Agata Rożek

Agata Rożek

@agastro.bsky.social

Astronomer looking at chunks of metal and rock in space. Currently at Royal Observatory Edinburgh. PhD. she/her. Asteroid 63440

691 followers188 following218 posts

Agata Rożek
@agastro.bsky.social

If you enjoy people being passionate about extremely specific things, please give @e-astronomer.bsky.social 's Shakespeare podcast a go!

Andy Lawrence@e-astronomer.bsky.social

Check out my podcast: Slices of Shakespeare. Each episode takes a famous quote, performs the scene, and chats about the play. Many groovy guests. Astro-prof does the Bard. Trailer live now, full launch Oct 16th. rss.com/podcasts/sli... #Theatresky #shakespeare #shakespearesunday

rss.comSlices of Shakespeare | Podcast on RSS.comJoin Professor Andy Lawrence to explore famous lines and phrases from Shakespeare.
Agata Rożek
@agastro.bsky.social

Paper day! My PhD student Richard Cannon collects the modelled contact binaries in the Solar System to analyse their properties and proposes methods of describing them 🔭☄️🪨 arxiv.org/abs/2610.29805 There's also a useful on-line table accompanying the paper: recannon.github.io/contact_bina...

arxiv.orgThe morphology of contact binary objects in the Solar SystemContact binaries, appearing as two objects stuck together, are prevalent throughout the Solar System, making up between 30- 50% of asteroids and comets. Despite this, detailed shape models of contact ...
Agata Rożek
@agastro.bsky.social

Paper day! It's not easy to fit all the science presented at a meeting as big as ACM in the word limit of a short report, but hey, we gave it a go! You can find the Nature Astronomy Meeting Report on Asteroids Comets Meteors 2026 here: rdcu.be/MvrGvwmXQsXa 🔭☄️🪨

Agata Rożek
@agastro.bsky.social

The way we wrote the report it summarises whole sessions and groups of talks and posters rather than specific talks with the limited citation space use to give examples representative of what results were discussed but by no means complete!

Agata Rożek reposted

Rubin LSST:UK
@lsstuk.bsky.social

Great to read BBC Sky At NIght interview with Cyrielle Opitom (@physicsastronomyed.bsky.social) on why comet 3I/ATLAS is a big deal. There's also a nod to how @vrubinobs.bsky.social can help us better understand interstellar objects 🔭 www.skyatnightmagazine.com/news/3i-atla...

skyatnightmagazine.com"We had a visitor from a distant corner of our Galaxy" Scientist reveals why interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS was so special – and why we'll find many more very soon | BBC Sky at Night MagazineInterview with astronomer Cyrielle Opitom who co-led a study of comet 3I/ATLAS using the Very Large Telescope
Agata Rożek
@agastro.bsky.social

There's nothing cooler than Astronomy with preschoolers 🙂 The group at Carrots and Peas nursery in Poznań was very enthusiastically studying the ejecta made by throwing rocks at trays filled with layers of flour and cocoa... planetary defenders in training! 🥰 🪨🛰

Agata Rożek reposted

Harrison Agrusa
@harrisonagrusa.bsky.social

I’ve been exploring gravitational reaccumulation after asteroid catastrophic disruptions and am finding contact binaries are super common outcomes! I can’t help but notice how similar Torifune looks compared to this fragment from one of my simulations, which I will present tomorrow at #ACM2026

Andy Rivkin@asrivkin.bsky.social

Torifune!! It looks like another Itokawa! As JB says, it’s a great time for asteroid studies, and hopefully we’ll hear a lot more over the course of the #ACM2026 meeting!

Agata Rożek
@agastro.bsky.social

Hey look at that Torifune there, contact-binarying away like it has no care in the world 🔭🪨☄️

Dr. JB Vincent@comet-toolbox.com

Great week-end for small bodies ! Hayabusa 2# flyby of asteroid Torifune (www.jaxa.jp/press/2026/0...) and Tianwen-2 images of asteroid Kamo'oalewa (www.xinhuanet.com/20260706/eb8...) ! #PlanetaryScience

Agata Rożek reposted

Royal Astronomical Society
@royalastrosoc.bsky.social

Astronomy needs dark, quiet skies, but light and radio pollution from growing space activity is putting them at risk. 🛰️ The Group of Friends for Dark and Quiet Skies has created a survey to help inform international discussions on protecting our Dark and Quiet Skies - and wants to hear from you. ⤵️

Agata Rożek reposted

ESO
@eso.org

Replying to @eso.org

Reflect Orbital aims to launch 50,000 mirror-like satellites to provide sunlight at night, with reflected beams spanning at least 5 km on Earth's surface. This image illustrates how scattered sunlight would increase the overall brightness of the sky above the VLT. 🔭 🧪 ☄️ #DarkSkies 3/4

Agata Rożek reposted

Meredith Rawls
@merrdiff.bsky.social

Along with LSST start 🎉 also out today is Thiele et al. reporting the CRASH Clock is at 2.5 days 👀 That's how long it'd take for satellites to start crashing into each other if they lost maneuvering capability 🛰️ When the authors first shared on arXiv in June 2025, it was at 5.5 days… Seems fine 🔭

theconversation.comA new CRASH Clock measures the chance of satellite collisions, and it’s ticking down fastHow prepared are we for a solar storm, bad software update or cybersecurity event that could trigger widespread loss of satellite control?
Agata Rożek
@agastro.bsky.social

For absolutely NO REASON WHATSOEVER, I thought I'd mention my 15-year old paper on orbital similarity: academic.oup.com/mnras/articl... Other publications on orbital similarity available. There really is no need to eyeball orbital similarity.

academic.oup.comOrbital similarity functions – application to asteroid pairsAbstract. The paper expands the idea of Vokrouhlický and Nesvorný who used a modified Zappalà et al. metric with osculating elements in search for pairs of
Agata Rożek
@agastro.bsky.social

🔭

Royal Astronomical Society@royalastrosoc.bsky.social

Care passionately about dark skies and the growing problem of satellites and space debris? 🛰️ The Group of Friends for Dark and Quiet Skies, composed of UN COPUOS Member States and Observers, wants to hear from you. ⤵️

Agata Rożek
@agastro.bsky.social

Just a friendly reminder that there's less than a week left to submit abstracts (and for early registration fee) for the largest conference in the small solar system bodies' field! acm2026.eu Happening in the best city ever, Poznań 💙🐐🐐 🥔 📡☄️🔭🛰🪨

Agata Rożek
@agastro.bsky.social

He didn't shy away when I asked him to come live in a tent for a couple weeks in a middle of nowhere with a bunch of Astronomy enthusiasts to teach high-school students about Astronomy, and was an excellent sport about the whole madness of a student-run science camp (5/..)

Agata Rożek
@agastro.bsky.social

He was a strict teacher and a no-nonsense administrator, but I remember Dybol as an excellent mentor and a supportive and warm person. He was stubborn and tireless in fighting for what he believed and cared deeply for his students. He's greatly missed (6/6)

Agata Rożek
@agastro.bsky.social

The legendary dreaded "Tycho" task required us to draw a simple histogram of star density in the Tycho catalogue in an arbitrary stripe of sky using ANSI C. We learned to think about geometry, astrometry, computer memory, and limits of a programming language in a way that stuck (3/..

Agata Rożek
@agastro.bsky.social

He also had a whole spiel about how the Oort Cloud isn't necessarily real, which was a demonstration of how you should read and review research papers and challenge accepted conclusions when new tools and evidence become available (4/..

Agata Rożek
@agastro.bsky.social

While best known in the Planetary Science community for his cometary dynamics work, I'll remember him as one of the best teachers and mentors a student could wish for (2/..

Agata Rożek
@agastro.bsky.social

I didn't realise Acta Prima Aprilia had a proper journal page. Udder respect to all the authors for following-up with some deliciously wild ideas 🤩 🔭

Prof. Sam Lawler@sundogplanets.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy

*Secret hilarious project* is now live! Astronomy has a fine tradition of April Fool's Day papers, where there are real calculations, but perhaps on a very silly topic. Compilation of this year's Acta Prima Aprilia papers here: https://www.actaprimaaprilia.com/2026-issue

actaprimaaprilia.comActa Prima Aprilia - 2026 IssuePlan 9: Detecting Atmospheric Deterrence Against Interstellar Monsters David Rice, Michael J. Radke arXiv:2603.28895 Exoplanet atmospheres are usually discussed as tracers of climate, chemistry, and habitability, but they may also preserve signatures of planetary defense. We consider three