Sera Markoff

@profsera.bsky.social

6502 Followers 2004 Following

Plumian Prof in Astro @U Cambridge & Prof Astro-/Particle Physics @U Amsterdam. All things black hole, member: Event Horizon Telescope, Africa Millimeter Telescope, CTAO. Space, sci-fi, cats, music, valve amps, other unabashed geekery. www.seramarkoff.com

Photo of a super floofy orange cat on a light green sofa, caught cleaning herself so her tail is wrapped up around her in a way that she looks completely round.
Closeup of a orange floofy cat on a pale green sofa, belly up and twisting to face the camera, one paw extended forward
Poster advertising the talk entitled "Staring into the heart of darkness: from theory to the direct imaging of black holes", with a photograph of me, a woman standing rather cheesily next to a telescope inside an observatory dome with wooden panelling. The yellow blocky script with my name is reminiscent of the Watchman comic :)
Screen shot of account name showing "Will be Markoff" instead of Sera Markoff
Photo of a stage with crowds and Billy Bragg performing, also projected on a larger screen.
Photo of a group of smiling people in front of a large crowd at a big march against the right in London
Photo of a substantial spider on the wall with slippers for scale.
Wall sign with arrows indicating bathroom, loft, library and “Skype room”!
Screen shot of a table schedule from a black hole conference showing black hole talks and discussion before/after an "Unconferencing" session and a photo of alpacas captioned by "Petting Alpacas"
Photo of Prof James Chibueze at the podium with his title slide projected in the background “Astronomy and Astrophysics as Development Drivers in Africa”
Screenshot of Dutch explanation that the Amsterdam to London train is delayed because of "an animal on the tracks".
Orange fluffy cat lying belly up, staring off into space looking a bit stunned
Photo of the singer Ezra Fuhrman with her band on stage at the Tolhuistuin in Amsterdam. She’s holding the mic singing in a blue dress and the lights behind her are reddish and diffusing out in a starlike pattern through a bit of haze.
Photo of 7 bars/boxes of variations on Dubai chocolate plus a bag of white chocolate and orange peel covered dates!
Two side by side photos, on the right is the aisle of a liquor store showing a trail of destruction left by the raccoon breaking (and apparently drinking) bottles, on the left is said raccoon, passed out splayed on its belly in a bathroom.
Photograph of an amazing work of art cake, a cylinder (clearly multilayer inside) sort of metallic grey with speckles for the night sky, and covered in some multicoloured spheres likely signifying planets, with a golden pedestal on top saying "Anton Pannekoek Institute" and a telescope dome, like a 3D version of our logo!
Short movie of the two pronged telescope transporter rig “Otto” coming down the road from #ALMA, including drivers waving at us.
Photo of woman with hat and oxygen tube under nose in front of stunning desert landscape with an array of white telescope dishes spread out behind. In the background the iconic Licancabur volcano in the background.
Photo of fluffy orange cat lying sideways facing camera, belly fluff softly lit, front paws extended and looking a bit plaintive.
3 colour illustration/visualisation of a talk about black holes. There is a drawing of a woman in a jacket holding open an interstellar like black hole that says "What will an 'activated'" black hole look like? Surrounding this drawing is a dynamic panorama of text and images relating to quotes and questions from the talk like "Black holes spend most of their time being rather harmless..." with cartoons of adorable little black holes with arms and legs being cute, and eating (with text "...until they get hungry!").
Photo of orange fluffy cat in profile with one back leg stuck in the air, as if caught in the act
Fluffy orange cat lying belly up on a wooden floor, looking at the camera, with a bit of a twist so she can drape he arms over some house slippers.
Photo showing a wicker basket dog menu full of little fancy dog meals by “Sir Woofchester’s” available to order in the pub. Flavored include Sleepy Bones, Bark Burgers, Sunday Roast, Bark Bangers and Fish and Chips dog bowl!
Photo of a scale in a doctor's office and on the wall above it is a sign that reads "PLEASE REMEMBER: This scale can only give you a numerical reflection of your relationshp with gravity. That is it. It cannot measure (each word in a different colour): beauty, talent, purpose, possibility, strength, love or character."
Photo of a fluffy orange cat in a black cubby box looking a bit startled, on a wooden window bench
A large fluffy orange cat belly up on a couch, head coquettishly averted, hairy feet sticking up with toe floof poking out in all directions. Evening vibe.
Short movie explaining what is going on with the three different images (spread over 4 years) of the M87* supermassive black hole. Captioned in movie, and with soundtrack.
A tryptich of three images of the M87* black hole, from April in 2017, 2018 and 2021 (we lost 2019-2020 campaigns to technical/pandemic reasons). The fuzzy red donut shape is the same but the bright spot shifts in 2018 and seems to reset in 2021. Streamlines in the image indicate the polarisation vectors, that trace the magnetic field configuration. This too seemed unusual in 2018 and the whole field configuration flipped direction over the 4 year period!
Photo of three women standing in front of a table full of pizzas at a gathering, the aftermath of our pizza lunch talks. The middle person (me) proudly clutching the pizza-topped prize trophy, the other two women are postdocs in my group.
Photo of a large galleon style ship with multiple masts and sails incongruously on the Amsterdam IJ river, surrounded by close to 100 smaller boats milling around it. Along the shoreline are crowds of onlookers cheering the parade of tall ships.
Movie of a gazillion ships piling up in the IJ river of Amsterdam as part of the SAIL in parade
Photo from above of a parked car, a convertible with black roof cover up. A black cat (one of our neighborhood cats Kiko) sits nonchalantly on it, blending in.
An image of a (proposed)?sculpture for Burning Man of swirling lines spiralling around a hole, very similar to the streamlines of polarisation vectors seen in Event Horizon Telescope's two polarised black hole images. An abstract adult figure is placed next to the sculpture to show scale is about twice the figure's height.
Photo of a group of friends in an open motor boat on a canal with houseboats along the side and Dutch style houses off in the distance behind
Photo of an orange fluffy cat sprawled on her pedestal, head tucked down between her front legs, staring off into space in a way that makes her look a bit sad
Screenshot showing list of available personal hotspots, including "Pretty fly for a WiFi"
Fluffy orange cat sprawled on a light green couch with closed eyes and curled down front paws
Photo of page of guestbook with a beautiful pen drawing like a map of the river flowing through Bern, Switzerland, reimagined as a flux tube interacting with a current sheet in an accretion disk. Also many small individual thank yous to the ISSI host centre.
screengrab of a small fraction of a new Vera Rubin Observatory image showing stunning galaxies and stars of many colours.
Photo of five adults donning the traditional robes and funny hats that Dutch professors wear at formal occasions. Amongst them is a young boy proudly dressed in his own mini version of the robes and hat.
A chart showing 19 active space missions that will be cut because of the new budgets. This is just a subset of the overall active missions that will be cut including astronomy. At the top are the words "These projects reflect more than $12 billion of investment by US taxpayers and 180 of combined years to build".
Photo taken from the US National Science Foundation press event in D.C. on 10 April 2019, where the team of us plus then NSF director France Cordova are on stage, with the first iconic black hole image of M87* looming over us.
Photo of living room with typical Dutch three windows showing blue skies and white and pink blossoms on trees. And a large fluffy orange cat sprawled in the middle of the floor, perfectly positioned so sun is shining on her lower belly.
ChatGPT generated image of the two iconic images of black holes Sgr A* and M87 looking like cute cartoons with buggy eyes, courtesy of EHT member Saurabh!
Screen shot of abstract and keywords from fake paper "The Rizzeta Stone: Adopting Gen-alpha colloquial language to improve scientific paper rizz and aura from a skibidi perspective"
Figure 2 from a fake paper on arXiv about spherical cow geometry, showing 3 rows of 3 volume renderings of cow multipole desconstructions, starting from a monopole (sphere, top left) to eventually a full cow (bottom right)
Photo of a sticker shaped like a 5 liter plastic jug with label “Graduate Student Tears”!
Photo of the huge crowd of protest marchers gathering under the sunny skies in the Dam square of Amsterdam with historic buildings in the background.
Screen grab of UK Top Album Charts showing Steven Wilson's the Overview betwen Sabrina Carpenter's "Short n' Sweet" and Lady Gaga's "Mayhem"!
Photo of a bouquet of bright yellow daffodils in front of window with view onto a spring scene of Amsterdam under a bright blue sky, with a few tiny white clouds. In other words, not shitty at all.
Screenshot showing list of top 5 cited papers in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, with the first black hole image paper in position 4!
View of two telescope domes on top of a university office building roof, from across an interior courtyard, under a (rare) clear blue Amsterdam sky.
Photo of several musicians on stage at the famous Paradiso club in Amsterdam, under beams of warm magenta light. Nubya Garcia stands up front, playing saxophone.