Dr Laura Driessen

@astrolaura.com

2115 Followers 661 Following

Radio astronomer and science communicator at the University of Sydney. Die hard Melbourne demons fan. Opinions are my own. www.astrolaura.com

A screenshot of the title page of my thesis. It had the Manchester Uni logo at the top and the title is "Radio Transients with MeerKAT". The title and some other bits like my name and my supervisor's name are all pink
A selfie of a woman. She's wearing a light blue tshirt with a denim dress over it. The dress has rockets and planets on it. She's smiling, has her hair pulled back, and is wearing glasses. In the background you can see a big teddy bear to her left and a doll to her right
A white dog sits facing forwards on a round, dark blue dog bed. He's wearing a red collar and purple lead. He has brown spots and a brown patch over one eye. He has dark brown ears. He's a whippet, so he's pretty skinny and has a pointy face
A cute drawing of a dog's face looking up at a little star above his head. He has a white face with a brown patch over one eye and brown ears
Hand holding a blob of ice. The blob is more than 2 fingers wide
A woman wearing black stands in the foreground. In the background are 4 radio telescopes. They look like large TV antennas. Each one is 22m in diameter.
A Black background with a small, red-ish dot in the middle. That dot is the Moon, trust me
A diagram of what an eclipse is. The Sun is on the left, the Earth in the middle, and the Moon is in the Earth's shadow on the right. The outer, fainter shadow of the Earth is called the Penumbra. The innder, darker shadow of the Earth is called the Umbra
A table showing the start and end times of the eclipse for different states in Australia. This information as a table can be found in the article I linked in the first post in this thread
A photo of a smiling woman in su glasses and a hat. She's standing on the red dirt of outback WA with two ASKAP antennas in the background. The antennas look like big TV dishes. There's info about the talk overlaid, that info can be found via the link in the post
An image of a stage with the 3D "SKAO" logo on the stage. Above the stage is a projected screen that says "Welcome to the 2025 SKAO science meeting"
A photo looking down a river from a bridge. On the left are some old-ish German buildings, mostly with red tiled rooves. On the right are trees and a low stone wall. The water is pretty still, so the scenery is reflected beautifully. The sky is a gorgeous clear blue with some fluffy clouds close to the horizon
Ad for my Pint of Science talk with text saying: "Pint of Science 2025 at The Commercial Hotel, Parramatta 7pm to 9pm on Tuesday the 20th of May Did you know that black holes can photobomb stars? Hear about how we’ve more than doubled the known number of radio stars using Australia’s ASKAP telescope. Stars might seem easy to find, but it’s a lot trickier with black holes everywhere!"
A woman with wavy brown hair is wearing blue-rimmed glasses and a navy blue dress with space things (rockets, planets, space ships, asteroids) sketched in white on it. The text says: "Raising the Bar Sydney", "Astronomers are bad at naming things (including this talk)", "20 Free Talks. 10 Local Bars. 1 Night."
A bad lighting 2014 photo of a report titled "a high-resolution, low frequency study if the Galactic Centre". Because of the time (2014) i wrote doge (the Shiba Inu, not the DOGE of today) style words over the top: such report, many writing, much relief, wow
A white whippet is comfortable stretched out on a pile of cushions on a queen size bed. The pillows and doona cover are light blue with geometric patterns. The Dog is white and skinny with really long front legs stretched as far out as they can. He has brown ears and a brown splotch on his side. He has a cute pink tummy with brown splotches.
Artist's impression of the Gaia space telescope in front of the Milky Way. Gaia looks kind of like a sunhat. I've added a little halo above it. The Milky Way has a glowy centre and you can see the dusk tracks in the disk. You can also see the bright blobs of the Magellanic Clouds below the Milky Way
A piñata in the shape of a porg from Star Wars. It has little pipe cleaner legs and everything
A picture of a TV showing ABCNews Live (Australia). The host is a blonde woman in a hot pink high neck blouse and white blazer. She's wearing glasses and is on the left side of the screen. Dr Laura Driessen is on the right being interviewed. Laura is wearing a high neck dress that has space things all over it, like Jupiter, rockets, astronauts and moons. She's wearing blue glasses. At the bottom of the TV screen it says "Australia's top Geminid meteor shower set to peak this weekend"
A dark green Christmas wreath with small, shiny stars on it. It also has 6 circles on it, each circle has a different astronomy image on it. They are: a JWST image of a Galaxy, a Juno image of Jupiter, an ASKAP image of a supernova remnant, an Event Horizon Telescope image of the black hole at the centre of our Galaxy, a MeerKAT image of the Galactic Centre, and the Hubble Ultra Deep field
A blue-green background with a red spiral swirl. On top of that is the word "Conversations" and the ABC logo is in the top left
A slightly awkward selfie of a woman with blonde curly hair wearing a maroon blazer, standing in front of the magestic Murriyang (Parkes) Radio Telescope. In the picture with can see the udner-side of the dish, which looks like a giant TV antenna. The sky in the background is very blue.
A white whippet with brown splotches, most notably a brown path over one ear and eye, is snoozling on a bean bag. Like most skinny dogs, he's a sensitive guy who doesn't like the cold, so he's tucked in to not one, but two blankies. Because he has such long, model-worthy legs, all four feets are tucked forward and sticking out of the blankets near his face. He is wearing a cute royal blue collar.
A sunset image of thr Parkes Telescope (looks like a giant TV dish) pointing straight up. The sky is a lovely mix of orange fading into pink. Above the dish you can see the Orion Constellation
An image of Australia made of rainbow sound waves
A blonde woman in front of a microphone and podium gesticulates passionately while talking about how radio is not sound
Two women stand together ready to talk about science!
Two women in sunglasses taking a selfie in a park in Lake Macquarie. The sky is blue, their smiles are big, and the science game is strong
A blonde wavy hair woman (me) in a dress with space dinosaurs on it is talking in front of a PowerPoint showing the Milky Way galaxy
A large radio dish stands in a field in front of a beautiful blue sky. The dish is the Murriyang (Parkes) Radio Telescope and it's magnificent.
A woman with blonde wavy hair is standing in front of the Christmas tree shaped antennas of the SKA low test array. She's wearing a pinafore style dress, that has a picture of the SKA low antennas on it