merger event in the Coma cluster using high-resolution X-ray spectroscopy of the intracluster medium. 🔭☄️ arxiv.org/abs/2511.10740
- Nicole’s first paper shows the structural parameters of the Milky Way’s thin and thick discs can shift depending on whether stars are split by chemistry, age, or dynamics. Chemically defined discs stay clean, while dynamical cuts can potentially mix populations. arxiv.org/abs/2511.10092 🔭☄️
- Michelle's first paper focused on finding extragalactic exoplanets! Te VOYAGERS survey looks for planets around stars brought into the Galaxy by the GES merger. Would they be different? Tune in to find out! 🔭 ☄️https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.07632
- Episode 25: Extragalactic exoplanets, simulating individual stars, and galaxy mergers as cosmic ray factories In this episode, Michelle and Payel explore various astrophysical topics, including the Solar birth cluster, young stars, the formation of intermediate mass black holes, and the universe's…
- Michelle's final paper focuses on machine learning approaches to detect strong gravitational lenses in incredible Euclid space telescope data. Using Masked-R-CNN, the authors are able to detect large lensing arcs in images. Tune in for more! 🔭 ☄️ arxiv.org/abs/2511.03064
- Payel's final paper compares how weel state-of-the-art Chat-GPT type models can predict the occurrence of solar flares and coronal mass ejections across high-resolution images, videos, and high-resolution time series data 🔭 ☄️. Find out more at arxiv.org/abs/2510.23400.
- Michelle's 2nd paper discusses a semi-analytical approach to modelling the formation of intermediate mass black holes in star clusters. They find different distributions in the cluster mass-black hole mass plane for globular and nuclear star clusters, Tune in for more! 🔭☄️ arxiv.org/abs/2511.00200
- Payel's second paper claims a expansion of the universe that is decelerating rather than accelerating after correcting for a correlation between age and magnitude of Type 1a supernovae 🔭 ☄️. Find out more at arxiv.org/abs/2510.13121.
- Payel's first paper finds bona-fide young alpha-enriched stars in the Milky Way! An unexpected find as alpha enrichment usually happens early in a chemical evolution history 🔭 ☄️. Find out more at arxiv.org/pdf/2510.15654.
- ☄️ Michelle's first paper constrains the birth cluster of the Sun. Using N-body simulations and the orbital properties of the Sednoids in the outer Solar system, they can improve constraints on the density of, and time the Sun spent in, the cluster by an order of magnitude! 🔭 arxiv.org/abs/2510.19910
- We give a shout out to Benty Fields this episode. It's a great resource for finding and tracking papers. Support them if you can ☄️🔭
- Episode 24 of the StarXiv is out! Tune in as Payel and Michelle discuss the latest from the astro-arXiv, including young, high alpha stars, intermediate black holes, solar flares, Euclid lenses and more! Listen below, on Spotify or wherever you get podcasts 🔭 🧪
- Episode 24: Strong lenses, Solar Flares and young, high alpha stars In this episode, Michelle and Payel explore various astrophysical topics, including the Solar birth cluster, young stars, the formation of intermediate mass black holes, and the universe's decelerated expansion. They also discuss…
- Owing to a technical hiccup, the StarXiv will be arriving a little later this week. Expect to hear Michelle and Payel chat about the latest from astro-ph this Wednesday instead! It'll be worth the wait ☄️ 🔭
- Michelle's final paper discussed the 'failed' galaxies. Thought to be living in massive dark matter halos that have formed fewer stars than expected, this population is poorly undertsood. This paper looks for their progenitors in the MAGNETICUM simulations 🔭 ☄️https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.04416
- Nicole’s third paper reported two RR Lyrae stars enriched in heavy s-process elements, a rare class previously represented only by TY Gruis. Their chemistry could reveal ancient mass transfer from AGB companions. arxiv.org/abs/2510.15723 🔭☄️
- In Michelle's second paper, she updates us all on the offensively faint Ursa Major III/UNIONS 1 stellar association. Is it a galaxy wtih dark matter or a star cluster? This new paper searches for signs of dark matter and/or binary stars to answer this question! arxiv.org/abs/2510.02431 🔭 ☄️
- Nicole’s second paper showed our Galaxy’s oldest stars mark a dense proto-Galaxy at its center, mirroring compaction-driven starbursts seen in Milky Way–like Auriga simulations that shaped the early, central galaxy. arxiv.org/abs/2510.17693 🔭☄️
- Michelle's first paper discussed MEGATRON! No, it's not some sort of transformer, but a neat suite of simulations that can help us understand what sets the metallicity of the faintest galaxies. Tune in for more! 🔭 ☄️ arxiv.org/abs/2510.05232
