Eric and Wendy Schmidt AI in Science Fellow and Astrophysicist Dr Heloise Stevance was a guest panellist on the BBC Four show The Sky at Night (Question Time special). The panellists took questions from pre-recorded videos as well as a live audience on a wide range of astrophysical topics. Heloise tackled the apparent paradox of expansion of the Universe, spoke about the incredible feat of the James Webb Space Telescope detecting the farthest galaxy (so far!), and she also lent her expertise in how machine learning and large scale data processing are essential to Astronomy.
This is a topic she is particularly familiar with since, as part of her fellowship, Heloise is developing a Virtual Research Assistant (VRA) for the ATLAS sky survey to help categorise, classify, and prioritise the thousands of cosmic explosions these telescopes detect every year. The first prototype of the VRA has been actively used since August 2024 and is saving the ATLAS sky survey ‘eyeballers’ more than 80% of the work. Less grunt work, more science!
Heloise has nearly a decade of experience communicating science including public talks, television and radio interviews, and news articles. Heloise was awarded the Beatrice Tinsley lecturer 2021 title by the Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand. This year she received the Caroline Herschel Prize Lectureship and will be delivering public talks titled “How can AI help us find exploding stars and hungry black holes?”.
But few experiences compare to appearing on the beloved BBC sky at Night programme which began in 1957 and has inspired several generations of future (and past!) astronomers. Heloise says:
It was an honour to be asked to contribute to such an amazing panel. I absolutely love getting to interact with the general public directly, and on a personal note it was phenomenal to get to meet Maggie, Chris and Georges [current Sky at Night presenters]. It was one of the best experiences of my life
You can watch the full episode here https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0023swy/the-sky-at-night-question-time-special
