Radio astronomer here! Many of you may already know me by my user name, /u/Andromeda321, which I've used for many years now to drop astronomy/space facts, or give context on new space discoveries in science. In the real world, my name is Yvette Cendes, and I am currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Next summer, however, I will begin as an assistant professor of physics at the University of Oregon, where I will focus on building the department's astronomy course and research offerings- go ducks!

Radio astronomy is a powerful tool to learn more about our cosmos- different physical processes emit light at different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, and radio waves can often reveal information you can't learn from other wavelengths. My particular specialty are "transient" signals- ones that turn on and off over time, instead of being constant (like most things in the universe are during the course of our lifetime). This has covered a huge range of phenomena, and certainly keeps things exciting- during my career I have studied things such as supernovae, potential radio emission from exoplanets (which would be generated by the planet's magnetosphere), and even the closest black holes we know of to Earth!

Most recently, however, I have focused most of my research on "burping" black holes- a new and unexpected phenomenon in black hole physics. This occurs years after a star wanders too close to a supermassive black hole, and is torn apart by tidal forces, in an event known as a Tidal Disruption Event (TDE). Outflows from these events generate radio emission, and was traditionally thought to occur only in the first ~months post-disruption, but my team has discovered an astounding ~40% of TDEs will have detectable radio emission years post-disruption that don't at early times! This is incredibly exciting because it opens a new door to studying black hole physics- you can read a recent news article about this discovery here, and a much more detailed summary of our preprint paper here. Additionally, last year I discovered that one of these "burping" black holes has an outflow with a velocity up to half the speed of light, known as AT2018hyz, or "Jetty McJetface."

When not doing research or hanging out around Reddit, I am also involved in outreach, writing for publications like Astronomy magazine and serving as the astronomy editor for the Guinness Book of World Records. I also maintain an active subreddit at /r/Andromeda321, and maintain a Twitter/X account (though don't post much there any more) and a much more active one at BluSky @whereisyvette.bsky.social. I enjoy a lot of astronomy cross stitch too!

Anyway, please post any questions you have about my research, astro outreach on Reddit, or anything else that comes to mind! I'll be stopping by at noon EDT (16 UT) to answer questions!