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Hello! Welcome to the StarXiv, hosted by Dr Michelle Collins and Dr Payel Das. This is a biweekly podcast that delves into the latest astronomy papers & results from the arXiv. Michelle and Payel are astronomers at the University of Surrey. They love research, but struggle to find time to read a lot of papers. They’re hoping this podcast fixes that. The beautiful logo is designed by Izzy Gray, a PhD student currently studying at the University of Surrey.Themes and summary (AI-generated based on podcaster-provided show and episode descriptions):
➤ arXiv astronomy paper discussions • galaxy formation, dwarfs, disks, clusters, chemical evolution • black holes and gravitational waves • dark matter and cosmology, lensing • exoplanets, stellar activity, Solar System • technosignatures, machine-learning methodsThis podcast is a biweekly discussion of recent astronomy and astrophysics research posted to arXiv, hosted by two professional astronomers. Across episodes, the hosts read and unpack a small set of current papers, emphasizing what the results claim, how the studies were done (observations, simulations, theory, or statistical/ML approaches), and what the implications might be for broader questions in astronomy.
A recurring focus is galaxy formation and evolution, particularly in the low-mass regime: dwarf galaxies, ultra-faint satellites, ultra-diffuse systems, and star clusters that blur the line between clusters and galaxies. Many conversations center on how these systems form stars, retain or lose gas, build up chemical elements, and record their histories in stellar populations. “Galactic archaeology” themes appear frequently, including the Milky Way’s thin/thick disc structure, stellar migration, merger debris, globular-cluster origins (in-situ versus accreted), and using stellar abundances as a kind of “chemical DNA” to trace common origin and enrichment pathways such as the r-process.
High-redshift and early-Universe topics are also common, including JWST results on very distant galaxies, “Little Red Dots,” nitrogen/oxygen abundance patterns, and proposed pathways to rapidly forming and growing massive black holes. Black holes feature broadly—from intermediate-mass candidates in clusters and dwarf galaxies to supermassive black holes in unusual environments, as well as observational signatures of accretion and tidal disruption, and constraints from gravitational-wave populations.
Cosmology and dark matter appear through discussions of halo structure, cusp–core issues, mixed/warm/cold dark matter constraints, rotation-curve puzzles, intracluster light, and gravitational lensing (arcs, rings, and survey-based lens searches). On smaller scales, the show also covers stellar and planetary astrophysics—variable stars, flares and starspots, unusual stellar phenomena, planet formation and architecture (including misaligned or wide-separation planets), and occasional solar-system and astrobiology-adjacent papers such as interstellar objects and technosignature searches. Machine learning and modern survey methods recur as tools for discovery and classification across many of these topics.
