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.
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.
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "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)
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:
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "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.
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:
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Differentiable Stochastic Halo Occupation Distribution with Galaxy Intrinsic Alignments" by Sneh Pandya and Jonathan Blazek (Northeastern U., USA)
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:
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "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.
Once again it’s time for the usual Saturday morning 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 67 and the total so far published by OJAp up to 515.
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.
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Constraining Brown Dwarf Desert Formation Mechanisms through Bayesian Statistical Comparison of Observed and Simulated Populations" by Behrooz Karamiqucham (College of Charleston, USA)
The second paper for this week, also published on Tuesday March 24th, but in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies, is “JWST observes the assembly of a massive galaxy at z ~ 4” by Aayush Saxena (University of Oxford, UK) and 20 others (based in the UK, Europe, USA, Brazil, Japan and China). The paper presents observations of radio galaxy TGSSJ1530+1049, revealing it as part of a dense structure of emitting objects likely to merge to form a massive galaxy within a few Gyr.
The overlay for this one is here:
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: "JWST observes the assembly of a massive galaxy at z ~ 4" by Aayush Saxena (University of Oxford, UK) and 20 others (based in the UK, Europe, USA, Brazil, Japan and China)
Next one up, the third paper of the week, also published on Tuesday March 24th in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies, is “The dawn is quiet II: Gaia XP constraints on the Milky Way’s proto-Galaxy from very metal-poor MDF tails” by Boquan Chen (Ohio State U., USA), Matthew D. A. Orkney (Universitat de Barcelona, Spain), Yuan-Sen Ting (Ohio State U.) & Michael R. Hayden (U. Oklahoma, USA). The paper aegues that the Milky Way’s metallicity distribution suggests that its early evolution involved a moderate gas reservoir, sustained by weak continuous inflow, and star formation efficiency similar to the present value.
The overlay for this one is here:
The final, accepted version can be found on arXiv here and the Mastodon announcement is here:
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "The dawn is quiet II: Gaia XP constraints on the Milky Way’s proto-Galaxy from very metal-poor MDF tails" by Boquan Chen (Ohio State U., USA), Matthew D. A. Orkney (Universitat de Barcelona, Spain), Yuan-Sen Ting (Ohio State U.) & Michael R. Hayden (U. Oklahoma, USA)
The fourth paper this week, published on Wednesday 25th March 2026 in the folder High-Energy Astrophysical Phenomena is “Shaping the diffuse X-ray sky: Structure, Variability and Visibility” by Philipp Girichidis (Heidelberg U., Germany) and 7 others based in Germany, USA, Austria and Italy. The paper argues that the X-ray properties of the Local Bubble (LB), a low-density cavity in the solar neighborhood reveal that supernova events significantly influence X-ray emissions, which show pronounced temporal variability
The overlay is here:
The finally accepted version of this paper can be found here and the Mastodon announcement is here:
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Shaping the diffuse X-ray sky: Structure, Variability and Visibility" by Philipp Girichidis (Heidelberg U., Germany) and 7 others based in Germany, USA, Austria and Italy
The fifth paper this week, also published on Wednesday 25th March 2026, is “Graph-Based Light-Curve Features for Robust Transient Classification” by Jesús D. Petro-Ramos David J. Ruiz-Morales, David Sierra Porta (Universidad Tecnológica de Bolívar, Colombia). This paper, which is in the folder Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics, uses graph-based representations of astronomical light curves for transient classification, achieving competitive multiclass performance, highlighting the potential of visibility graphs as a survey-agnostic tool for classifying time series.
This is the overlay:
The officially accepted version can be found on arXiv here and the Mastodon announcement follows:
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Graph-Based Light-Curve Features for Robust Transient Classification" by Jesús D. Petro-Ramos David J. Ruiz-Morales, David Sierra Porta (Universidad Tecnológica de Bolívar, Colombia)
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Redshift-Frame Systematics and Their Impact on the Hubble Constant from Pantheon+ Supernovae" by Said Laaroua (Santa Rosa Junior College, USA)
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Why Machine Learning Models Systematically Underestimate Extreme Values II: How to Fix It with LatentNN" by Yuan-Sen Ting (Ohio State University, USA)
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Catalog of Mock Stellar Streams in Milky Way-Like Galaxies" by Colin Holm-Hansen, Yingtian Chen and Oleg Y. Gnedin (University of Michigan, USA)
You will have observed that this week’s papers cover five of the six main categories on astro-ph. We haven’t yet managed to cover all six in a week – we only missed Solar and Stellar Astrophysics this time!
It’s Saturday once more, 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 59 and the total so far published by OJAp up to 507. We passed the 500 mark on Monday, and the week was also notable because we once again published at least one paper each working day.
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 is our 500th publication. The title is “The causal structure of galactic astrophysics” and the authors are Harry Desmond (U. Portsmouth, UK) and Joseph Ramsey (Carnegie Mellon U., USA). This paper was published on Monday March 16th 2026 in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies. It proposes using causal discovery, a method for inferring data structure, to better utilize information in astrophysical data, demonstrated through an algorithm applied to a large galaxy dataset.
The overlay is here:
You can find the officially accepted version on arXiv here and the announcement on Fediverse here:
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "The causal structure of galactic astrophysics" by Harry Desmond (U. Portsmouth, UK) and Joseph Ramsey (Carnegie Mellon U., USA)
The second paper for this week, also published on March 16th in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies, is “Finding the boundary: Using galaxy membership to inform galaxy cluster extent through machine learning” by Christine Hao, Stephanie O’Neil, Mark Vogelsberger, & Vinh Tran (MIT, USA), Lamiya Mowla (Wellesley College, USA) and Joshua S. Speagle (U. Toronto, Canada). This study uses neural networks and simulations to identify and map the transitional region between cluster and field galaxies, revealing it as a scattered area rather than a sharp boundary.
The overlay for this one is here:
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: "Finding the boundary: Using galaxy membership to inform galaxy cluster extent through machine learning" by Christine Hao, Stephanie O'Neil, Mark Vogelsberger, & Vinh Tran (MIT, USA), Lamiya Mowla (Wellesley College, USA) and Joshua S. Speagle (U. Toronto, Canada)
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "The Manticore-Local Cluster Catalogue: A Posterior Map of Massive Structures in the Nearby Universe" by Stuart McAlpine (Oskar Klein Centre, Stockholm U., Sweden)
The fourth paper this week, published on 18th March 2026 in the folder Solar and Stellar Astrophysics is “Vision-Based CNN Prediction of Sunspot Numbers from SDO/HMI Images” by Fabian C. Quintero-Pareja, Diederik A. Montano-Burbano, Santiago Quintero-Pareja & David Sierra Porta (Universidad Tecnológica de Bolívar, Colombia). This article describes a deep learning framework that uses convolutional neural networks to estimate daily sunspot numbers from solar images, offering a scalable and accurate method for solar monitoring.
The overlay is here:
The finally accepted version of this paper can be found here and the Mastodon announcement is here:
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Vision-Based CNN Prediction of Sunspot Numbers from SDO/HMI Images" by Fabian C. Quintero-Pareja, Diederik A. Montano-Burbano, Santiago Quintero-Pareja & David Sierra Porta (Universidad Tecnológica de Bolívar, Colombia)
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "RABBITS –III. Modelling relativistic accretion discs around spinning black holes in galaxy formation simulations" by Dimitrios Irodotou (ICR, London) and 8 others based in China, Korea, Belgium, France, Finland and the UK.
The sixth paper this week is “A novel algorithm for GPU-accelerated particle-mesh interactions implemented in the QUOKKA code” by Chong-Chong He (Australia National University), Benjamin D. Wibking (Michigan State U., USA), Aditi Vijayan (ANU), Mark R. Krumholz (ANU) and Pak Shing Li (Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, China). This was published on Thursday 19th March in the folder Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics. The article introduces a GPU-optimized algorithm for particle-mesh interactions in hydrodynamics simulations, improving efficiency and scalability in simulations of star formation and feedback in galaxies.
The overlay is here:
The officially accepted version of this paper can be found on arXiv here, and the Mastodon announcement is here:
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "A novel algorithm for GPU-accelerated particle-mesh interactions implemented in the QUOKKA code" by Chong-Chong He (Australia National University), Benjamin D. Wibking Michigan State U., USA), Aditi Vijayan (ANU), Mark R. Krumholz (ANU) and Pak Shing Li (Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, China)
The penultimate, seventh, paper for this week is “The SEEDZ Simulations: Methodology and First Results on Massive Black Hole Seeding and Early Galaxy Growth” by Lewis Prole (NUI Maynooth, Ireland) and 15 others based in Ireland, Germany and the UK. This paper was also published on Thursday March 19th 2026 in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies. Ir presents the SEEDZ simulations, studying the formation and growth of the universe’s first massive black holes, finding that these black holes initially grow faster than their host galaxies.
The overlay for this one is here:
The official version of this paper can be found here. This is the Mastodon announcement:
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "The SEEDZ Simulations: Methodology and First Results on Massive Black Hole Seeding and Early Galaxy Growth" by Lewis Prole (NUI Maynooth, Ireland) and 15 others based in Ireland, Germany and the UK.
And finally for this week, published yesterday (Friday 20th March 2026) in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies, we have “Planes of satellites, at once transient and persistent” by Till Sawala (University of Helsinki, Finland). This study resolves the contradiction in the lifespan of satellite systems around galaxies, showing they are short-lived but maintain spatial coherence over billions of years.
Here is the overlay for this one:
The officially accepted version can be found on arXiv here and the Mastodon announcement is here:
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Planes of satellites, at once transient and persistent" by Till Sawala (University of Helsinki, Finland)
And that concludes the update for this week. Will we keep the rate up next week? Tune in next Saturday to find out!
P.S. Thank you once again to the many people who have responded to the latest call for editors. The Editorial Board has grown substantially over the last few weeks – an up-to-date version can be found here – and there are still some people waiting to get onboard, so please bear with me!
It’s Saturday once more, so it’s time for another 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 51 and the total so far published by OJAp up to 499. I hoped we would reach 500 this week, but that milestone will have to wait. We have however passed the 50 mark for this year, so we have now published more papers so far in 2026 than we published in all of 2023.
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.
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Effect of temperature on the structure of porous dust aggregates formed by coagulation" by Lucas Kolanz, Davide Lazzati and Job Guidos (Oregon State University, USA)
The second paper for this week is “Intrinsic alignment of disks and ellipticals across hydrodynamical simulations” by M. L. van Heukelum and N. E. Chisari (Utrecht University, The Netherlands). This is one of two papers published on Tuesday 10th March. This one is in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies: it examines the inconsistent correlations between galaxy positions and shapes, comparing disk and elliptical shapes in different simulations. The results highlight the importance of sub-grid physics at non-linear scales.
The overlay for this one is here:
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: "Intrinsic alignment of disks and ellipticals across hydrodynamical simulations" by M. L. van Heukelum and N. E. Chisari (Utrecht University, The Netherlands)
Next one up is “A Comparison of Galacticus and COZMIC WDM Subhalo Populations” by Jack Lonergan (U. Southern California), Andrew Benson (Carnegie Observatories) and Xiaolong Du (UCLA), all based in the USA. This paper was published on 10th March 2026 in the folder Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics. The study compares warm dark matter subhalo populations using the Galacticus model and COZMIC simulations, finding both can reliably reproduce these distributions, with Galacticus offering computational efficiency.Abstractfor A Comparison of Galacticus and COZMIC WDM Subhalo Populations.
The overlay for this one is here:
The final, accepted version can be found on arXiv here and the Mastodon announcement is here:
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "A Comparison of Galacticus and COZMIC WDM Subhalo Populations" by Jack Lonergan (U. Southern California), Andrew Benson (Carnegie Observatories) and Xiaolong Du (UCLA), all based in the USA.
And finally for this week we have “Simulation-Based Inference for Probabilistic Galaxy Detection and Deblending” by Ismael Mendoza (U. Maryland, USA) and 7 others (all based in the USA) on behalf of the LSST Dark Energy Science Collaboration. This was published on Thursday March 12th in the folder Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics. The article introduces the Bayesian Light Source Separator (BLISS), for detecting and measuring galaxy properties in wide-field cosmological surveys. BLISS demonstrates improved performance, particularly for faint and blended objects.
The overlay is here:
The finally accepted version of this paper can be found here and the Mastodon announcement is here:
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Simulation-Based Inference for Probabilistic Galaxy Detection and Deblending" by Ismael Mendoza (U. Maryland, USA) and 7 others (all based in the USA) on behalf of the LSST Dark Energy Science Collaboration
P.S. Thank you once again to the many people who have responded to the latest call for editors. I’ve been sending out invitations and getting people onboard as quickly as I can, but I still have a number to get to, so please bear with me!
It’s Saturday once more, so it’s time for another update of activity at the Open Journal of Astrophysics. After a bumper week last week, this week has been slower on the publication side. Since the last update we have published a further two papers, bringing the number in Volume 9 (2026) to 47 and the total so far published by OJAp up to 495.
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.
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Comments on “Little ado about everything” by A. Lapi et al. and on cosmological back-reaction" by Julian Adamek (Universität Zürich, Switzerland)
The second (and last) paper for this week is “Linear map-making with LuSEE-Night” by Hugo Camacho (Brookhaven National Laboratory, USA) and 34 others based in the USA, France, and the Netherlands. This was published on Thursday 5th March in the folder Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics. The paper discusses LuSEE-Night (the Lunar Surface Electromagnetics Experiment), a proposed lunar radio telescope using four antennas to map the sub-50 MHz sky with a 5-degree resolution, using the Wiener filter algorithm to manage systematic effects.
The overlay for this one is here:
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: "Linear map-making with LuSEE-Night" by Hugo Camacho (Brookhaven National Laboratory, USA) and 34 others based in the USA, France, and the Netherlands.
That concludes this week’s (brief) update. Based on the number of papers accepted and waiting to be published it is likely we will pass 50 for the year and 500 in total by next week.
P.S. Thank you once again to the many people who have responded to the latest call for editors. I’ve been sending out invitations and getting people onboard as quickly as I can, but I still have a number to get to so please bear with me!
It’s Saturday once more, so it’s time for another update of activity at the Open Journal of Astrophysics. It has been a busy week. Since the last update we have published a further nine papers, bringing the number in Volume 9 (2026) to 45 and the total so far published by OJAp up to 493.
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 four papers this week were all published on Monday 23rd February.
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "A Bayesian Exploration of The Mass of the Ursa Major III: Kinematics, Rotation and their influence on the Mass to Light Ratio" by Tim R. Adams (U. Sydney, Australia), Brendon J. Brewer (U. Auckland, New Zealand) and Geraint F. Lewis (Sydney)
The second paper is “The Impact of Baryonic Effects on the Dynamical Masses Inferred Using Satellite Kinematics” by Josephine F.W. Baggen, Frank C. van den Bosch, and Kaustav Mitra (Yale U., USA). This paper, also in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies, presents a model to assess the impact of stars and gas on satellite kinematics, showing that these baryonic effects can reduce the satellite velocity dispersion and increase inferred central galaxy masses.
The overlay for this one is here:
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: "The Impact of Baryonic Effects on the Dynamical Masses Inferred Using Satellite Kinematics" by Josephine F.W. Baggen, Frank C. van den Bosch, and Kaustav Mitra (Yale U., USA)
The third paper this week, and the third published on Monday 23rd February, and the third in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies, is “MEGATRON: Disentangling Physical Processes and Observational Bias in the Multi-Phase ISM of High-Redshift Galaxies” by Nicholas Choustikov (U. Oxford, UK) and 12 others based in UK, USA, France, Korea and Belgium. The study uses MEGATRON simulations to analyze the interstellar medium (ISM) of high-redshift galaxies, finding it denser and less metal-enriched than local galaxies with implications for line ratios as diagnostics
The overlay is here:
The official version can be found on arXiv here and the Fediverse announcement is here:
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "MEGATRON: Disentangling Physical Processes and Observational Bias in the Multi-Phase ISM of High-Redshift Galaxies" by Nicholas Choustikov (U. Oxford, UK) and 12 others based in UK, USA, France, Korea and Belgium
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Redshift Assessment Infrastructure Layers (RAIL): Rubin-era photometric redshift stress-testing and at-scale production" by the RAIL Team (31 authors) and the Dark Energy Science Collaboration
Moving on to Tuesday 24th February, the fifth paper this week, is “Feedback shaped the galaxy morphological sequence in presence of mergers” by Masafumi Noguchi (Tohoku University, Japan). This article was published in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies. This study suggests that galaxy morphology, specifically the mass ratios of bulges and disks, is influenced by galaxy mergers and feedback processes from active galactic nuclei and supernovae.
The overlay is here:
The accepted version can be found on arXiv here, and the fediverse announcement is here:
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Feedback shaped the galaxy morphological sequence in presence of mergers" by Masafumi Noguchi (Tohoku University, Japan)
The sixth paper this week is “HelioSpectrotron 5000: an interactive solar atlas” by Alexander G.M. Pietrow (AIP Potsdam, Germany). This was published on Tuesday 24th February in the folder Solar and Stellar Astrophysics. This describes HelioSpectrotron~5000 (HS5000), which is an interactive solar spectral atlas that allows comparison between high-resolution spectra and ground-based instrument observations, aiding in wavelength calibration and line identification. The software can be found here; I had a play with it yesterday and it’s very easy to use!
The overlay is here:
You can find the officially accepted version on arXiv here and the Mastodon announcement is here:
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "HelioSpectrotron 5000: an interactive solar atlas" by Alexander G.M. Pietrow (AIP Potsdam, Germany)
The seventh paper of this week was published on Thursday 26th February is “The Rise of Ionized Gas Filaments in Early-Type Galaxies” by Ryan Eskenasy (U. Kentucky, USA), Valeria Olivares (Universidad de Santiago de Chile) and Yuanyuan Su (U. Kentucky, USA). This article, in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies, is an exploration of the formation of multiphase filamentary nebulae in early-type galaxies (ETGs), using VLT-MUSE IFU observations of 126 non-central ETGs, focussing on the hot gas components thereof.
The overlay is here:
The officially accepted version of this paper can be found on the arXiv here and the Mastodon announcement is here:
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "The Rise of Ionized Gas Filaments in Early-Type Galaxies" by Ryan Eskenasy (U. Kentucky, USA), Valeria Olivares (Universidad de Santiago de Chile) and Yuanyuan Su (U. Kentucky, USA)
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Relationship Between Major Stellar Physical Parameters and Normal Mode Frequencies in Accreting White Dwarf Stars" by Praphull Kumar, Dean M. Townsley and Hunter Anz (U. Alabama, USA)
The ninth, and final, paper for this week is “A Semi-Supervised Learning Method for the Identification of Bad Exposures in Large Imaging Surveys” by Yufeng Luo (U. Wyoming, USA) and 8 others from the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys Team. This was published on Friday 27th February, i.e yesterday, in the folder Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics. The paper describes a machine-learning approach for detecting poor-quality exposures in large astronomical imaging surveys, proving efficient and accurate in identifying problematic exposures.
The overlay is here:
The official version on arXiv can be found here and the Mastodon announcement follows:
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "A Semi-Supervised Learning Method for the Identification of Bad Exposures in Large Imaging Surveys" by Yufeng Luo (U. Wyoming, USA) and 8 others from the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys Team
And that concludes this week’s update. We have now published 45 papers in two complete months of 2026, on which basis we can estimate about 270 papers in the year. For the record, in the first two months of 2025 we published 21 papers.
P.S. Thank you to the many people who responded to the latest call for editors. I’ve been sending out invitations and getting people onboard as quickly as I can, but I still have a number to get to so please bear with me!
It’s Saturday once more 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 36 and the total so far published by OJAp up to 484.
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 is “SKA-Low simulations for a cosmic dawn/epoch of reionisation deep field” by Anna Bonaldi, Philippa Hartley, Simon Purser & Omkar Bait (SKAO, UK), Eunseong Lee (U. Manchester, UK), Robert Braun (SKAO), Florent Mertens (Sorbonne Université, France), Andrea Bracco (Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri, IT), Wendy Williams (SKAO) and Cath Trott (Curtin U., Australia). This paper presents a simulation of an SKA-Low cosmic dawn/epoch of reionisation observation to advance foreground-mitigation approaches: the simulation includes various sky components and modelled errors, allowing for efficacy assessment. It was published on Monday 16th February 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:
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "SKA-Low simulations for a cosmic dawn/epoch of reionisation deep field" by Anna Bonaldi, Philippa Hartley, Simon Purser & Omkar Bait (SKAO, UK), Eunseong Lee (U. Manchester, UK), Robert Braun (SKAO), Florent Mertens (Sorbonne Université, France), Andrea Bracco (Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri, IT), Wendy Williams (SKAO) and Cath Trott (Curtin U., Australia)
The second paper is “V717 Andromedae: An Active Low Mass Ratio Contact Binary” by Surjit S. Wadhwa (Western Sydney U. Australia), Marko Grozdanovic (Astronomical Observatory Belgrade, Serbia), and Nicholas F.H Tothill, Miroslav D. Filipovic, Ain Y. De Horta (Western Sydney U.). This was also published on Monday 1th February, but in the folder Solar and Stellar Astrophysics. The article discusses the contact binary V717 Andromedae, an extreme low mass ratio system with high inclination and moderate contact, showing signs of chromospheric activity but stable and not a merger candidate
The overlay for this one is here:
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: "V717 Andromedae: An Active Low Mass Ratio Contact Binary" by Surjit S. Wadhwa (Western Sydney U. Australia), Marko Grozdanovic (Astronomical Observatory Belgrade, Serbia), and Nicholas F.H Tothill, Miroslav D. Filipovic, Ain Y. De Horta (Western Sydney U.)
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "DIPLODOCUS II: Implementation of transport equations and test cases relevant to micro-scale physics of jetted astrophysical sources" by Christopher N Everett (Oxford U., UK), Marc Klinger-Plaisier (U. Amsterdam, NL) and Garret Cotter (Oxford)
The fourth paper this week, also published on Tuesday 17th February, but in the folder Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics is “Revisiting the Great Attractor: The Local Group’s streamline trajectory, cosmic velocity and dynamical fate” by Richard Stiskalek (Oxford U., UK), Harry Desmond (U. Portsmouth, UK), Stuart McAlpine (Stockholm, SE), Guilhem Lavaux (Sorbonne Université, FR), Jens Jasche (Stockholm) and Michael J. Hudson (U. Waterloo, Canada). This paper revisits the so-called “Great Attractor” concept, finding that it doesn’t dominate the Local Group’s cosmic velocity; multiple structures contribute to the motion, with no single attractor accounting for the flow.
Here is the overlay:
The official version can be found on arXiv here and the Fediverse announcement is here:
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Revisiting the Great Attractor: The Local Group’s streamline trajectory, cosmic velocity and dynamical fate" by Richard Stiskalek (Oxford U., UK), Harry Desmond (U. Portsmouth, UK), Stuart McAlpine (Stockholm, SE), Guilhem Lavaux (Sorbonne Université, FR), Jens Jasche (Stockholm) and Michael J. Hudson (U. Waterloo, Canada)
The fifth paper this week, is “JWST observations of three long-period AM CVn binaries: detection of the donors and hints of magnetically truncated disks” by Kareem El-Badry (Caltech), Antonio C. Rodriguez (CfA Harvard), Matthew J. Green (U. Oklahoma) & Kevin B. Burdge (MIT); all based in the USA. The article was published on Thursday 19th February 2026 in the folder Solar and Stellar Astrophysics. The paper describes high-cadence infrared spectroscopy used to analyze three long-period, eclipsing AM CVn (AM Canum Venaticorum) binaries; findings suggest the presence of magnetized white dwarf accretors, with surface magnetic fields of 30-100 kG.
The overlay is here:
The accepted version can be found on arXiv here, and the fediverse announcement is here:
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "JWST observations of three long-period AM CVn binaries: detection of the donors and hints of magnetically truncated disks" by Kareem El-Badry (Caltech), Antonio C. Rodriguez (CfA Harvard), Matthew J. Green (U. Oklahoma) & Kevin B. Burdge (MIT); all in USA
Finally for this week we have “Ultra-long Gamma-ray Bursts from Micro-Tidal Disruption Events: The Case of GRB 250702B” by Paz Beniamini (Open University, IL), Hagai B. Perets (Technion, IL) and Jonathan Granot (Open University, IL); all based in Israel. The paper was published on Friday 18th February 2026 in the folder High-Energy Astrophysical Phenomena.
The overlay is here:
You can find the officially accepted version on arXiv here and the Mastodon announcement is here:
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Ultra-long Gamma-ray Bursts from Micro-Tidal Disruption Events: The Case of GRB 250702B" by Paz Beniamini (Open University, IL), Hagai B. Perets (Technion, IL) and Jonathan Granot (Open University, IL)
And that concludes this week’s update. I will do another next Saturday, by which time I expect we will have published a similar number of papers to this week.
It’s Saturday once more 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 30 and the total so far published by OJAp up to 478.
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.
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Faraday Depolarization Study of a Radio Galaxy Using LOFAR Two-metre Sky Survey: Data Release 2" by Samantha Sneha Paul and Abhik Ghosh (Banwarilal Bhalotia College, India)
The second paper is “Rapid cosmological inference with the two-loop matter power spectrum” by Thomas Bakx (Utrecht U., NL), Henrique Rubira (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, DE), Nora Elisa Chisari (Utrecht) and Zvonimir Vlah (Ruđer Bošković Institute, Croatia). This was also published on Tuesday February 10th in the folder Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics. This paper uses the COBRA method to compute the two-loop effective field theory power spectrum of dark matter density fluctuations, providing more precise cosmological constraints than the one-loop EFT.
The overlay for this one is here:
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: "Rapid cosmological inference with the two-loop matter power spectrum" by Thomas Bakx (Utrecht U., NL), Henrique Rubira (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, DE), Nora Elisa Chisari (Utrecht) and Zvonimir Vlah (Ruđer Bošković Institute, Croatia)
Next, published on Wednesday 11th February in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies, is “Interpreting nebular emission lines in the high-redshift Universe” by Aswin P. Vijayan (U. Sussex, UK) and 9 others based in the UK, Taiwan, China and The Netherlands. This article examines the reliability of diagnostics used to estimate star formation rate and gas-phase oxygen abundance in high-redshift galaxies. It finds that variations in stellar populations and star-dust geometry. The overlay is here:
The official version can be found on arXiv here and the Fediverse announcement is here:
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Interpreting nebular emission lines in the high-redshift Universe" by Aswin P. Vijayan (U. Sussex, UK) and 9 others based in the UK, Taiwan, China and The Netherlands
The fourth paper this week, also published on Wednesday 11th February, but in the folder Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics is “Derivative-Aligned Anticipation of Forbush Decreases from Entropy and Fractal Markers” by Juan D. Perez-Navarro & David Sierra Porta (Universidad Tecnológica de Bolívar, Colombia). The paper presents a feature-based framework for predicting Forbush decreases, i.e. rapid, temporary drops in galactic cosmic ray (GCR) intensity (up to tens of percent) caused by solar wind disturbances, typically Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) or high-speed streams from coronal holes, in neutron-monitor records using various computational methods. The approach is reproducible, operates on native station units, and is stable.
Here is the overlay:
The official version can be found on arXiv here and the Fediverse announcement is here:
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Derivative-Aligned Anticipation of Forbush Decreases from Entropy and Fractal Markers" by Juan D. Perez-Navarro & David Sierra Porta (Universidad Tecnológica de Bolívar, Colombia)
The fifth paper, the penultimate for this week, is “Supermassive black hole growth from stellar binary encounters” by Aubrey L Jones and Benjamin C Bromley (University of Utah, USA). This paper explores the growth of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) through stellar accretion via the Hill’s mechanism, predicting capture rates and identifying potential growth drivers in 91 galaxies. It was published on Thursday 11th February 2026 in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies.
The overlay is here:
The accepted version can be found on arXiv here, and the fediverse announcement is here:
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Supermassive black hole growth from stellar binary encounters" by Aubrey L Jones and Benjamin C Bromley (University of Utah, USA)
Finally for this week we have “Dynamics in the Cores of Self-Interacting Dark Matter Halos: Reduced Stalling and Accelerated Core Collapse” by Frank C. van den Bosch and Shashank Dattathri (Yale University, USA). This study uses simulations to explore core dynamics in self-interacting dark matter (SIDM) halos. Findings suggest strong self-interactions prevent core stalling and buoyancy, leading to accelerated core collapse. This was published yesterday, on Friday 13th February 2026, in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies.
The overlay is here:
You can find the published version of the article here, and the Mastodon announcement is here:
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Dynamics in the Cores of Self-Interacting Dark Matter Halos: Reduced Stalling and Accelerated Core Collapse" by Frank C. van den Bosch and Shashank Dattathri (Yale University, USA)
It’s Saturday once more 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 24 and the total so far published by OJAp up to 472.
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 announcement also show the DOI for each paper.
The first paper to report this week is “The Impact of Star Formation and Feedback Recipes on the Stellar Mass and Interstellar Medium of High-Redshift Galaxies” by Harley Katz (U. Chicago, USA), Martin P. Rey (U. Oxford, UK), Corentin Cadiou (Lund U., Sweden) Taysun Kimm (Yonsei U., Korea) and Oscar Agertz (Lund). This paper was published on Monday 2nd February 2026 in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies. It introduces MEGATRON, a new model for galaxy formation simulations, highlighting that feedback energy controls star formation at high redshift and highlighting the importance of the interstellar medium.
The overlay is here:
You can find the officially accepted version on arXiv here and the announcement on Fediverse here:
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "The Impact of Star Formation and Feedback Recipes on the Stellar Mass and Interstellar Medium of High-Redshift Galaxies" by Harley Katz (U. Chicago, USA), Martin P. Rey (U. Oxford, UK), Corentin Cadiou (Lund U., Sweden) Taysun Kimm (Yonsei U., Korea) and Oscar Agertz (Lund)
The second paper is “Photometric Redshifts in JWST Deep Fields: A Pixel-Based Alternative with DeepDISC” by Grant Merz (U. Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and 6 others, all based in the USA. This paper was published on Monday February 2nd 2026 in the folder Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics. This paper explores the effectiveness of the DeepDISC machine learning algorithm in estimating photometric redshifts from near-infrared data, demonstrating its potential for larger image volumes and spectroscopic samples
The overlay for this one is here:
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: "Photometric Redshifts in JWST Deep Fields: A Pixel-Based Alternative with DeepDISC" by Grant Merz (U. Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and 6 others, all based in the USA
Next, published on Wednesday 4th February in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies, is “Inferring Interstellar Medium Density, Temperature, and Metallicity from Turbulent H II Regions” by Larrance Xing (U. Chicago, USA), Nicholas Choustikov (U. Oxford, UK), Harley Katz (U. Chicago) and Alex J. Cameron (DAWN, Denmark). This paper argues that supersonic turbulenc affects the interpretation of H II region properties, potentially impacting inferred metallicity, ionization, and excitation from in nebular emission lines, motivating more extensive modelling.
The overlay is here:
The official version can be found on arXiv here and the Fediverse announcement is here:
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Inferring Interstellar Medium Density, Temperature, and Metallicity from Turbulent H II Regions" by Larrance Xing (U. Chicago, USA), Nicholas Choustikov (U. Oxford, UK), Harley Katz (U. Chicago) and Alex J. Cameron (DAWN, Denmark)
The fourth paper this week, also published on Wednesday 4th February, but in the folder Solar and Stellar Astrophysics, is “A Systematic Search for Big Dippers in ASAS-SN” by B. JoHantgen, D. M. Rowan, R. Forés-Toribio, C. S. Kochanek, & K. Z. Stanek (Ohio State University, USA), B. J. Shappee (U. Hawaii, USA), Subo Dong (Peking University), J. L. Prieto Universidad Diego Portales, Chile) and Todd A. Thompson (Ohio State). This study identifies 4 new dipper stars and 15 long-period eclipsing binary candidates using ASAS-SN light curves and multi-wavelength data, categorizing them based on their characteristics.
Here is the overlay:
The official version can be found on arXiv here and the Fediverse announcement is here:
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "A Systematic Search for Big Dippers in ASAS-SN" by B. JoHantgen , D. M. Rowan, R. Forés-Toribio, C. S. Kochanek, & K. Z. Stanek (Ohio State University, USA), B. J. Shappee (U. Hawaii, USA), Subo Dong (Peking University), J. L. Prieto Universidad Diego Portales, Chile) and Todd A. Thompson (Ohio State)
Fifth, and next to last this week we have “Unveiling the drivers of the Baryon Cycles with Interpretable Multi-step Machine Learning and Simulations” by Mst Shamima Khanom, Benjamin W. Keller and Javier Ignacio Saavedra Moreno (U. Memphis, USA). This paper was published on Thursday 5th February 2026 in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies. This study uses machine learning methods to understand how galaxies lose or retain baryons, highlighting the relationship between baryon fraction and various galactic measurements.
The overlay is here:
The accepted version can be found on arXiv here, and the fediverse announcement is here:
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Unveiling the drivers of the Baryon Cycles with Interpretable Multi-step Machine Learning and Simulations" by Mst Shamima Khanom, Benjamin W. Keller and Javier Ignacio Saavedra Moreno (U. Memphis, USA)
Finally for this week we have “The Bispectrum of Intrinsic Alignments: II. Precision Comparison Against Dark Matter Simulations” by Thomas Bakx (Utrecht U., Netherlands), Toshiki Kurita (MPA Garching, Germany), Alexander Eggemeier (U. Bonn, Germany), Nora Elisa Chisari (Utrecht) and Zvonimir Vlah (Ruđer Bošković Institute, Croatia). This paper was accepted in December, but publication got delayed by the Christmas effect so was published on February 6th 2026, in the folder Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics. This study uses N-body simulations to accurately measure three-dimensional bispectra of halo intrinsic alignments and dark matter overdensities, providing a method to determine higher order shape bias parameters.
The overlay is here:
You can find the published version of the article here, and the Mastodon announcement is here:
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "The Bispectrum of Intrinsic Alignments: II. Precision Comparison Against Dark Matter Simulations" by Thomas Bakx (Utrecht U., Netherlands), Toshiki Kurita (MPA Garching, Germany), Alexander Eggemeier (U. Bonn, Germany), Nora Elisa Chisari (Utrecht) and Zvonimir Vlah (Ruđer Bošković Institute, Croatia)
It’s Saturday once more so time for another 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 18 and the total so far published by OJAp up to 466.
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 announcement also show the DOI for each paper.
The first paper to report this week is “Probing Stellar Kinematics with the Time-Asymmetric Hanbury Brown and Twiss Effect” by Lucijana Stanic (University of Zurich, Switzerland) and 13 others based in Zurich, Lausanne and Geneva (all in Switzerland). This was published on Monday 26th January 2026 in the folder Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics. This research demonstrates that intensity interferometry can reveal internal stellar kinematics, providing a new way to observe stellar dynamics with high time resolution.
The overlay is here:
You can find the officially accepted version on arXiv here and the announcement on Fediverse here:
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Probing Stellar Kinematics with the Time-Asymmetric Hanbury Brown and Twiss Effect" by Lucijana Stanic (University of Zurich, Switzerland) and 13 others based in Zurich, Lausanne and Geneva.
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "DIPLODOCUS I: Framework for the evaluation of relativistic transport equations with continuous forcing and discrete particle interactions" by Christopher N Everett & Garret Cotter (University of Oxford, UK)
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: DR6 Sunyaev-Zel’dovich Selected Galaxy Clusters Catalog" by M. Aguena et al. (101 authors altogether), on behalf of the ACT-DES-HSC Collaboration
And finally for this week we have a paper published yesterday, Friday 30th January 2026, in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies. This is the paper I blogged about yesterday: “A Cosmic Miracle: A Remarkably Luminous Galaxy at zspec = 14.44 Confirmed with JWST” by Rohan Naidu (MIT Kavli Institute) and an international cast of 45 others. This article reports on the discovery by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) of a bright galaxy, MoM-z14, located 280 million years post-Big Bang, that challenges models of galaxy formation and the star-formation history of early galaxies.
The overlay is here:
The accepted version can be found on arXiv here, and the fediverse announcement is here:
New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "A Cosmic Miracle: A Remarkably Luminous Galaxy at $z_{rm spec} = 14.44$ Confirmed with JWST" by Rohan Naidu (MIT Kavli Institute) and 45 others.
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In the Dark 