Dr Kirsten Banks

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Dr Kirsten Banks AstroKirsten | Astrophysicist | Science Communicator Welcome to the official page of Kirsten Banks, also known as AstroKirsten!
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Kirsten is an astrophysicist and science communicator who is passionate about making science accessible and engaging for everyone. Through her fun and informative videos, Kirsten shares her love for space and science with the world. She covers a wide range of topics, from the latest space news to the basics of astronomy, and everything in between. Her approachable and relatable style makes learnin

g about science a fun and enjoyable experience for people of all ages. Kirsten's dedication to science communication has earned her a large following on social media, where she has become a well-known personality in the science community. Her positive and uplifting content inspires and educates people around the world, while her infectious enthusiasm encourages everyone to pursue their interests in science and space. This page is the go-to place for all things AstroKirsten. Follow along for updates on her latest videos, appearances, and projects, as well as behind-the-scenes looks at the life of a science communicator. Join the community and connect with others who share a love for space and science. Let's explore the wonders of the universe together with AstroKirsten!

19/08/2025

Ever heard of a zombie star? 🧟‍♂️✨

It's the name given to a star that survives a supernova explosion!

Imagine two stars forming together. The more massive one becomes a white dwarf first and starts slurping hydrogen and helium from its sibling. This continues until it triggers a supernova explosion. However, the explosion isn't strong enough to completely destroy the white dwarf, leaving behind a "zombie star".

Astronomers have identified over 30 of these mini-supernovae, meaning there could be many more zombie stars out there!

What other weird space things do you want to learn about? Let me know in the comments! 🚀🔭

14/08/2025

How can we possibly tell what a star is made of from light-years away? 🤯

It’s all thanks to spectroscopy! Basically, reading a cosmic barcode in light!

Here’s how it works: atoms are picky eaters. They only absorb or release very specific colours of light. Hydrogen, for example, loves a certain red, a certain greenish, and a couple of specific blues.

Every element has its own colour ‘fingerprint’. On Earth, we’ve mapped them all in labs, so when we look at light from a star or planet, we can spot those fingerprints instantly.

By seeing which colours are missing or glowing, we know exactly what elements are there, no matter how far away they are.

Astronomy is wild. We can read the chemistry of the universe… without ever touching it. 🌌

04/08/2025

Peacocks have LASERS?! 🦚

Scientists in the US have found that there are structures in the eyespots of a peacock's feathers that naturally turn light into laser light.

But what makes light laser light? Basically, laser light is light that is one colour, and one colour only, and the light is strengthened by bouncing the light back and forth (aka amplified) and aligned perfectly (aka it's coherent).

Leave a comment if you know what the LASER acronym stands for...

So, what did researchers find with peacocks?

Well, they found evidence of optical cavities, an area where light can get bounced back and forth to become amplified and coherent, turning it into laser light. And some of those structures emit specific green laser light, and other spots emit specific yellow/orange laser light!

The mechanism behind how peacocks make these lasers work is still a mystery... As is the reason why evolution decided to give peacocks lasers in the first place, but damn, this is cool!

30/07/2025

Why do stars twinkle, but planets don’t? ✨

Here's what's going on:
Even though stars are usually much bigger than planets, they're really far away, making them look like tiny points of light in the sky.

Planets, however, are much closer, so they take up more of the sky, looking like little disks or orbs.

Since stars appear as just a point of light in the sky, they're more affected by our atmosphere.

Our atmosphere is kind of chaotic... there’s wind, different temperatures, wobbly turbulence…

And as light travels through it, that turbulence knocks the light around, making stars appear to twinkle.

Since planets are closer, their light is more like spread-out beams, even if the light gets jiggled around, it kinda evens out and appears more stable compared to stars.

Unless the weather’s bad, or the planet’s low in the sky, then you might catch a twinkle or two!

28/07/2025

The Sun is a star, but we only figured that out about 100 years ago 👀🌞✨

If we compare the stars to the Sun, they seem completely different:
☀️ The Sun shows up during the day, stars come out at night
☀️ The Sun is a big glowing circle, stars are tiny dots
☀️ The Sun is hot, stars don’t warm us at all

So what changed? Spectroscopy.

That’s when you split light into a rainbow and read the “barcode” hidden in those colours. Scientists saw that sunlight and starlight shared very similar barcodes… meaning they’re made of the same stuff!

And that’s how we finally realised that the Sun is just a star up close.

23/07/2025

Do we have actual pictures of colliding galaxies?

YES! And they are chef’s kiss 🔥

So let’s talk galaxy mergers while you check them out:

💥 Binary vs multiple mergers (2 vs 3+ galaxies)
⚖️ Major vs minor (similar size or one tiny)
💧 Wet vs dry vs damp (how much gas they’ve got)

Milky Way + Andromeda? That’s a wet one. 🌌

💫 In a major merger, galaxies can lose up to 50% of their stellar mass

🚀 And there's a 50% chance the Solar System will get YEETED out of the Milky Way when Andromeda arrives

🕰 And the whole process takes billions of years

Honestly, the universe is dramatic.

✨ What’s your favourite galaxy merger fact? Tell me below 👇

22/07/2025

I saw the aurora borealis for the first time last year and took this photo…

And look, I was excited. But compared to what professional astrophotographers can do? Yeah… mine’s giving ✨meh✨.

But here’s the cool part... if you’re in Australia, you don’t have to fly to Iceland to see an aurora! Tasmania is one of the BEST places to catch the aurora australis, and this year at Beaker Street Festival, you’ll get to learn from Australia’s top aurora chasers.

🌌 Learn how to spot it.
📷 Get pro tips on photographing it.
🌠 And soak up a sky full of science, sidewalk astronomy, and even secret-location photo workshops.

I’ll be there too, and I can’t wait! 🎉

🗓 12–24 August
📍 Nipaluna / Hobart
🎟 Tickets are going fast: beakerstreet.com.au

Image supplied by: Rian Lowe

20/07/2025

⚠️ This ring is expanding faster than the speed of light... but how?! Isn’t light the ultimate speed limit?

It’s called superluminal motion, and it’s a mind-bending illusion caused by geometry, timing, and light itself. 💡🌀

In this Hubble image of a supernova in the Centaurus A galaxy, the light echoes reflecting off surrounding dust look like they’re expanding 37x faster than light speed, but they’re not actually breaking physics. Just your brain. 🧠✨

And thank you to our community member for the brilliant Moon-laser analogy, it’s such a good way to wrap your head around this!

17/07/2025

I’m heading back to Tasmania this August for Beaker Street Festival — and I couldn’t be more excited!

If you were there last year, you know it’s a science festival like no other:
🔬 chaotic scientific debates
🎶 live music and storytelling
❄️ Antarctic saunas (!!)
💬 late-night chats with some of the brightest minds around

This year, I’ll be on the Main Stage Saturday, 16 August with Beyond the Stars: Seeing the Sky Through Aboriginal Eyes — where we’ll explore how Indigenous sky stories hold deep scientific and astronomical knowledge. ✨🌌

But honestly? That’s just one tiny piece of what Beaker Street has to offer.

Come along to:
🌠 Stargaze under the Tasmanian sky
🔥 Warm up with mulled wine and great conversation
🎙️ See legends like Dr Karl, Myf Warhurst, and Dr Esmé Louise James

Beaker Street runs from 12–24 August across Nipaluna/Hobart.

🎟️ Tickets & full program at beakerstreet.com.au

See you there, fellow nerds 💫

17/07/2025

🚨 New discovery alert! 🚨

Astronomers have just captured something we've never seen before: the birth of a solar system. 🍼🪐

Yes, we've spotted baby planets before, but never this early in their development. The star system is called HOPS-315, located in Orion about 1,370 light-years away, and it’s giving us a glimpse of what our own Sun might’ve looked like when it was just 100,000 to 200,000 years old.

Here’s what’s happening: Scientists used ALMA (which sees in submillimetre wavelengths, between infrared and radio light) to capture this image of HOPS-315. They saw a disk of silicon monoxide forming around the baby star.

But here’s the wild part: that material is condensing into crystalline silicates. These are the exact kind of minerals we find on Earth in sand, rock, and even concrete. 🪨

Why is that so cool? Because these are the first solid ingredients believed to kick off planet formation, and exactly what we think happened in our Solar System 4.5 billion years ago. 🌍

Until now, we could only guess that this happened in other systems based on asteroid samples. But now we've seen it in action in a different star system.

So... are we special? Or is this just how planets are made across the cosmos?

Here’s the original research if you want to dive deeper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09163-z

15/07/2025

We found it! That mysterious Hubble supernova timelapse? Turns out it is real!

Huge thank you to Phil Plait (you legend!) for pointing me to the original source by Judy Schmidt, complete with a link to the scientific paper so we can learn all the juicy details. 🔗 https://www.flickr.com/photos/geckzilla/49521695336/in/photostream/

This supernova exploded in Centaurus A, about 12 million light-years away. This time-lapse spans 1.5 years of the explosion’s aftermath, capturing not one, but FOUR light echoes!

And, what's most wild, those light echoes appear to travel up to 37 times the speed of light. 🫨 Don’t worry, no physics is being broken... It’s an optical illusion called superluminal motion.

Not only is this beautiful, but it’s also science history: it includes the earliest ever detection of a light echo after a supernova.

Big love to Phil Plait and Judy Schmidt for helping us learn more about this amazing cosmic event! 🌌

14/07/2025

Did Hubble really capture a star exploding?

That’s what this viral video claims: a time-lapse of a supernova caught by the Hubble Space Telescope.

So I went searching for the original. I checked NASA, ESA, Hubble’s archive… nothing.

No matching supernova. No light echo. No official release.

Reverse image search? Just more viral posts giving contradictory info. Some say it’s from 60 million light-years away, others say 10.

I finally found a name for the supernova, supposedly in Centaurus A, but even that didn’t turn up anything verifiable.

So is this real? I really don't know!

Moral of the story?

Science communication needs sources and details. It helps people trust the cool stuff you're sharing. It also helps nerds like me find the facts behind the fireworks. 🙃

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