Country Music isn’t really my thing, but I was very sad when I heard the news a couple of days ago about the death of Dolly Parton. So sad, in fact, that I felt I had to wait a while before posting anything. I have little to add to the obituaries about her now, but I’ll just mention some things that I liked about her. O
ne was that she was totally accepting of the LGBTQ+ people, which is why she was adopted so enthusiastically even by people like me who aren’t really country music fans. Her unoffocial motto was “Find out who you are and do it on purpose”. That is admirable advice. Even during the ongoing backlash of bigotry she stood her ground. For that alone I would mourn her passing.
The second thing that I should say mention is her philanthropy. She was a tireless supporter of good causes, especially her wonderful Imagination Library (which has had a branch in the Republic of Ireland since 2019). This exists to encourage young children to read by giving them free books. Here in Ireland An Post delivers them for free too. As well as this and other public initiatives there are countless private acts of kindness, little gifts and words of encouragement. These days it seems unfashionable to be both rich and generous. Certainly one can’t imagine Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos and their ilk giving any of their vast fortunes to any good cause.
Another thing about Dolly Parton that I adored was her self-deprecating humour. I regularly saw her on TV disarming someone who tried to mock her style and appearance by parodying herself. She always seemed to be down-to-earth and completely without pretentions. Of course I never met Dolly Parton, but I really think I would have liked her if I had.
I’ve already stated that I am not the biggest fan of Country Music but some of Dolly Parton’s songs crossed over and became huge popular hits. This one is one that I really do like. This is the original version of I Will Always Love You later covered by Whitney Houston, but I like it this version better. Incidentally, it was written on the same day as another smash hit of hers, Jolene.
Today (26th August 2026) was the day that students across Ireland received offers of places at Third-Level Institutions to start next month. The offers for all courses and all institutions are available on the official CAO website here; they are also widely available elsewhere.
The official numbers for first round offers at Maynooth are here. Minimum points required for Maynooth’s – and indeed Ireland’s – most important course, MH206 Theoretical Physics and Mathematics, are 500 this year, down from 520 last year. MH204 Physics with Astrophysics is 401, up on last year’s 385. MH201 General Science (of which Physics is a part) is on 346 points, down 6 from 352 last year. Maynooth’s biggest course (by student numbers) – and indeed the biggest course in Ireland reckoned that way – is the Omnibus Arts programme MH101 which has an entry level this year of just 300 CAO points, the same as last year. There are several more rounds of offers and the final points may vary as the system works through to the finish.
Leaving Certificate results are just one factor in determining the CAO points for a particular course at a particular Institution. Overall the picture is rather complex. Across Ireland, points are up for about 50% of courses and down for about 42%. The CAO points needed for a course are largely a matter of demand versus capacity rather than academic performance. For the last few years Maynooth University has been recruiting more and more students, putting pressure on accommodation, teaching loads and campus space. This strategy will prevent any significant rise in CAO points for the foreseeable future. This is probably happening to some extent across the sector, though Maynooth has a more urgent need for more students: to pay for the legions of new posts it has created within its bloated management structure.
A reminder that all this just concerns the first round of offers so things may change significantly over the next week or two. Students now have to decide whether to accept their first-round offer or try to change course. They have until next week to do this. Departments won’t know how many new students they have for a while yet.
Update: 27/8/206. Here is the traditional Irish Times supplement with all first-round offers, confirming most courses at Maynooth are bucking the national trend by going down rather than up:
In my recent weekly updates of activity at the Open Journal of Astrophysics, the latest of which is here, I’ve remarked that we had built up quite a backlog of papers accepted but yet to be published. This is no doubt due to August being a holiday for many researchers. Well, we seem to be catching up rather rapidly. So far this week we have published eight new papers, and it’s only Wednesday!
The recent burst of activity has led to us establishing a first, a week in which we have published a full house of at least one paper in each of the six sections of astro-ph on the arXiv. As a reminder, these are they:
astro-ph.GA – Astrophysics of Galaxies. Phenomena pertaining to galaxies or the Milky Way. Star clusters, HII regions and planetary nebulae, the interstellar medium, atomic and molecular clouds, dust. Stellar populations. Galactic structure, formation, dynamics. Galactic nuclei, bulges, disks, halo. Active Galactic Nuclei, supermassive black holes, quasars. Gravitational lens systems. The Milky Way and its contents
astro-ph.CO – Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics. Phenomenology of early universe, cosmic microwave background, cosmological parameters, primordial element abundances, extragalactic distance scale, large-scale structure of the universe. Groups, superclusters, voids, intergalactic medium. Particle astrophysics: dark energy, dark matter, baryogenesis, leptogenesis, inflationary models, reheating, monopoles, WIMPs, cosmic strings, primordial black holes, cosmological gravitational radiation
astro-ph.EP – Earth and Planetary Astrophysics. Interplanetary medium, planetary physics, planetary astrobiology, extrasolar planets, comets, asteroids, meteorites. Structure and formation of the solar system
astro-ph.HE – High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena. Cosmic ray production, acceleration, propagation, detection. Gamma ray astronomy and bursts, X-rays, charged particles, supernovae and other explosive phenomena, stellar remnants and accretion systems, jets, microquasars, neutron stars, pulsars, black holes
astro-ph.IM – Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics. Detector and telescope design, experiment proposals. Laboratory Astrophysics. Methods for data analysis, statistical methods. Software, database design
astro-ph.SR – Solar and Stellar Astrophysics. White dwarfs, brown dwarfs, cataclysmic variables. Star formation and protostellar systems, stellar astrobiology, binary and multiple systems of stars, stellar evolution and structure, coronas. Central stars of planetary nebulae. Helioseismology, solar neutrinos, production and detection of gravitational radiation from stellar systems.
As of yesterday we had published in five of the six categories and were only missing a paper (in Number 4 – High-Energy Astrophysical Phenomena). Today, right on cue, from the queue, came this paper to complete the set:
There’s still a couple of days to go and we have more papers in the pipeline so it looks like I’ll have a busy time on Saturday morning when I do the next update!
As of today, 25th August 2026, the Open Journal of Astrophysics has published 632 articles. Using the dollar cost of an MNRAS APC as a benchmark – many journals charge more – this means that we have now saved the global astrophysics community over $2M (for a total outlay of around $15K).
Yes, we are still a small journal but the size of that figure should help you understand how much money is being wasted globally on publishing fees that could instead be spent on actual research.
It’s good to see that more and more researchers are seeing the light and switching to Diamond Open Access. Today we published the 184th article in Volume 9 (2026) of the Open Journal of Astrophysics. At the end of August we will be about two-thirds of the way through the year so I expect we will publish more than 270 articles this year. I also expect that less than a year from now we will have saved our third million dollars.
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone involved in running this journal: the Editors, staff at Maynooth University Library who help us, the host of volunteer referees, and of course our authors. I’m confident that, together, we can change the publishing landscape in astrophysics, and put the power (and money) back in the hands of researchers instead of greedy publishers.
This is a slightly-edited version of a post I made yesterday, when we had published four fewer papers, for the Open Journal of Astrophysics blog.
I’ve mentioned several times on this blog that there are many crows in Maynooth. By “crows” I mean members of the family Corvidae, including rooks, jackdaws and magpies as well as crows themselves, of which the hooded crow is the most common around these parts. I find them all fascinating, as they are remarkably intelligent, playful and full of mischief, though they can be a nuisance at times. The sound of crows clattering about on the roof can be quite distracting, and their cawing and chattering is hardly musical. I’m used to them now, though. I often watch them with suspicion, wondering what they’re up to, but don’t try to scare them off. I would miss them if they went away.
At this time of year the crows are moulting, and I regularly have to pick up discarded feathers here and there:
I noticed some rooks and jackdaws starting to moult a few weeks ago, actually. The usual season is “late summer”, i.e. after the beeding season, but I suppose the precise timing of the onset of moulting depends on the weather. It does seem a rather uncomfortable time for these birds. Their new feathers have to grow out through their skin as the old ones are discarded which can’t be a pleasant experience. I imagine they feel quite itchy while it’s going on. They also look very dishevelled and grumpy; sometimes even embarrassed. Some look sick or diseased, but they’re quite healthy really. It’s just a natural phase they go through once a year. Soon they will emerge with shiny new feathers, ready for fresh mischief.
Here’s a rather dishevelled rook with old feathes clearly visible to make my point
What the moulting season is for birds – the time when they lose their feathers – setbacks, misfortune and hard times are for us human beings. You can cling on to the moulting season, you can also emerge from it reborn, but it must not be done in public.
I looked at my Outlook calendar for the forthcoming week and found it reassuringly empty of meetings and deadlines. That means I can get on with some useful work. In fact I’ll have to because the week after next, starting 31st August, will be very busy. Anyway, I thought I would use the start of this August hiatus to update a post I did more than eight years ago about blogging and privacy.
It was triggered by the following cartoon I saw in The Oldie (which I used to buy for the crossword) and which really struck home.
I can think of quite a few occasions when I’ve met a complete stranger who, by being a reader this blog, seemed to know more about me than I do!
Looking back over the years, admit that there have been a few times when I’ve posted personal things on here that I probably should have kept to myself. On the other hand, a lot of things have happened over the years that I haven’t even mentioned on here. More recently I’ve had very good reason to keep many more personal things to myself. That’s mainly because there’s another person involved who is far more important to me than the blog and who has good reason to dislike all forms of social media. He doesn’t mind me writing a blog. He sometimes even reads it. He just doesn’t want to identified on it, even accidentally.
To start with I felt a bit strange about going somewhere or doing something interesting then not even mentioning it on here. To be honest I felt a bit guilty about being secretive. Then I snapped out of it and realised that there’s nothing at all wrong with keeping private things private for any reason at all, and particularly not if the person you share them with has very good reasons for not wanting to share them with anyone else. Secrecy often implies something bad you want to hide, whereas privacy is just about helping other people to mind their own business.
Looking back over the years, I know I’ve also written tactless items about things I would have been wiser to have left alone and have sometimes caused offence as a result. Everybody makes mistakes, but if you make them on the internet they’re in the public domain forever. Part of the problem is that it’s too easy to forget that people actually read this stuff! On the other hand, I do think at least some of the items I’ve posted have had a positive effect and that, in my mind at least, far outweighs the negatives.
This rambling post (like the one that preceded it) is just a product of the process I go through from time to time, wondering how much longer I want to keep this blog going. Next month In The Dark will be 18 years old, so perhaps I should treat it like an adult and let it make its own decisions! By the time it reaches 20, however, I will have retired and I think that will be a good time to pull down the shutters.
Later than usual, it’s time once more for another Saturday update of activity at the Open Journal of Astrophysics. Since the last update we have published a further six papers, bringing the number in Volume 9 (2026) to 177 and the total so far published by OJAp up to 625.
I continue to include the posts made on our Mastodon account (on Fediscience); these announcements also show the DOI for each paper. In the past on these posts I have included the article keywords as tags, but this is quite a lot of effort to do for little benefit so I’ve decided just to tag the arXiv category (i.e. folder) and arXiv ID for each paper.
The first one up this week was published on Tuesday 18th August in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies. The article “Ghostly DLAs in SDSS DR16” by Patrick Petitjean (Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris, France). This study revisits the origin of proximate damped Lyman-alpha absorbers (PDLAs), associating most with the AGN or quasar host galaxy environment..
You can find the officially accepted version on arXiv here and the announcement on Fediverse here:
The second paper for this week, also published on Tuesday 18th August in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies is “Dust in the Average Galaxy: Attenuation, Emission, and Opacity from 0<z<7” by Caitlin M. Casey (University of California Santa Barbara, USA) and an international cast of 45 others. This study analyzes over 500,000 galaxies to understand dust emission and attenuation properties. Findings reveal UV/optical attenuation underestimates IR luminosity, and dust constraints are crucial for understanding star-forming galaxies.
The overlay looks like this:
The official version of the paper can be found on arXiv here and the Fediverse announcement here:
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Dust in the Average Galaxy: Attenuation, Emission, and Opacity from 0<z<7" by Caitlin M. Casey (University of California Santa Barbara, USA) and an international cast of 45 others.
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "First Light And Reionization Epoch Simulations (FLARES) XXI: The UV Indices of Galaxies in the Early Universe" by Connor Sant Fournier (University of Malta, Malta) and 7 others based in Malta and the UK.
The fourth paper of the week is “White dwarf + M dwarf Detached Binaries in Long Period Radio Transients: Observed Binary Parameters, Evolution, and Population Constraints” by Antonio Rodriguez (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA, USA), Kareem El-Badry (Caltech, USA), Iris de Ruiter (U. Sydney, Australia), Kaustubh Rajwade (U. Oxford, UK), Edo Berger & Liam Connor (CfA) and Natasha Hurley-Walker (Curtin U., Australia). This was published on Wednesday 19th August in the folder Solar and Stellar Astrophysics. This article presents new findings on long period radio transients (LPTs), slow-pulsing radio sources, associated with M dwarf-white dwarf systems., suggests these systems are part of a significant Galactic population of such objects.
The overlay is here:
The officially-accepted version of the paper can be found on arXiv here and the Fediverse announcement here:
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "White dwarf + M dwarf Detached Binaries in Long Period Radio Transients: Observed Binary Parameters, Evolution, and Population Constraints" by Antonio Rodriguez (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA, USA), Kareem El-Badry (Caltech, USA), Iris de Ruiter (U. Sydney, Australia), Kaustubh Rajwade (U. Oxford, UK), Edo Berger & Liam Connor (CfA) and Natasha Hurley-Walker (Curtin U., Australia)
The fifth paper of the week is “Cosmological Dynamics of Multi-Axion Quintessence” by Supakorn Katewongveerachart (Mahidol U., Thailand) and David J. E. Marsh, King’s College London, UK). This was published on Thursday 20th August 2026 in the folder Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics. This study explores dark energy dynamics, and their potential observational consequences, for a cosmological model with two, three or four axion fields.
The overlay is here:
The officially-accepted version of the paper can be found on arXiv here and the Fediverse announcement here:
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Cosmological Dynamics of Multi-Axion Quintessence" by Supakorn Katewongveerachart (Mahidol U., Thailand) and David J. E. Marsh, King's College London, UK)
Finally for this week, the sixth paper of the week is “How can we finally see the first light? Status and perspective in the search for Population III stars” by Alessandra Venditti (U. Texas Austin, USA) and 28 others from around the world. This was published on Thursday August 20th in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies. This review article discusses the ongoing search for the first stars (Population III), their formation, and characteristics. It highlights various observational strategies and the role of advanced technology in this quest. This can perhaps act as a reminder that we do publish review articles, as long as the Editorial Board and the reviewers consider them a useful contribution to the literature.
The overlay is here:
You can find the officially-accepted version of the paper on arXiv here and the Fediverse announcement here:
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "How can we finally see the first light? Status and perspective in the search for Population III stars" by Alessandra Venditti (U. Texas Austin, USA) and 28 others from around the world
And that’s all for this week. We’re starting to clear the backlog of papers accepted through the summer but yet to be published, but it will probably take a few weeks to do so completely.
Yesterday I attended my last two Examination Boards for the year at Maynooth University. one for graduating MSc students and another for undergraduate repeat students in Engineering (which I attend because I’m teaching a mathematics course they do). That, more or less, is the end of the business (for me) for the 2025/6 academic year. No sooner is that done, however, than preparations for the start of the 2026/7 teaching session begins, as we wait to find out how many new students we will be admitting to our courses in September.
Today’s the day that over 70,000 school students across Ireland received their Leaving Certificate Results. As always there will be joy for some, and disappointment for others. The headline news relating to these results is that the proportion of students receiving the top grades in higher level examinations (i.e. H1) is down significantly from 11.7% last year to 10.1% this year. This fall is because various adjustments that were made during the Covid-19 pandemic are gradually being wound down. After next year they will disappear altogether.
I thought I would have a quick look at the results for subjects relevant to Physics:
Subject
Number (2025)
Number (2026)
% Grade 1 (2025)
% Grade 1 (2026)
Maths A
23540
25157
11.4
8.1
Maths G
33364
35444
6.1
4.2
Physics A
6592
6855
19.5
15.6
Physics G
1154
1335
5.5
4.5
Applied Maths A
1861
1954
25.9
20.9
Applied Maths G
34
50
5.9
4
(A is higher level and G is ordinary level). Please note that this year’s numbers are provisional and may change as a result of appeals, etc. The full details can be found here.
You can see that the number of students taking these subjects has increased since last year, but in all cases the percentage getting top grades has fallen. Note the very low numbers in the last row, meaning that most students who take Applied Mathematics do the Higher level version. The numbers mean that exactly 2 people got the top grade in 2026 and 2025!
Comparison with earlier years is interesting. Here are the H1 percentages for Mathematics, Physics and Applied Mathematics since 2019:
Mathematics
Physics
Applied Mathematics
2019
6.4
10.9
16.5
2020
8.6
16.1
29.9
2021
15.1
21.1
40.9
2022
18.1
23.7
29.3
2023
11.2
21.2
31.0
2024
12.6
20.7
28.4
2025
11.4
19.5
25.9
2026
8.1
15.6
20.9
You can see that although these percentages have declined from their respective peaks they remain well above 2019 pre-pandemic levels.
It is also worth noting that the number of students taking Physics (A) nationally seems to be recovering from a sharp drop in 2022-4, the numbers being: 6583(2019); 7037(2020); 7210(2021); 6487(2022); 6143(2023); 6009 (2024); 6592 (2025); and 6855 (2026).
Anyway, now that the results are out there will be a busy time until next Wednesday (26th August) when the CAO first round offers go out. That is when those students wanting to go to university find out if they made the grades and university departments find out how many new students (if any) they will have to teach in September. Incidentally, colleagues in the UK might be interested to know that, here in Maynooth, departments have no say in admissions decisions: these are all made centrally.
P.S. When I was a little kid we used to call a “Certificate” a “Stiff Ticket”. I just thought you would like to know that.
I don’t often post anything about matters pertaining to the Irish Federation of University Teachers (IFUT), of which I am a member, but there is something very important going on so I thought I would make an exception. In what follows, I of course speak for myself as an IFUT member and not for IFUT as a whole.
Yesterday I attended an information session in advance of a forthcoming ballot for industrial action. The reason for the action is that the Public Service Agreement, covering pay and working conditions for all public service workers in Ireland, lapsed at the end of June this year (2026) and there is currently no pay settlement for the second half of this year or next year. Salaries have fallen behind inflation under the existing Agreement and some important commitment have not yet been implemented. The Government does not give the impression of being serious about negotiations on these matters.
The members’ ballot will comprise a single YES/NO question on whether or not to support industrial action, including strike action. I think this is an important step towards serious negotiations. I will be supporting industrial action.
The IFUT ballot will open on September 1st, but only IFUT members (working in public institutions) will be able to vote. If you are eligible for IFUT membership, you should join now so that you can have your say and strengthen the collective position of higher education staff. Eligible colleagues who join IFUT by 5pm on 31 August 2026 will be eligible to vote in the ballot. You can join IFUT here. If you’re eligible, please join!
Similar ballots are taking place across all the public service unions. If it comes to industrial action – which I hope it does not – then such action will be coordinated across the public sector.
The views presented here are personal and not necessarily those of my employer (or anyone else for that matter).
Feel free to comment on any of the posts on this blog but comments may be moderated; anonymous comments and any considered by me to be vexatious and/or abusive and/or defamatory will not be accepted. I do not necessarily endorse, support, sanction, encourage, verify or agree with the opinions or statements of any information or other content in the comments on this site and do not in any way guarantee their accuracy or reliability.
In the Dark 