Plaskett fellow at the NRC Herzberg Astronomy and Astrophysics. Exoplanets, direct imaging instruments, and stats tools. #julialang enthusiast.
Victoria, B.C., Canada
Joined January 2020
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William Thompson retweeted
The first astronaut in history to speak French while en route to the moon — Canada’s very own @astro_jeremy 🇨🇦
William Thompson retweeted
This photo of Earth is EXTRA spectacular for a good reason... let me explain. Most images you see of Earth from space are the daylight side of the Earth, and it's obviously very bright (see my last image), this means stars are too dim to be seen with that bright exposure setting (low ISO, high shutter and / or stopped down aperture).
BUT this image taken by the Orion crew looks so incredible because you can see the sun is BEHIND the earth, meaning it's night time on the side of the earth facing the crew in this image.
So how do you expose a night time earth from space? Same way you do on Earth! A mixture of opening up the aperture (F4 in this case), cranking the ISO (51,200 here), and using a relatively long exposure (1/4 of a second). We can see the settings used by looking at the exif data from the camera. What this means is our camera is also sensitive enough to see stars in the background of Earth, leading to an extraordinary image!!! GREAT WORK!!! These are the kind of images I've been so excited to see!
We see our home planet as a whole, lit up in spectacular blues and browns. A green aurora even lights up the atmosphere. That's us, together, watching as our astronauts make their journey to the Moon.
ALT A full disk image of Earth, as seen from the Orion capsule. The planet is a pale blue, swirling with white clouds and glowing slightly lighter blue in place from reflected light. From about 8 to 9 o'clock, a large brown landmass is Africa, with the Iberian peninsula twinkling with lights just where the planet curves. At the 1 o'clock spot, aurora glow in a thin green glow, just barely separated from the planet's surface. Earth is set against the black of space. Credit: NASA/Reid Weisman
William Thompson retweeted
New paper! In work led by Sabina Sagynbayeva we quantify mission and ancillary data (RV, astrometry) requirements that enable "full system" (terrestrial AND giant planets) characterization with the Habitable Worlds Observatory.
arxiv.org/abs/2507.21443
William Thompson retweeted
A surprising & little-known results in classical statistics:
Mean (μ) and median (m) are within one std deviation:
|μ−m| ≤ σ
For unimodal densities, bound is even tighter
|μ−m| ≤ 0.7746 σ
This beautiful results first appeared in a 1932 paper by Hotelling & Solomons
1/3
William Thompson retweeted
Our paper on a differentiable spectral model, ExoJAX2, has been accepted by ApJ. In this paper, we use HMC-NUTS to analyze JWST’s native-resolution transmission, high-dispersion spectra of a brown dwarf from Subaru, and Jupiter’s reflected light. arxiv.org/abs/2410.06900 1/N
William Thompson retweeted
Taking my glasses off when I get home after a long day because I’ve seen enough
William Thompson retweeted
The Flag That Unites Us.
Happy #FlagDay! 🇨🇦
William Thompson retweeted
Researchers from UVic’s Astronomy Research Centre used the James Webb Space Telescope to captured a rare glimpse of how young planets are forming. This groundbreaking discovery reveals how planets compete with their host star for material shorturl.at/Ei7Fh @ArcUvic #JWST
William Thompson retweeted
Just saw someone saying using the em-dash is a sign of something being written by AI, because real people rarely use it. This is terrible news for everyone like me who has an unhealthy emotional attachment to the em-dash.
William Thompson retweeted
Law of controls: write C code for real-time embedded hardware. You can't use #python or #rstats etc. for that, right? With #julialang v1.12, we demonstrate it's possible to ahead of time compile to small binaries for use in controls applications. #sciml
arxiv.org/abs/2502.01128
William Thompson retweeted
The heretical thought occurs to me as I dig into “The Stars, Like Dust” that I do not in fact enjoy Isaac Asimov’s long form writing.
William Thompson retweeted
Though many events in space take place over vast timescales, these rings (Webb spotted 17 of them) are moving outward from their stars at more than 1600 miles/s, making them noticeably different from one year to the next. This animation shows changes in WR140 between 2022-2023.
William Thompson retweeted
One photo with: Milkyway, Zodical light, @Starlink satellites as streaks, stars as pin points, atmosphere on edge showing OH emission as burned umber (my favorite Crayon color), soon to rise sun, and cities at night as streaks. Taken two days ago from Dragon Crew 9 vehicle port window.
William Thompson retweeted
whole article is incredible and has 5-6 “koans” about git’s (horrible) quirks
Sweet summer child, you probably weren't using it when the man page for git checkout started with a sentence about "tree-ish[es]".
stevelosh.com/blog/2013/04/g…
William Thompson retweeted
Wishing everyone a happy and healthy arXiv2501 . . . 😉🪩🎉
So thankful for everyone around the world who uses arXiv to share and discover new research. Here's to more #openscience in the new year!
#happynewyear #newyearnewscience #2025
ALT A scientist giving a thumbs up from behind a laptop and some beakers and saying "happy new year from the arXiv team"
William Thompson retweeted
Cosmic fireflies. Actually, these are Starlink satellites momentarily flashing sunlight towards @Space_Station.
William Thompson retweeted
We're back on Monday, December 2, 2024. Jayke Nguyen of UC San Diego will present The Incomprehensible Scales of Astrophysics, followed by astronomy trivia! Join us at 7pm at Duck Foot Brewing in Miramar (8920 Kenamar Drive, San Diego, CA 92121). #duckfootbrewing #astronomyontap
