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wthomp

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wthomp
·2 anni fa·discuss
This is maybe not the place, but we did some apples to apples comparisons between PyMC, Dynesty, and the Julia Turing.jl package.

A little to my surprise, despite being a Julia fan, Turing really outperformed both the Python solutions. I think JAX should be competitive in raw speed, so it might come down to the maturity of the samplers we used.
wthomp
·2 anni fa·discuss
I visited the Large binocular telescope just a month or two ago. A very impressive facility, and one can only imagine the image quality if they were captured using both mirrors coherently.
wthomp
·3 anni fa·discuss
That doesn’t seem to match what I understood from the article. At one point they say explicitly that it will enable brighter displays.
wthomp
·3 anni fa·discuss
My understanding is that the AO system for GMT is going to pose quite a challenge. A big topic of ongoing research is dealing with “petaling” where the separate primary mirrors in phase due to the atmosphere.

For combining the projects, it does seem like that may be the only option funding wise, but it’s hard to imagine what the resulting observatory would look like. Maybe it would have to be a completely new design?
wthomp
·3 anni fa·discuss
There’s a bit more to it than that. GMT is further along but its design has many compromises versus TMT. Also, a second ELT in the southern hemisphere is less useful than one in both Hemispheres. The situation for TMT on Maunakea is definitely tricky, but it’s also a better site than either of GMT’s or EELTs.
wthomp
·3 anni fa·discuss
Worth mentioning that essentially all professional astronomers / astrophysicists consider this person a grifter. It’s amazing that he keeps getting so much press though, would love to learn his secret.
wthomp
·3 anni fa·discuss
Yes exactly. Which means it's extremely, extremely low.

Even though the probably of a meteorite hitting somewhere is high, the probability of hitting somewhere in particular is tiny.
wthomp
·3 anni fa·discuss
I’m using this from Julia and both the user and developer experience is great. It’s much more limited than publication style plotting libraries but the instant 60fps reactivity is amazing.
wthomp
·3 anni fa·discuss
#3 spot at atmospheric pressure
wthomp
·3 anni fa·discuss
Coming from matplotlib, I found Makie such a breath of fresh air. The API is just as (if not more) flexible but way more predictable. Their layout system in particular is amazing. I think it bundles it's own constraint engine? Congrats on the new website!

PS. Thanks to the Makie team for the shoutout to my corner plot package in the ecosystem section!
wthomp
·3 anni fa·discuss
As has been pointed out elsewhere, this is the first image of our galaxy in something other than light (radio, infrared, x rays, gamma rays are all photons).
wthomp
·3 anni fa·discuss
Would you mind explaining this further? Since sound is literally pressure waves, I don't understand how reducing sound can still leave "sound pressure".
wthomp
·3 anni fa·discuss
This is not a “nature publication” in the common sense. It’s in their commentary section.
wthomp
·4 anni fa·discuss
This is true but the poster above doesn’t mean Monte Carlo integration. Rather, testing those methods on simulations from generative models.
wthomp
·4 anni fa·discuss
Small correction, no one will be able to pay for time on JWST. But if you put in a proposal for time and it's accepted, they will pay you. That's to make sure there is sufficient funds available to properly make use of the data you proposed for.
wthomp
·4 anni fa·discuss
If you were to fly into these nebula in some kind of spaceship they wouldn't be any brighter than they appear in the night sky from Earth. They would just look way way bigger. The frustrating thing is that our eyes start to respond differently to colours when the light is really really faint. So we would probably perceive them as a grayish green haze. If the image was brightened artificiallythen we would see it as mostly red, with some browns and blues.