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Weekly Update from the Open Journal of Astrophysics – 23/05/2026

Posted in OJAp Papers, Open Access, The Universe and Stuff with tags arXiv:2508.00976v2, arXiv:2509.06929v3, arXiv:2511.05653v2, arXiv:2512.15961v2, arXiv:2601.12094v2, arXiv:2605.22516v1, Astrophysics of Galaxies, blazars, cosmic shear, cosmological simulations, Cosmology and NonGalactic Astrophysics, Dark Energy, Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, Dark Energy Survey, Diamond Open Access, Diamond Open Access Publishing, galaxy clustering, High-Energy Astrophysical Phenomena, Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics, kinetic Sunyaev-Ze'dovich effect, LOFAR, Open Access, Open Access Publishing., Point Spread Function, pulsars, quasars, radio-astronomy, stacked images, Sunyaev-Ze'dovich Effect, supernova, supernovae, Tomography, Vera C Rubin Observatory, Very Large Array, weak gravitational lensing on May 23, 2026 by telescoper

It’s Saturday once again, so time for another 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 110 and the total so far published by OJAp up to 558.

I will continue to include the posts made on our Mastodon account (on Fediscience); these announcements also show the DOI for each paper.

The first paper to report this week, published on Monday 18th May in the folder Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics is “Edges In Coadded Images” by Erin Sheldon (Brookhaven National Laboratory, USA). This paper describes a study exploring how image discontinuities and noise impact weak gravitational lensing measurements, finding no significant biases under typical conditions. Biases occur only in extreme cases, but can be mitigated.

The overlay for this paper is here

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 Monday 18th May but in the folder Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics, is “Joint cosmological fits to DESI-DR1 full-shape clustering and weak gravitational lensing in configuration space” by A. Semenaite (Swinburne Institute of Technology, Australia) and 72 other authors from all round the world. This paper presents a cosmological analysis of correlations between the DESI-DR1 Bright Galaxy Survey and Luminous Red Galaxy samples and overlapping shear measurements from various weak lensing surveys.

The overlay for this one is here:

The official version of the paper can be found on arXiv here and the Fediverse announcement here:

Next one up, the third paper of the week, and the third published on Monday 18th May, also published on Tuesday 12th May, and in the folder Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics is “Probing Dark Energy Microphysics with kSZ Tomography” by Julius Adolff, Selim Hotinli and Neal Dalal (all of the Perimeter Institute, Canada). This paper explores how kinetic Sunyaev-Zel’dovich tomography and galaxy clustering can enhance our understanding of dark energy and its effects, potentially revealing its microphysical properties in future surveys.

The overlay for this one is here:

The final, accepted version can be found on arXiv here and the Mastodon announcement is here:

The fourth paper this week, published on Wednesday May 20th “A Census of Variable Radio Sources at 3 GHz” by Yjan A. Gordon, Peter S. Ferguson, Michael N. Martinez and Eric J. Hooper (all of the University of Wisconsin, USA). This article, published in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies, uses data from the Very Large Array Sky Survey to analyze variability in the radio sky, finding most changes consistent with blazars and quasars.

The overlay is here:

The officially accepted version can be found on arXiv here and here is the Mastodon announcement:

The fifth article of this week was published on Friday 22nd May in the folder Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics. The title is “Uncovering the Next Galactic Supernova with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory” by John Banovetz (Lawrence Berkeley Lab., USA), Claire-Alice Hebert & Peter B. Denton (Brookhaven National Lab., USA), Dan Scolnic (Duke University, USA), Anze Slosar (Brookhaven) and Chris Walter (Duke). The paper presents a study simulating how effectively the Vera C. Rubin Observatory can localize supernovae using neutrino triggers, finding a 57-97% success rate based on stellar mass density predictions.

The overlay is here:

You can find the authorized version of this paper on arXiv here and the Fediverse announcement is here:

Last, but by no means least, this week we have “Pulsar timing solutions for 17 pulsars at 150 MHz from the Irish LOFAR station” by David J. McKenna (ASTRON, The Netherlands), Evan F. Keane (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland), Peter T. Gallagher (DIAS, Ireland) and Joe McCauley (Trinity). This was published on Friday 22nd May in the folder High-Energy Astrophysical Phenomena. It presents a demonstration of the use of international Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) stations in tracking and characterizing pulsars, providing new insights into these neutron stars’ emission properties.

The overlay for this one is here:

You can find the authorized version of this paper on arXiv here and the Fediverse announcement is here:

And that concludes this week’s update. I’ll do another one next Saturday.

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Weekly Update from the Open Journal of Astrophysics – 16/05/2026

Posted in OJAp Papers, Open Access, The Universe and Stuff with tags arXiv:2512.11035v3, arXiv:2601.04953v3, arXiv:2601.07374v3, arXiv:2603.14511v2, Astrophysics of Galaxies, Capotauro, Chevallier-Polarski-Linder, cosmic shear, cosmological simulations, Cosmology and NonGalactic Astrophysics, Dark Energy, Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, Dark Energy Survey, Dark Scattering, Diamond Open Access, Diamond Open Access Publishing, dwarf galaxies, fast radio bursts, galaxy formation, general relativity, High-Energy Astrophysical Phenomena, JWST, Magnetars, Open Access, Open Access Publishing., peculiar velocities, supernova on May 16, 2026 by telescoper

It’s Saturday once again, so time for another update of activity at the Open Journal of Astrophysics. Since the last update we have published a further five papers, bringing the number in Volume 9 (2026) to 104 and the total so far published by OJAp up to 552. It took us until late July to pass 100 last year.

I will continue to include the posts made on our Mastodon account (on Fediscience) to encourage you to visit it. Mastodon is a really excellent service, and a more than adequate replacement for X/Twitter (which nobody should be using); these announcements also show the DOI for each paper.

The first paper to report this week, published on Monday 11th May in the folder High-Energy Astrophysical Phenomena is “Triaxial magnetars as sources of fast radio bursts” by Jonathan I Katz (Washington University, USA). This paper suggests that the mysterious properties of Fast Radio Bursts (FRB) could be explained by triaxial magnetars, with their activity levels influenced by precessional time scales.

The overlay for this paper is here

You can find the officially accepted version on arXiv here and the announcement on Fediverse here:

The second paper for this week, published on Tuesday 12th May in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies, is “The Abundance of Thin Dwarf Galaxies: a Challenge for Cosmological Simulations” by Jose Benavides & Laura V. Sales (UC Riverside, USA), Julio F. Navarro (U. Victoria, Canada), Simon D. M. White (MPA Garching, Germany), and Carlos S. Frenk, Kyle A. Oman & Shaun Cole (U. Durham, UK). Depending on mass up to 40% of galaxies are intrinsically flat, a fraction that numerical models of galaxy formation struggle to reproduce suggesting the models are incomplete.

The overlay for this one is here:

The official version of the paper can be found on arXiv here and the Fediverse announcement here:

Next one up, the third paper of the week, also published on Tuesday 12th May but in the folder Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics is “Cosmological peculiar velocities in general relativity” by Chris Clarkson (Queen Mary, University of London, UK) and Roy Maartens (U. Western Cape, South Africa). This paper refutes claims that the 1+3 covariant approach to cosmological perturbation theory predicts stronger growth of galaxy peculiar velocities, arguing that standard treatments are correct and fully relativistic.

The overlay for this one is here:

The final, accepted version can be found on arXiv here and the Mastodon announcement is here:

The fourth paper this week, published on Wednesday May 13th “Possible evidence for a pair-instability supernova nature of ultra-early JWST sources” by Andrea Ferrara & Stefano Carniani (Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Italy), Takahiro Morishita (California Institute of Technology, USA), and Massimo Stiavelli (Space Telescope Science Institute, USA). Published in the section Astrophysics of Galaxies. This paper argues that recent observations challenge early galaxy formation models, suggesting that the bright source, Capotauro, could be a supernova from a massive, metal-free star, not a luminous galaxy as initially thought.

The overlay is here:

The officially accepted version can be found on arXiv here and here is the Mastodon announcement:

The fifth and final article of this week was also published on Wednesday 13th May but in the folder Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics. The title is “Evolving and interacting dark energy: photometric and spectroscopic synergy with DES Y3 and DESI DR2” and it is by Maria Tsedrik and Benjamin Bose (University of Edinburgh, UK). The study investigates the Dark Scattering interacting dark energy scenario, using data from various sources. Results show no evidence of dark-sector interaction and a preference for the Chevallier-Polarski-Linder parametrisation.

The overlay is here:

You can find the authorized version of this paper on arXiv here and the Fediverse announcement is here:

And that concludes this week’s update. I’ll do another next Saturday.

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Editorial Opportunity at the Journal of Open Source Software

Posted in Open Access with tags Arfon Smith, Diamond Open Access Publishing, JOSS, Journal of Open Source Software, OJAp, Open Journal of Astrophysics, open source software, The Open Journal of Astrophysics on May 11, 2026 by telescoper

The Journal of Open Source Software – known to its friends as JOSS – is is a developer friendly, diamond open access journal for research software packages which has been running since 2016 and is enormously successful, publishing Open Source software across many fields of science. Its UR, joss.theoj.org, is a giveaway that it is a stablemate of astro.theoj.org, aka the Open Journal of Astrophysics.

The driving force behind JOSS, responsible for getting it off the ground at the very beginning, is Arfon Smith whom I’ve known since Nottingham days and it iis fair to say that without his considerable help, OJAp would never have started. Both journals started off as speculative ventures, and OJAp has taken a considerable time to establish itself, but JOSS took off very quickly indeed and has now published over 3,500 papers. There are numerous differences between the two journals but, like OJAp, all publications in JOSS are free to authors and readers.

Arfon has held the role of Editor-in-Chief at JOSS since 2016 but in a recent blog post he explains that he is stepping down from his role as Editor-in-Chief, although he will remain at JOSS. The call for a replacement is here. It’s an opportunity that will appeal to anyone interested in open-source research software and open-access publishing so if that’s you then please consider applying. It will be a substantial investment of time, probably about a day a week. I quote:

Candidates should have the capacity to commit the time this role requires. For those in institutional positions, we ask for a brief letter or statement from your employer or supervisor confirming support for this commitment. Independent researchers, consultants, or others without a traditional institutional affiliation should include a brief statement describing how they plan to allocate the time.

P.S. Today OJAp published its 100th paper of 2026 so far…

P.P.S. I’ll be stepping down as Editor-in-Chief at OJAp in a couple of years, when I retire, and we’ll be doing a similar search nearer the date.

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Weekly Update from the Open Journal of Astrophysics – 09/05/2026

Posted in OJAp Papers, Open Access, The Universe and Stuff with tags arXiv:2510.07673v2, arXiv:2510.27604v3, arXiv:2511.11965v2, arXiv:2512.01270v2, arXiv:2512.15604v2, Astrophysics of Galaxies, Baryonic Feedback, black hole binaries, cosmic shear, Cosmology and NonGalactic Astrophysics, Diamond Open Access, Diamond Open Access Publishing, Egent, Equivalent Width, galaxy evolution, hyper-velocity stars, Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics, nuclear transients, Open Access, Open Access Publishing., peculiar velocities, supernovae, Voigt profiles, weak gravitational lensing on May 9, 2026 by telescoper

It’s Saturday once again, so time for another update of activity at the Open Journal of Astrophysics. Since the last update we have published a further five papers, bringing the number in Volume 9 (2026) to 99 and the total so far published by OJAp up to 547. We didn’t quite make it to a hundred for the year last week, but will do so with the next paper.

The first paper to report this week is “Formation of Close Binaries through Massive Black Hole Perturbations and Chaotic Tides” by Howard Hao-Tse Huang and Wenbin Lu (University of California at Berkeley, USA). This one was published on Wednesday 6th May 2026 in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies. The paper presents a model of massive black hole-binary systems, showing that repeated tidal interactions can lead to the creation of hyper-velocity stars and other nuclear transients.

The overlay for this paper is here

You can find the officially accepted version on arXiv here and the announcement on Fediverse here:

The second paper for this week, also Wednesday 6th May, but in the folder Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics is “Detection of supernova magnitude fluctuations induced by large-scale structure” by Andrew Nguyen (Swinburne Institute of Technology, Australia) and 58 others based all around the world. This study uses supernovae and galaxy velocities to measure the universe’s structure growth rate, confirming the Planck LambdaCDM model prediction. The methodology is validated and shows potential for future research.

The overlay for this one is here:

The official version of the paper can be found on arXiv here and the Fediverse announcement here:

Next one up, the third paper of the week, also published on Wednesday 6th May in the folder Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics is “Comparing cosmic shear nulling methods for Stage-IV surveys” by Naomi Clare Robertson and Alex Hall (University of Edinburgh, UK). This study compares three strategies for reducing baryon feedback impact on cosmic shear measurements. All methods effectively mitigate bias, with varying degrees of efficiency and information preservation.

The overlay for this one is here:

The final, accepted version can be found on arXiv here and the Mastodon announcement is here:

The fourth paper this week, published on Thursday May 7th, is “Egent: An Autonomous Agent for Equivalent Width Measurement” by Yuan-Sen Ting & Serat Mahmud Saad (Ohio State University, USA), Fan Liu (National Astronomical Observatories, Beijing, China), and Yuting Shen (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA). Egent is an autonomous agent that combines multi-Voigt profile fitting with large language model visual inspection for efficient, automated analysis of raw flux spectra, validated against expert measurements. This one is in the folder Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics. The associated software can be found here.

The overlay is here:

The officially accepted version can be found on arXiv here and here is the Mastodon announcement:

The fifth and final article of this week was published on Friday 8th May in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies. The title is “DiffstarPop: A generative physical model of galaxy star formation history” and it is by Alex Alarcon (Institute of Space Sciences, Barcelona, Spain), Andrew P. Hearin , Matthew R. Becker & Gillian Beltz-Mohrmann (Argonne National Laborarory, USA), and Andrew Benson & Sachi Weerasooriya (Carnegie Observatories, USA). DiffstarPop is a model that accurately and rapidly reproduces statistical distributions of galaxy star formation histories (SFH), using parameters related to galaxy formation physics.

The overlay is here:

You can find the authorized version of this paper on arXiv here and the Fediverse announcement is here:

Here endeth this week’s update. There shall be another next Saturday.

P.S. Just a reminder that, thanks to the efforts of a member of our Editorial Board, the Open Journal of Astrophysics now has a Wikipedia page.

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Weekly Update from the Open Journal of Astrophysics – 02/05/2026

Posted in OJAp Papers, Open Access, The Universe and Stuff with tags 3×2 pt analysis, Active galactic nuclei, AGN, arXiv:2509.07104v2, arXiv:2510.09756v2, arXiv:2512.09342v2, arXiv:2512.15960v3, arXiv:2601.06253v2, arXiv:2601.18784v2, arXiv:2604.24965v1, Astrophysics of Galaxies, baryonification, Computational Astrophysics, cosmic rays, Cosmology and NonGalactic Astrophysics, Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, DESI, Diamond Open Access, Diamond Open Access Publishing, Dispersion Measures, fast radio bursts, galactic cosmic rays, galaxy evolution, galaxy formation, galaxy mergers, High-Energy Astrophysical Phenomena, Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics, magnetohydrodynamics, masers, Milky Way, Open Access, Open Access Publishing., Solar and Stellar Astrophysics, Solar Corona, supermassive black holes, Vera C Rubin Observatory, weak gravitational lensing, wikipedia on May 2, 2026 by telescoper

Here we are, on schedule, with another update of activity at the Open Journal of Astrophysics. Since the last update we have published a further seven papers, bringing the number in Volume 9 (2026) to 94 and the total so far published by OJAp up to 542. I checked the corresponding update for last year (on 3rd May 2025), and we’ve had an increase from 54 to 94 in papers published (about 74%) between the first four months of 2025 and the first four months of 2026.

The first paper to report this week is “DESI-DR1 3 × 2-pt analysis: consistent cosmology across weak lensing surveys” by Anna Porredon (CIEMAT, Madrid, Spain) and 72 others (DESI Colllaboration). This paper was published on Tuesday 28th April in the folder Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics. This paper presents a joint cosmological analysis of galaxy clustering and gravitational lensing observations, providing consistent constraints on cosmological parameters. The analysis also introduces a new blinding procedure to prevent confirmation bias. See this post for news of an important DESI milestone.

The overlay for this paper is here

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 28th April but in the folder High-Energy Astrophysical Phenomena is “Masers and Broad-Line Mapping Favor Magnetically-Dominated AGN Accretion Disks” by Philip F. Hopkins (Caltech, USA), Dalya Baron (Stanford U., USA) and Joanna M. Piotrowska (Caltech). This one presents a new constraint on supermassive black hole accretion disks physics, suggesting that outer regions are likely in a ‘hyper-magnetized’ state, as thermal or radiation pressure models appear inconsistent.

The overlay for this one is here:

The official version of the paper can be found on arXiv here and the Fediverse announcement here:

Next one up, the third paper of the week, is “Galaxy mergers and disk angular momentum evolution: stellar halos as a critical test” by Eric F. Bell (U. Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA), Richard D’Souza (Vatican Observatory), Monica Valluri & Katya Gozman (U. Michigan). This was published on Wednesday 29th April in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies. The paper argues that satellite accretion impacts the angular momentum evolution of galaxies, often causing significant reorientation. This process is detectable in Milky Way-mass galaxies so the idea is testable observationally.

The overlay for this one is here:

The final, accepted version can be found on arXiv here and the Mastodon announcement is here:

The fourth paper this week, published on Thursday April 30th, is “Time-Dilation Methods for Extreme Multiscale Timestepping Problems” by Philip F. Hopkins and Elias R. Most (Caltech, USA). This paper is in the folder Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics: it presents a new method for astrophysical simulations that modulates time evolution with a variable dilation/stretch factor, improving efficiency and accuracy in modeling processes across different scales.

The overlay is here:

The finally accepted version of this paper can be found here and the Mastodon announcement follows:

The fifth article of this week was also published on Thursday 30th April, but in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies. The title is “Cosmic Rays on Galaxy Scales: Progress and Pitfalls for CR-MHD Dynamical Models” and the author is Philip F. Hopkins (Caltech, USA) who has three papers featured this week. The paper presents an overview of cosmic ray (CR) modeling, highlighting its influence on galactic physics and star formation. It addresses previous modeling errors and presents new methods for full-spectrum dynamics.

The overlay is here:

You can find the authorized version of this paper on arXiv here and the Fediverse announcement is here:

The sixth paper of the week is “Baryonification III: An accurate analytical model for the dispersion measure probability density function of fast radio bursts” by MohammadReza Torkamani (Universität Bonn, Germany) and 8 others based in Germany, Switzerland, UK and Sweden. This article was also published on Thursday April 30th in the folder Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics. It presents a framework for predicting dispersion measures of fast radio bursts using the baryonification model, providing a cost-effective alternative to hydrodynamical simulations. The model’s accuracy is validated through full numerical simulations. The overlay is here:

You can find the officially-accepted version on arXiv here and the Mastodon announcement here:

Seventh and finally for this week we have “The stellar and dark matter distributions in early-type galaxies measured by stacked weak gravitational lensing” by Momoka Fujikawa and Masamune Oguri (Chiba University, Japan). This study uses weak gravitational lensing to investigate stellar mass and dark matter density in red galaxies, suggesting a stronger feedback effect than current simulations predict. This was published on Friday 1st May 2026 in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies. The overlay is here:

You can find the officially-accepted version on arXiv here and the Fediverse announcement is here:

And that concludes this week’s update. I’ll do another one at the end of next week. Will Vol. 9 have reached a hundred by then?

P.S. Just a reminder that, thanks to the efforts of a member of our Editorial Board, the Open Journal of Astrophysics now has a Wikipedia page.

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Weekly Update from the Open Journal of Astrophysics – 25/04/2026

Posted in OJAp Papers, Open Access, The Universe and Stuff with tags 300S Stellar Stream, arXiv:2506.21410v2, arXiv:2511.21512v2, arXiv:2601.14554v2, arXiv:2602.14630v2, arXiv:2603.10040v3, Astrophysics of Galaxies, Bayesian Methods, Cosmic Voids, Cosmology and NonGalactic Astrophysics, Diamond Open Access, Diamond Open Access Publishing, Earth and Planetary Astrophysics, GAIA, galaxy evolution, galaxy formation, galaxy mergers, Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics, Intergalactic Medium, IRMaGiC, Large Magellanic Cloud, LSST, LSST Dark Energy Science Collaboration, Milky Way, Open Access, Open Access Publishing., Solar and Stellar Astrophysics, Solar Corona, Vera C. Rubin Observatory, wikipedia on April 25, 2026 by telescoper

So here we are again, on a Saturday morning, with another update of activity at the Open Journal of Astrophysics. Since the last update we have published a further five papers, bringing the number in Volume 9 (2026) to 87 and the total so far published by OJAp up to 535.

The first paper to report this week is “Bayesian Cosmic Void Finding with Graph Flows” by Leander Thiele (U. Tokyo, Japan). This was published on Monday 20th April in the folder Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics. The paper presents a method using a deep graph neural network to identify cosmic voids in sparse galaxy surveys, improving upon traditional deterministic algorithms by considering the problem’s probabilistic nature. The overlay is here:

You can find the officially accepted version on arXiv here and the announcement on Fediverse here:

The second paper for this week, published on Wednesday 22nd April in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies, is “Sifting for a Stream: The Morphology of the 300S Stellar Stream” by Benjamin Cohen (U. Chicago, USA) and 20 others distributed around the world. This study analyzes the morphology of the $300S$ stellar stream, revealing three density peaks, a possible gap, and a kink, suggesting significant influence from the Large Magellanic Cloud on its structure.

The overlay for this one is here:

The official version of the paper can be found on arXiv here and the Fediverse announcement here:

Next one up, the third paper of the week, is “IRMaGiC: Extending Luminous Red Galaxy Selection into the Infrared with Joint Rubin Observatory’s Large Survey of Space Time and Roman’s High Latitude Imaging Survey” by Zhiyuan Guo & Chris. W. Walter (Duke U., USA) and Eli S. Rykoff (Stanford U., USA) on behalf of the LSST Dark Energy Science Collaboration. This was published on Wednesday April 22nd in the folder Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics. The paper introduces IRMaGiC, an algorithm that improves the selection and redshift estimation of Luminous Red Galaxies (LRGs) by incorporating infrared data, enhancing future cosmological surveys.

The overlay for this one is here:

The final, accepted version can be found on arXiv here and the Mastodon announcement is here:

The fourth paper this week, published on Thursday April 23rd, is “The Diagnostic Temperature Discrepancy as Evidence for Non-Maxwellian Coronal Electrons” by Victor Edmonds (Final Stop Consulting, USA). This paper, in the folder Solar and Stellar Astrophysics, presents two methods of measuring electron temperature in the quiet solar corona yielding different results, suggesting non-Maxwellian electron velocity distributions may be responsible for the discrepancy.

The overlay is here:

The finally accepted version of this paper can be found here and the Mastodon announcement follows:

The fifth and final paper for this week was published on Friday 24th April in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies. The title is “Galaxy evolution in the post-merger regime. IV – The long-term effect of mergers on galactic stellar mass growth and distribution” by Sara L. Ellison (U. Victoria, Canada) and Leonardo Ferreira (Universidade Federal do Rio Grande, Brazil). This study uses a large sample of post-merger galaxies to demonstrate that galaxy mergers trigger significant and extended stellar mass growth in their central regions, independent of stellar population modelling.

The overlay is here:

You can find the authorized version of this paper on arXiv here and the Fediverse announcement is here:

The overlay for this one is here:

You can find the officially-accepted version on arXiv here and the Mastodon announcement here:

And that concludes this week’s update. I’ll do another one at the end of next week.

P.S. Thanks to the efforts of a member of our Editorial Board, the Open Journal of Astrophysics now has a Wikipedia page.

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Weekly Update from the Open Journal of Astrophysics – 18/04/2026

Posted in OJAp Papers, Open Access, The Universe and Stuff with tags arXiv:2503.03824v4, arXiv:2508.20266v2, arXiv:2509.14875v2, arXiv:2510.18946v2, arXiv:2511.09644v2, arXiv:2601.14688v2, Astrophysics of Galaxies, binary stars, Computational Astrophysics, Cosmology and NonGalactic Astrophysics, Diamond Open Access, Diamond Open Access Publishing, Earth and Planetary Astrophysics, Epoch of Reionization, galaxy formation, Galaxy Morphology, galaxy profiles, Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics, Intergalactic Medium, Ionization, LAEs, light curves, LSST, Lyman-Alpha Emitters, Open Access, Open Access Publishing., Orbits, Sérsic profile, Solar and Stellar Astrophysics, statmorph-lsst, stellar halos, strong gravitational lensing, THESAN, zELDA on April 18, 2026 by telescoper

It is Saturday morning, and therefore time for yet another 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 82 and the total so far published by OJAp up to 530.

The first paper to report this week is “Beyond Spherical geometry: Unraveling complex features of objects orbiting around stars from its transit light curve using deep learning” by Ushasi Bhowmick & Shivam Kumaran (Indian Space Research Institute, Ahmedabad, India). This study uses deep neural networks to predict the shape of objects orbiting stars based on their transit light curves, demonstrating the potential to extract geometric information from these systems. It was published on Monday 13th April in the folder Earth and Planetary Astrophysics and the overlay can be seen here:

You can find the officially accepted version on arXiv here and the announcement on Fediverse here:

Open Journal of Astrophysics

@OJ_Astro@fediscience.org

New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Beyond Spherical geometry: Unraveling complex features of objects orbiting around stars from its transit light curve using deep learning" by Ushasi Bhowmick & Shivam Kumaran (ISRO, Ahmedabad, India)

https://doi.org/10.33232/001c.160561

April 13, 2026, 6:31 am 1 boosts 1 favorites

The second paper for this week, also published on Monday 13th April but in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies, is “statmorph-lsst: Quantifying and correcting morphological biases in galaxy surveys” by Elizaveta Sazonova (U. Waterloo, Canada) and an international cast of 18 others. This paper presents an investigation of potential biases in quantitative morphology metrics used in galaxy evolution studies, proposing two new measurements to resolve biases, and provides a related Python package (statmorph-lsst), which can be found here on github.

The overlay for this one is here:

The official version of the paper can be found on arXiv here and the Fediverse announcement here:

Open Journal of Astrophysics

@OJ_Astro@fediscience.org

New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "statmorph-lsst: Quantifying and correcting morphological biases in galaxy surveys" by Elizaveta Sazonova (U. Waterloo, Canada) and an international cast of 18 others.

https://doi.org/10.33232/001c.160562

April 13, 2026, 6:51 am 3 boosts 1 favorites

Next one up, the third paper of the week, one of four published on Friday 17th April, is “Disentangling the galactic and intergalactic components in 313 observed Lyman-alpha line profiles between redshift 0 and 5” by Siddhartha Gurung-López (Universitat de València, Spain) and 7 others based in Spain and Germany. Published in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies, this paper uses the zELDA package to analyze Lyman-alpha photons from star-forming galaxies, revealing IGM effects dominate Lyman-alpha observability at high redshifts, while galactic outflows become more important at lower z.

The overlay for this one is here:

The final, accepted version can be found on arXiv here and the Mastodon announcement is here:

Open Journal of Astrophysics

@OJ_Astro@fediscience.org

New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Disentangling the galactic and intergalactic components in 313 observed Lyman-alpha line profiles between redshift 0 and 5" by Siddhartha Gurung-López (Universitat de València, Spain) and 7 others based in Spain and Germany.

https://doi.org/10.33232/001c.160706

April 17, 2026, 7:19 am 1 boosts 0 favorites

The fourth paper this week, also published on Friday 17th April is “Using Symbolic Regression to Emulate the Radial Fourier Transform of the Sérsic Profile for Fast, Accurate and Differentiable Galaxy Profile Fitting” by Tim B. Miller (Northwestern University, USA) and Imad Pasha (Yale University, USA). This one is published in the folder Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics: it develops an emulator for galaxy profile fitting in Fourier space, improving speed by 2.5 times with minimal accuracy loss, aiding in managing increasing data flow.

The overlay is here:

The finally accepted version of this paper can be found here and the Mastodon announcement follows:

Open Journal of Astrophysics

@OJ_Astro@fediscience.org

New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Using Symbolic Regression to Emulate the Radial Fourier Transform of the Sérsic Profile for Fast, Accurate and Differentiable Galaxy Profile Fitting" by Tim B. Miller (Northwestern University, USA) and Imad Pasha (Yale University, USA)

https://doi.org/10.33232/001c.160755

April 17, 2026, 7:25 am 1 boosts 1 favorites

The fifth paper for this week is “The THESAN project: Lyman-alpha emitters as probes of ionized bubble sizes” by Meredith Neyer (MIT, USA) and 6 others based in the USA, Colombia, Canada, Japan and UK. The study uses THESAN simulations to explore how Lyman-alpha emitters (LAEs) trace ionized bubble sizes during the Epoch of Reionization, providing a framework for interpreting LAE surveys. This was published on Friday 17th April in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies.

The overlay for this one is here:

You can find the authorized version of this paper on arXiv here and the Fediverse announcement is here:

Open Journal of Astrophysics

@OJ_Astro@fediscience.org

New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "The THESAN project: Lyman-alpha emitters as probes of ionized bubble sizes" by Meredith Neyer (MIT, USA) and 6 others based in the USA, Colombia, Canada, Japan and UK.

https://doi.org/10.33232/001c.160756

April 17, 2026, 7:34 am 1 boosts 0 favorites

The sixth and final paper for this week is “Closed-Form Statistical Relations Between Projected Separation, Semimajor Axis, Companion Mass, and Host Acceleration” by Timothy D Brandt (Space Telescope Science Institute, USA). This was published on Friday 17th April in the folder Solar and Stellar Astrophysics. In this paper the author derives statistical relationships between radial velocity, a companion’s mass, and projected separation, useful for calculations requiring derivatives. The results are verified with empirical comparisons to existing literature.

The overlay for this one is here:

You can find the officially-accepted version on arXiv here and the Mastodon announcement here:

Open Journal of Astrophysics

@OJ_Astro@fediscience.org

New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Closed-Form Statistical Relations Between Projected Separation, Semimajor Axis, Companion Mass, and Host Acceleration" by Timothy D Brandt (Space Telescope Science Institute, USA)

https://doi.org/10.33232/001c.160757

April 17, 2026, 7:46 am 1 boosts 1 favorites

And that concludes this week’s update. I’ll do another one at the end of next week.

P.S. Just a reminder, for those of you into LinkedIn, that we now have a page there.

2 Comments »

Weekly Update from the Open Journal of Astrophysics – 11/04/2026

Posted in OJAp Papers, Open Access, The Universe and Stuff with tags accretion, accretion disks, arXiv:2506.06921v2, arXiv:2508.20173v2, arXiv:2512.05194v2, arXiv:2512.08490v2, arXiv:2601.18954v2, Astronomy Education, Astrophysics of Galaxies, Computational Astrophysics, Cosmology and NonGalactic Astrophysics, Diamond Open Access, Diamond Open Access Publishing, Eulerian Methods, galaxy clusters, galaxy formation, GHZ2, halo models, High-Energy Astrophysical Phenomena, Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics, Interstellar Medium, ionisation, jellyfish galaxies, Lagrangian Methods, Large Language Models, MACS J0138.0-2155, Open Access, Open Access Publishing., stellar halos, strong gravitational lensing on April 11, 2026 by telescoper

With permission, I have time for yet another Saturday morning update of activity at the Open Journal of Astrophysics. Since the last update we have published a further five papers, bringing the number in Volume 9 (2026) to 76 and the total so far published by OJAp up to 524.

The first paper to report this week is “Lagrangian versus Eulerian Methods for Toroidally-Magnetized Isothermal Disks” by Yashvardhan Tomar and Philip F. Hopkins (California Institute of Technology, USA). This study re-evaluates previous research on toroidally-magnetized disks, using two Lagrangian methods. The results suggest that sustained midplane toroidal fields in recent simulations are not a numerical artefact. It was published on Tuesday April 7th 2026 in the folder High-Energy Astrophysical Phenomena.

The overlay is here:

You can find the officially accepted version on arXiv here and the announcement on Fediverse here:

The second paper for this week, published on Wednesday 8th Apil in the folder Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics, is “Teaching Astronomy with Large Language Models” by Yuan-Sen Ting and Teaghan O’Briain (Ohio State University, USA). The paper introduces AstroTutor, an AI-enhanced astronomy tutoring system, to improve undergraduate astronomy education and AI literacy. It found that structured AI integration can enhance learning and critical evaluation skills. The primary classification on arXiv for this paper is physics.ed-ph but it is cross-listed on astro-ph which qualifies it for consideration.

The overlay for this one is here:

The official version of the paper can be found on arXiv here and the Fediverse announcement here:

Next one up, the third paper of the week, also published on Wednesday 8th April, is “Statistical Predictions of the Accreted Stellar Halos around Milky Way-Like Galaxies” by J. Sebastian Monzon & Frank C. van den Bosch (Yale University, USA) and Martin P. Rey (University of Bath, UK). This one was published in the section Astrophysics of Galaxies; it describes new model to track formation of stellar halos in Milky Way-like galaxies, revealing their sensitivity to the fate of the largest satellite and whether accretion is early or late.

The overlay for this one is here:

The final, accepted version can be found on arXiv here and the Mastodon announcement is here:

The fourth paper this week, published on Thursday 9th April is “A Tale of Tails: Star Formation and Stripping in Jellyfish Galaxies in the Strong Lensing Cluster MACS J0138.0-2155” by Catherine C. Gibson, Jackson H. O’Donnell and Tesla E. Jeltema (UC Santa Cruz, USA). This investigates the effects of ram-pressure stripping on four galaxies, focusing on their stellar and gas kinematics, star formation rates, and galactic structure and is published in the folder marked Astrophysics of Galaxies.

The overlay is here:

The finally accepted version of this paper can be found here and the Mastodon announcement is here:

The fifth and final paper for this week is “Investigating ionising sources and the complex interstellar medium of GHZ2 at z=12.3” by M. Castellano (INAF Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma, Italy) and 29 others based all around the world. This was also published on Thursday 9th April in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies. The paper uses deep observations of galaxy GHZ2 to explore the sources of ionising radiation and interstellar medium properties at cosmic dawn. Findings suggest a stratified environment and a hard ionising radiation component.

The overlay for this one is here:

The officially-accepted version of this one can be found on arXiv here and the Mastodon announcement is here

That concludes this week’s update. I’ll do another one at the end of next week, when the Easter vacations will be over.

P.S. For those of you into LinkedIn, we now have a page there.

1 Comment »

An independent arXiv

Posted in Finance, Maynooth, Open Access with tags arXiv, Cornell University, Open Access, Open Journal of Astrophysics on April 9, 2026 by telescoper

I’m a bit late passing this news on, but a few weeks ago arXiv announced that from 1st July 2026 it will be establishing itself as an “independent nonprofit organization”. It has been hosted for many years by Cornell University. You can read here about the reasons for this and how it will work, and there is a lengthier article in Science magazine, but the quick summary is

This transition allows for faster technological development, greater organizational flexibility, expanded partnerships, and long-term financial sustainability. A platform built by scientists for scientists, the new arXiv will continue to serve researchers worldwide with the same dedication to free and open scientific discovery.

Such a move creates opportunities, but also carries risks. The sustainability of the new-look arXiv will depend on finding appropriate sources of income, for example. I wish arXiv well in this move. There’s an advertisement for the post of Chief Executive, if anyone fancies the job!

One possible future model for the Open Journal of Astrophysics is as a standalone non-profit organization of some sort, funded also by donations. Currently we are funded by the Library at Maynooth University, where I am based. Having made the decision not to charge fees of any kind, we lack any source of income other than the University. I am very grateful for that support, but we are run on a very tight budget. We keep costs to an absolute minimum, but are not free.

I have written before about what I think the future of Diamond Open Access could look like. I would like to see a range of Diamond Open Access journals offering a choice for authors and serving different sub-disciplines. Most universities nowadays have publishing operations so there could be network of federated journals, some based on arXiv and some based on other repositories and others with different models, such as SciPost. Perhaps institutions are worried about the expense but, as we have shown the actual cost, is far less than they are wasting on Article Processing Charges.

Everything is working well right now at OJAp, but it is not reasonable that the expense of running a journal that serves the global astrophysics community should fall entirely on one small University in Ireland. It won’t be sustainable in the long run, either, if we continue to grow at the present rate. Compare us with the Diamond Open Access publisher SCIPOST, which has a long list of sponsors covering its costs; we have none. My only hope at the moment of turning OJAp into an independent organization is to win the lottery!

Another thing makes me nervous. Many modern universities, which are nominally non-profit institutions, are managed by people who care far more about revenue generation than about academic scholarship and research. I worry that someone upstairs might pressurize us to introduce charges to generate income by threatening to close us down.

I know that money is very tight in astrophysics these days but if you have access to any potential sources of funding – then please consider supporting OJAp!

1 Comment »

Weekly Update from the Open Journal of Astrophysics – 04/04/2026

Posted in OJAp Papers, Open Access, The Universe and Stuff with tags 3x2pt analysis, arXiv:2507.13317v2, arXiv:2509.18266v2, arXiv:2510.05539v2, arXiv:2602.04977v2, Astrophysics of Galaxies, Cosmology and NonGalactic Astrophysics, DESI, Diamond Open Access, Diamond Open Access Publishing, diffHOD-IA, dust, dust grains, galaxy formation, halo models, Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics, intrinsic alignments, Milky Way, Open Access, Open Access Publishing., supernovae, weak gravitational lensing on April 4, 2026 by telescoper

It may be the Easter weekend, but it’s still time for a Saturday morning update of activity at the Open Journal of Astrophysics. Since the last update we have published a further four papers, bringing the number in Volume 9 (2026) to 71 and the total so far published by OJAp up to 519. This update coimpletes the first quarter of 2026, which suggests that if we continue to publish at the same rate we’ll reach about 280 for the year.

The first paper to report this week is “Testing halo models for constraining astrophysical feedback with multi-probe modeling: I. 3D Power spectra and mass fractions” by Pranjal R. S. (U. Arizona, USA), Shivam Pandey Johns Hopkins U., USA), Dhayaa Anbajagane (U. Chicago, USA), Elisabeth Krause (U. Arizona) and Klaus Dolag (Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Germany). This paper was published on Tuesday March 31st in the folder Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics.

The overlay is here:

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 March 31st in the folder Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics, is “Validation of the DESI-DR1 3×2-pt analysis: scale cut and shear ratio tests” by Ni Putu Audita Placida Emas (Swinburne University of Technology, Australia) and an international cast of 56 others. This study validates the combined analysis of galaxy clustering and weak gravitational lensing data from various surveys, ensuring accurate tests of the standard cosmological model using future Stage-IV surveys

The overlay for this one is here:

The official version of the paper can be found on arXiv here and the Fediverse announcement here:

Next one up, the third paper of the week, also published on Tuesday March 31st in the folder Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics, is “Differentiable Stochastic Halo Occupation Distribution with Galaxy Intrinsic Alignments” by Sneh Pandya and Jonathan Blazek (both of Northeastern University, USA). This is a paper introducing diffHOD-IA, a differentiable model for galaxy population analysis that incorporates intrinsic alignments and halo occupation distribution. It’s validated against existing models and can be used in next-generation weak-lensing analyses.

The overlay for this one is here:

The final, accepted version can be found on arXiv here and the Mastodon announcement is here:

The fourth and final paper this week, published on Wednesday April 1st (but not a joke), is “The Growth of Dust in Galaxies in the First Billion Years with Applications to Blue Monsters” by Desika Narayanan (U. Florida, USA) and 11 others based in the USA and Europe. This one is in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies; it presents a simulation-based study of dust accumulation in early galaxies via supernovae production and rapid growth on tiny dust grains, with local density and grain size being important factors.

The overlay is here:

The finally accepted version of this paper can be found here and the Mastodon announcement is here:

And that concludes the update for this week. I’ll do another next week, but I’m expecting a fairly low number of papers owing to the Easter vacation.

1 Comment »

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