It’s Saturday again, so it’s time for another update of activity at the Open Journal of Astrophysics. Since the last update we have published a further eight papers, bringing the number in Volume 9 (2026) to 245 and the total so far published by OJAp up to 693. There was no arXiv update on Monday 12th October owing to a US holiday, and I was on strike on Wednesday 14th October, so there were no papers published on either 13th or 14th October.
I continue to include the posts made on our Mastodon account (on Fediscience); these announcements also contain a clickable form of the DOI for each paper. Our Mastodon account has regular updates and other announcements from OJAp too, including posts from the OJAp blog.
The first new paper this week was published on Monday 12th October in the folder High-Energy Astrophysical Phenomena. The title is “Search for Gamma-ray emission from Abell 119 galaxy cluster using INTEGRAL/ISGRI, COMPTEL, and DAMPE data” by Siddhant Manna & Shantanu Desai (IIT Hyderabad Kandi, India. The study conducted a thorough search for non-thermal high-energy gamma-ray emission from the Abell 119 galaxy cluster using archival observations, but found no significant emission.
The overlay for this one 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 12th October, is “Fast Astronomical Transients in Archival Photographic Plates: Using optical aberrations as a tool for discerning real images, from plate artifacts” by Ivo Busko (Independent Researcher). This study supports the idea that fast astronomical transients detected in 1950s Palomar sky surveys are not just plate artifacts, but potentially genuine off-axis point sources. It is in the folder Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics.
The overlay looks like this:
The official version of the paper can be found on arXiv here and the Fediverse announcement here:
The third paper of the week, published on Thursday 15th October in the folder Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics, is “Differentiable Optics with dLux II: Optical Design Maximising Fisher Information” by Louis Desdoigts (Leiden Obs., NL), Benjamin Pope (Macquarie U., AU), Michael Gully-Santiago (U. Texas Austin, USA) & Peter Tuthill (U. Sydney, Australia).
The overlay for this is here:
The accepted version of this one can be found on the arXiv here and the Mastodon announcement here:
The fourth new article of the week, also published on Thursday 15th October, in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies is “The Lumina Project: Intergalactic Clumping and Recombination Sinks” by Ali Sadain (U. Texas Dallas, USA) and 12 others based in the USA, S. Korea and Germany. The study uses simulations to examine the uneven recombination rates during the Epoch of Reionization, finding a universal clumping evolution and discrepancies in recombination rates due to photoheating.
The overlay is here:
The official version of the paper can be found on arXiv here and the Fediverse announcement here:
Paper Number Five for the week is “Blast.jl: Differentiable Non-Limber Power Spectra for Joint Clustering, Shear, and CMB lensing Analyses” by Sofia Chiarenza (U. Waterloo, Canada) and 6 others based in Canada, Italy, France and USA. This study, which is in the folder Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics, presents an enhanced version of Blast.jl, a toolkit for computing non-Limber angular power spectra, incorporating various cosmological effects. Despite increased complexity, it maintains efficiency and supports gradient-based inference. It was also published on Thursday 15th October.
The overlay is here:
The officially-accepted version of the paper can be found on arXiv here and the Fediverse announcement here:
Sixth one up is “EMU detection of mysterious multiple component radio-continuum emission from nearby spiral Seyfert I type galaxy ‘Sand-timer’ (NGC 7213)” by Miroslav Filipović (Western Sydney U., Australia) and an international cast of 26 others. The observations presented in this paper reveal peculiar emissions and previously undetected features in the ‘Sand-timer’ galaxy NGC 7213, possibly due to black hole activity or a tidal disruption event.
The overlay is here:
The officially-accepted version of this paper is on arXiv here and the Mastodon announcement on the fediverse here:
The seventh paper of the week is “pynucastro 3: A community library for nuclear astrophysics” by Zhi Chen (Stony Brook U., USA) and 10 others, all based in the USA. This was published on Friday 16th October, i.e. yesterday, in the folder Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics. This article announces the latest release of pynucastro, a python library for nuclear astrophysics, includes new rate approximations, a stellar equation of state, StarLib support, and network exploration tools.
The overlay is here:
The officially accepted version is on arXiv here and the Mastodon announcement here:
The eighth, and last, of the new papers for this week is “A Deep Look at the Ultra-Faint Milky Way Satellite Virgo III with Rubin Observatory Data Preview 2” by Aashay Pai (U. Chicago, USA) and 12 others based in the USA. This study uses data from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory to analyze the ultra-faint Milky Way satellite, Virgo III, confirming Virgo III’s properties as an ultra-faint dwarf galaxy.
The overlay is here:
The final version of this paper is on the arXiv here and the Mastodon announcement here:
That concludes this week’s update. I anticipate that we’ll pass the 250 mark for 2026 next week, which means we’re well on target to publish over 300 papers and reach the 750 mark by the end of the year. I’ll do another update next weekend.
