✨Astronomer searching for and studying the faintest galaxies in the Universe ✨co-host of the @starxiv.bsky.social podcast ✨ Enthusiastic-but-mediocre runner 🏃🏻♀️ vegan 🌱 She/her
Michelle Collins
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Individual galaxies are beautiful and they can tell us a lot! In a world where we increasingly talk about large samples of galaxies, it's nice to get a detailed look at just one. Download our latest episode to hear more 🔭☄️🧪 @starxiv.bsky.social
Michelle Collins
Episode 38 is live! Tune in below or anywhere you get podcast to hear Michelle and Nicole discuss machine learning methods for classifying mergers and supernova, unusual chemistry in binary systems and an awesome spiral galaxy with exquisite deep MUSE data. starxiv.com/2026/06/08/e... 🔭 ☄️
starxiv.com
Arrakihs is a go! Congratulations to the whole team, I'm so happy and excited! And to my colleague @derkal.bsky.social who has put in a huge amount of effort to this awesome mission 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🔭☄️😊
Nicole's second paper is a deep look at one ordinary spiral, W2246f, mapped edge to edge with MUSE. Its centre looks like it hosts an active nucleus using standard diagnostics, but better diagnostics show it's just old, quiet stars; a galaxy quenching from the inside out. arxiv.org/abs/2605.29014 ☄️🔭
Why do some binary stars have weirdly different chemistries? This paper investigates whether swallowing a planet might explain it. Check out the latest episode of the @starxiv.bsky.social for more! 🔭☄️🧪
Vision learning models along with a Bayesian uncertainty framework leads to computers being as good at identifying galaxy mergers as human experts! This paper got me excited for what we can do with image classification with machine learning🤩🔭☄️🧪
Just before switching on my out of office and leaving for the lakes, I recorded the latest episode of the @starxiv.bsky.social with @nbuckley0810.bsky.social! Check it out and subscribe for astro-ph based content 😊🔭☄️🧪
It's paper day! Connor Pickett (who has just submitted his thesis 🎉) has his paper on the mass profiles of Andromeda dwarfs out! He has modelled another 7 and they look super interesting. Many are less dense than we expected. 🧪☄️🔭 arxiv.org/abs/2606.00221
The StarXiv ✨ podcast
Dynamical mass modeling of Andromeda (M31) dwarf spheroidal (dSph) galaxies has revealed a growing trend of lower central dark matter (DM) densities than predicted by pure DM structure formation in La...
Episode 38 is live! Tune in below or anywhere you get podcast to hear Michelle and Nicole discuss machine learning methods for classifying mergers and supernova, unusual chemistry in binary systems and an awesome spiral galaxy with exquisite deep MUSE data. starxiv.com/2026/06/08/e... 🔭 ☄️
Nicole's first paper asks if a swallowed planet explains why one star in the HD 81809 binary is far more iron-rich than its twin. The problem: any planet big enough to fix the iron adds too much lithium. The iron needs ~50 Earth-masses to match, the lithium needs under 6. arxiv.org/abs/2605.31060 ☄️🔭
starxiv.com
Michelle's first paper looked at using vision-language models and a Bayesian uncertainty framework for classifying galaxies undergoing mergers, Turns out, the machines can do as well as human experts! 🔭 ☄️https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.00415
The StarXiv ✨ podcast
The StarXiv ✨ podcast
The StarXiv ✨ podcast
The Arrakihs mission has been adopted as ESA's next F-class mission, with an expected launch in 2030! It will look at the low surface brightness outskirts of 80 Milky Way-like galaxies.
www.esa.int/Science_Expl...
The European Space Agency’s (ESA) Science Programme Committee has adopted the Arrakihs mission. Planned for launch by the end of 2030, Arrakihs will capture the faint light from nearby galaxy haloes. ...
