So what is the site about?

Five years ago, a group of astronomy PhD students at Harvard University teamed up to solve a problem they’d encountered when, as eager undergraduates just beginning to dip their toes into research, they attempted to read actual scientific papers for the first time. Like thousands of others before them, they found it a daunting experience – the jargon! the pages of citations! the unfamiliar methods! – and they resolved to do something to make it easier for the next generation of students. The result is Astrobites, a blog where current astronomy postgraduate students post undergraduate-friendly summaries of recent papers.

Who is behind it?

The original Harvard group quickly expanded to include PhD students from other universities across the US and Europe, and the site’s current “daily rotation” has 26 members, each of whom has committed to writing one post per month. All told, more than 60 PhD students have written summaries for Astrobites, while a handful of senior academics have posted as guests.

What are some of the topics covered?

The contributors to Astrobites are a diverse group, with research specialisms that range from planetary science to extragalactic observation and theoretical cosmology. That diversity feeds through to their choices about which papers to cover: a typical week might throw up papers about magnetars (neutron stars with super-powerful magnetic fields), newly observed exoplanets, and an estimate of the number of intelligent civilizations in the universe. “We’re not trying to identify the ‘best’ papers – it’s more a question of what will add the most to our site,” explains Nathan Sanders, one of the original Astrobites contributors and now an administrator on the site.

Anything else I should look for?

In addition to the near-daily summaries of recent papers, the site also has a section devoted to explanations of “classic” papers within astrophysics. A few of these classics are now chiefly of historic interest (such as the Astrobite dedicated to Ptolemy’s treatise on his geocentric model of the universe), but many others feature methods and results that remain relevant today. A good example is a 1987 paper from the Astrophysical Journal (315 L77) in which the researchers used the luminosity spectrum of white dwarf stars to estimate the age of the universe. While the number they arrived at – 10.3 ± 2.2 billion years – is lower than the currently accepted value, Astrobites author Josh Fuchs explains, “The debate and process of determining the age of the universe is a good reminder of the workings of science. Multiple independent methods gave different results, which motivated astronomers to keep searching for a believable number.” Also of note is the fact that the Astrobites concept has been adopted by several other scientific fields: there’s an Oceanbites for ocean science and a Particlebites for particle physics, to name just two.

Can I get involved?

If you are a PhD student in astronomy, astrophysics or a related field, then yes, potentially. The site runs a “hiring call” every autumn when would-be contributors are asked to submit a short example post and some information about themselves; the most recent call began on 15 September, so if you’re quick, you might just make it in. They usually have more applicants than they can accept into their regular daily rota of contributors, and Sanders attributes this to the site’s “dual benefit”: reading the summaries is beneficial for undergraduates, but writing them gives graduate students valuable communication experience. “It looks a lot like teaching, which is what some of us are trying to do as lecturers 5–10 years in the future,” he explains. And speaking of teaching, Sanders told Physics World that the Astrobites crew is working on a spin-out site in which astronomy undergraduates write summaries for younger students. Watch this (outer) space.

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