Archive for Interstellar Medium

Weekly Update from the Open Journal of Astrophysics – 14/02/2026

Posted in OJAp Papers, Open Access, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 14, 2026 by telescoper

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.

The first paper to report this week is “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). This was published on Tuesday February 10th in the folder Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics. The paper analyzes the depolarization of radio galaxy ILTJ012215.21+254334.8 using LOFAR’s Sky Survey data, revealing a preferred three-component model and highlighting turbulence in the magneto-ionic medium.

The overlay is here:

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

Open Journal of Astrophysics

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)

doi.org/10.33232/001c.157500

February 10, 2026, 6:25 am 0 boosts 1 favorites

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:

Open Journal of Astrophysics

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)

doi.org/10.33232/001c.157501

February 10, 2026, 6:41 am 0 boosts 0 favorites

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:

Open Journal of Astrophysics

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

doi.org/10.33232/001c.157554

February 11, 2026, 8:21 am 0 boosts 0 favorites

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:

Open Journal of Astrophysics

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)

doi.org/10.33232/001c.157585

February 11, 2026, 5:19 pm 0 boosts 0 favorites

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:

Open Journal of Astrophysics

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)

doi.org/10.33232/001c.157589

February 12, 2026, 7:31 am 1 boosts 2 favorites

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:

Open Journal of Astrophysics

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)

doi.org/10.33232/001c.157701

February 13, 2026, 8:27 am 1 boosts 2 favorites

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

Weekly Update from the Open Journal of Astrophysics – 07/02/2026

Posted in OJAp Papers, Open Access, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 7, 2026 by telescoper

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:

Open Journal of Astrophysics

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)

doi.org/10.33232/001c.156097

February 2, 2026, 11:02 am 1 boosts 1 favorites

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:

Open Journal of Astrophysics

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

doi.org/10.33232/001c.156099

February 2, 2026, 11:23 am 1 boosts 0 favorites

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:

Open Journal of Astrophysics

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)

doi.org/10.33232/001c.156223

February 4, 2026, 8:20 am 1 boosts 0 favorites

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:

Open Journal of Astrophysics

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)

doi.org/10.33232/001c.156224

February 4, 2026, 8:40 am 1 boosts 0 favorites

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:

Open Journal of Astrophysics

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)

doi.org/10.33232/001c.156271

February 5, 2026, 7:39 am 1 boosts 1 favorites

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:

Open Journal of Astrophysics

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)

doi.org/10.33232/001c.156361

February 6, 2026, 7:43 am 1 boosts 0 favorites

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

Weekly Update from the Open Journal of Astrophysics – 20/12/2025

Posted in OJAp Papers, Open Access, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 20, 2025 by telescoper

Christmas is coming, but it’s still time for the usual update of the week’s new papers at the Open Journal of Astrophysics. Since the last update we have published two more regular papers, described below, which brings the number in Volume 8 (2025) up to 197, as well as the 12 papers in yesterday’s Supplement, and the total published for the year up to 209, and the total so far published by OJAp up to 444.

Please note that we will be pausing publishing activity from 24th December 2025 until Monday 5th January 2026. Submissions will remain open, but no more papers will be published in Volume 8 (2025) after Christmas Eve. We will resume in the New Year with Volume 9.

Now for this week’s update. Since I blogged about the contents of the Supplement yesterday I won’t repeat them here and will instead just include the two regular papers.

The first regular paper this week is “Optimal intrinsic alignment estimators in the presence of redshift-space distortions” by Claire Lamman (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA, USA), Jonathan Blazek (Ohio State U., USA) and Daniel J. Eisenstein (Northeastern U., USA). This was published on Monday December 15th 2025 in the folder  Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics. The authors present estimators for quantifying intrinsic alignments in large spectroscopic surveys intended to inprove the constraints they provide for weak gravitational lensing and other cosmological applications.

The overlay is here:

You can find the officially accepted version on arXiv here and this is the announcement on Mastodon (Fediscience):

Open Journal of Astrophysics

New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Optimal intrinsic alignment estimators in the presence of redshift-space distortions" by Claire Lamman (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA), Jonathan Blazek (Ohio State U.) and Daniel J. Eisenstein (Northeastern U.); all based in the USA

doi.org/10.33232/001c.154373

December 15, 2025, 8:57 am 1 boosts 0 favorites

The second regular paper of the week is “What is the contribution of gravitational infall on the mass assembly of star-forming clouds? A case study in a numerical simulation of the interstellar medium” by Noé Brucy (Universite Claude Bernard Lyon 1, France), Enrique Vázquez-Semadeni (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico), Tine Colman (Universite Claude Bernard Lyon 1, France), Jérémy Fensch (Universite Claude Bernard Lyon 1, France) and Ralf S. Klessen (Universität Heidelberg, Germany). This was published in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies on Friday 19th December 2025. This paper describes research using numerical simulations to quantify how much of the mass inflow into a star-forming cloud is driven by the self-gravity of the gas and the gravity from the stellar disk.

The overlay is here:

You can find the official version of this one on arXiv here. The federated announcement on Mastodon is here:

Open Journal of Astrophysics

New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "What is the contribution of gravitational infall on the mass assembly of star-forming clouds? A case study in a numerical simulation of the interstellar medium" by Noé Brucy (Universite Claude Bernard Lyon 1, France), Enrique Vázquez-Semadeni (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico), Tine Colman (Lyon), Jérémy Fensch (Lyon) and Ralf S. Klessen (Universität Heidelberg, Germany)

doi.org/10.33232/001c.154637

December 19, 2025, 8:30 am 0 boosts 0 favorites

And that concludes the update for this week, which will be the last Saturday update for 2025.

Weekly Update from the Open Journal of Astrophysics – 22/11/2025

Posted in OJAp Papers, Open Access, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 22, 2025 by telescoper

It’s Saturday again, so it’s time for the usual update of the week’s new papers at the Open Journal of Astrophysics. Since the last update we have published another five papers, which brings the number in Volume 8 (2025) up to 180, and the total so far published by OJAp up to 415.

The first paper to report this week is “Probing Anisotropic Cosmic Birefringence with Foreground-Marginalised SPT B-mode Likelihoods” by Lennart Balkenhol (Sorbonne Université, France), A. Coerver (UC Berkeley, USA), C. L. Reichardt (U. Melbourne, Australia) and J. A. Zebrowski (U. Chicago, USA). This paper was published on Monday November 17th in the folder Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics. It presents a way of using data from the Souh Pole Telescope (SPT) in the CMB-lite framework to constrain the level of cosmic birefringence.  The overlay is here:

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

Open Journal of Astrophysics

New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Probing Anisotropic Cosmic Birefringence with Foreground-Marginalised SPT B-mode Likelihoods" by Lennart Balkenhol (Sorbonne Université, France), A. Coerver (UC Berkeley, USA), C. L. Reichardt (U. Melbourne, Australia) and J. A. Zebrowski (U. Chicago, USA)

doi.org/10.33232/001c.147459

November 17, 2025, 8:43 am 1 boosts 0 favorites

The second paper of the week is “Radio Observations of a Candidate Redback Millisecond Pulsar: 1FGL J0523.5-2529” by Owen. A. Johnson & E. F. Keane (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland), D. J. McKenna (ASTRON, NL), H. Qiu (SKAO, UK), S. J. Swihart (Insitute for Defense Analyses, USA), J. Strader (Michigan State U., USA) and M. McLaughlin (West Virginia U., USA). This one was published on Tuesday November 18th 2025 in the folder marked High-Energy Astrophysical Phenomena and it describes a search for radio emission from a candidate “redback pulsar” J0523.5-2529 resulting in upper limits but no detection.

The overlay is here:

You can find the official version of this one on arXiv here. The federated announcement on Mastodon is here:

Open Journal of Astrophysics

New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Radio Observations of a Candidate Redback Millisecond Pulsar: 1FGL J0523.5-2529" by Owen. A. Johnson & E. F. Keane (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland), D. J. McKenna (ASTRON, NL), H. Qiu (SKAO, UK), S. J. Swihart (Insitute for Defense Analyses, USA), J. Strader (Michigan State U., USA) and M. McLaughlin (West Virginia U., USA)

doi.org/10.33232/001c.147516

November 18, 2025, 8:42 am 1 boosts 0 favorites

Next one up is “The role of turbulence in setting the phase of the ISM and implications for the star formation rate” by Tine Colman (Université Paris-Saclay, France) and 13 others based in France, Germany, Italy and the UK. This was published in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies on Tuesday November 18th. It descrtibes using a suite of stratified box simulations to explore the link between star formation, turbulence and the thermal state of the multi-phase interstellar medium (ISM).

The overlay is here:

You can find the official accepted version on arXiv here. The fediverse announcement is here:

Open Journal of Astrophysics

New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "The role of turbulence in setting the phase of the ISM and implications for the star formation rate" by Tine Colman (Université Paris-Saclay, France) and 13 others based in France, Germany, Italy and the UK.

doi.org/10.33232/001c.147517

November 19, 2025, 8:19 am 0 boosts 0 favorites

The fourth paper of the week is “A Bimodal Metallicity Distribution Function in the Ultra-Faint Dwarf Galaxy Reticulum II” by Alice M. Luna (U. Chicago, USA) and 8 others based in the USA, Korea and Canada. This was published on Wednesday November 19th in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies. It decribes low-resolution Magellan/IMACS spectroscopy of 167 stars in the ultra-faint galaxy Reticulum II, revealing a clearly bimodal distribution.

The overlay is here:

You can find the official published version on arXiv here. The Fediverse announcement follows:

Open Journal of Astrophysics

New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "A Bimodal Metallicity Distribution Function in the Ultra-Faint Dwarf Galaxy Reticulum II" by Alice M. Luna (U. Chicago, USA) and 8 others based in the USA, Korea and Canada.

doi.org/10.33232/001c.147696

November 19, 2025, 8:37 am 0 boosts 0 favorites

The fifth and final paper for this week is “Cool Gas in the Circumgalactic Medium of Massive Post Starburst Galaxies” by Zoe Harvey, Sahyadri Krishna, Vivienne Wild & Rita Tojeiro (U. St Andrews, UK) and Paul Hewett (U. Cambridge, UK). This was published on Thursday November 20th in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies.

The overlay is here:

The officially accepted version can be found on arXiv here. The Fediverse announcement is here:

Open Journal of Astrophysics

New Publication at the Open Journal of Astrophysics: "Cool Gas in the Circumgalactic Medium of Massive Post Starburst Galaxies" by Zoe Harvey, Sahyadri Krishna, Vivienne Wild & Rita Tojeiro (U. St Andrews, UK) and Paul Hewett (U. Cambridge, UK)

doi.org/10.33232/001c.147836

November 20, 2025, 9:02 am 1 boosts 0 favorites

And that concludes the update for this week. I will do another next Saturday.