Jekyll2026-05-18T12:53:28+00:00https://www.adam-mcmaster.com/feed.xmlDr Adam McMasterI'm an astronomer with the University of Southampton studying time domain astrophysics with citizen science.Adam McMasterSEPnet student-led conference: The Imitation Game2023-03-30T00:00:00+00:002023-03-30T00:00:00+00:00https://www.adam-mcmaster.com/research/sepnet-bhhThis week was the SEPnet student-led conference, The Imitation Game, at The Open University.

As well as being a member of the organising committee, I presented an early look at the results from Black Hole Hunters – a PDF of the slides is available. Work on the analysis pipeline is going well and there should hopefully be a paper out with the final results later this year.

]]>Adam McMasterSuperWASP: Black Hole Hunters at REINFORCE2022-09-08T00:00:00+00:002022-09-08T00:00:00+00:00https://www.adam-mcmaster.com/research/reinforce-bhhLast week I gave an update on the Black Hole Hunters project to the REINFORCE workshop, Fostering citizens’ role in the advance of ground-breaking research in fundamental physics. Just in time for my talk, the project reached 2 million classifications on the Zooniverse! I’m currently working on building the analysis pipeline to see what the Zooniverse volunteers have found.

A PDF of the slides is available.

]]>Adam McMasterBlack Hole Hunters at the National Astronomy Meeting 20222022-07-19T00:00:00+00:002022-07-19T00:00:00+00:00https://www.adam-mcmaster.com/media/nam22Last week I attended NAM 2022 at the University of Warwick. I presented my poster, Black Hole Hunters: A citizen science search for black hole self-lensing. The Royal Astronomical Society also put out a press release about the project:

A research team from the Open University and the University of Southampton is asking for the public’s help to find some of the most mysterious, elusive objects in the Universe – black holes. By examining data from the SuperWASP survey, the UK’s leading extra-solar planet detection programme, the team hope to detect changes in starlight that may provide evidence for the existence of these black holes.

]]>Adam McMasterThe Conversation: Gaia mission: five insights astronomers could glean from its latest data2022-06-23T00:00:00+00:002022-06-23T00:00:00+00:00https://www.adam-mcmaster.com/writing/the-conversation-gaiaI wrote an article for The Conversation about the recent Gaia Data Release 3 (along with Andrew Norton) summarising my favourite highlights from the new data:

The European Space Agency’s (Esa) Gaia mission has just released new data. The Gaia satellite was launched in 2013, with the aim of measuring the precise positions of a billion stars. In addition to measuring the stars’ positions, speeds and brightness, the satellite has collected data on a huge range of other objects.

There’s a lot to make astronomers excited. Here are five of our favourite insights that the data might provide.

]]>Adam McMasterBritish Science Week: Astronomy needs you!2022-03-17T00:00:00+00:002022-03-17T00:00:00+00:00https://www.adam-mcmaster.com/media/bsw-bhhI hosted a discussion and Q&A about Black Hole Hunters, citizen science, and the “big data” revolution in astronomy, as part of British Science Week. We encouraged the audience to submit classifications via the Zooniverse, and they submitted over 7,000 during the event and 14,000 during the whole day.

The recording of the event is below:

]]>Adam McMasterAstronomy on Tap Jena2022-02-21T00:00:00+00:002022-02-21T00:00:00+00:00https://www.adam-mcmaster.com/media/aot-jenaI recorded an interview with Astronomy on Tap Jena where I talked about my work on SuperWASP Variable Stars and Black Hole Hunters, as well as my unusual career path into astronomy. Check it out:

]]>Adam McMasterThe Conversation: Astronomers think they’ve just spotted an ‘invisible’ black hole for the first time2022-02-14T00:00:00+00:002022-02-14T00:00:00+00:00https://www.adam-mcmaster.com/writing/the-conversation-lensingThe Conversation has published an article by me and Andrew Norton on the probable recent discovery by gravitational microlensing of the first isolated, quiescent black hole:

Astronomers famously snapped the first ever direct image of a black hole in 2019, thanks to material glowing in its presence. But many black holes are actually near impossible to detect. Now another team using the Hubble Space Telescope seems to have finally found something nobody has seen before: a black hole which is completely invisible. The research, which has been posted online and submitted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal, is yet to be peer-reviewed.

It’s been republished in a few places, including Popular Science, The Next Web, and Singularity Hub.

]]>Adam McMasterHow to find invisible black holes2022-01-31T00:00:00+00:002022-01-31T00:00:00+00:00https://www.adam-mcmaster.com/writing/black-hole-openlearnI wrote an article about our recently-launched Black Hole Hunters project for the Open University’s OpenLearn web site:

Finding the sudden glints of light from otherwise invisible black holes is the focus of the SuperWASP: Black Hole Hunters citizen science project. In citizen science projects, we ask volunteers – you! – for help figuring out things that computers can’t solve for us! Black Hole Hunters is the Open University’s second citizen science project using data from the SuperWASP All-Sky Survey.

…

Whereas SuperWASP Variable Stars looks for types of star that repeatedly change in brightness at regular intervals, SuperWASP: Black Hole Hunters is searching for the invisible black holes. The two projects are very similar, except now we’re looking for stars that get brighter only once before going back to ‘normal’. The lensing effect – where the black hole’s gravity bends and focuses the light from its companion star – makes a short, symmetrical peak in the graph of the star’s brightness.

]]>Adam McMasterVeSPA: Data Release 1.0 on Zenodo and AAS Research Notes2021-10-15T00:00:00+00:002021-10-15T00:00:00+00:00https://www.adam-mcmaster.com/research/vespa-dr1I recently added VeSPA data release 1 to Zenodo:

Each data release will also have a DOI via Zenodo. This allows researchers to cite the exact data release they used in any research they publish. A copy of each data release is also archived on the Zenodo website in perpetuity.

It’s important when research is published that the original data behind that research is also made available. This allows other researchers to reproduce the original results and to build on them for their own work. Keeping a permanent copy of each version of the data helps to achieve this.

And I’ve written up a short description of VeSPA in Research Notes of the AAS:

We present the first results from the SuperWASP Variable Stars (SVS) citizen science project. The photometry archive of the Wide Angle Search for Planets has previously been searched for periodic variations and the results of this search formed the basis of the SVS project on the Zooniverse. The SVS project asks volunteers to visually inspect light curve plots and categorize each one according to a broad classification scheme. Results from the first two years of SVS have now been published online as the SuperWASP Variable Star Photometry Archive (VeSPA). The archive can be browsed online, downloaded in full, or queried, filtered, and sorted to export a refined set of results. An interactive light curve viewer also allows any light curve to be folded at a user-defined period. Analysis of citizen science results and development of VeSPA features are both ongoing. Updated results will be published every six months.

]]>Adam McMasterVeSPA: The Variable Star Photometry Archive2021-08-09T00:00:00+00:002021-08-09T00:00:00+00:00https://www.adam-mcmaster.com/research/code/vespaThe new SuperWASP.org is now live. It contains a section called VeSPA: The Variable Star Photometry Archive which I’ve spent the last few months building. The archive contains the first results from the SuperWASP Variable Stars Zooniverse project

The code behind VeSPA is available on GitHub.

I presented a couple of conference posters about VeSPA last month, one at the European Astronomical Society Meeting and one at the RAS National Astronomy Meeting. A PDF of the NAM poster is available. I also made a third poster for a competition at the Open University, which you can view on the OU website.

]]>Adam McMaster