A research team has successfully imaged a nova in high resolution--and the images suggest that the nova was not a single, impulsive explosion. The Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy (CHARA Array) at Georgia State University has generated detailed images of the early stages of two nova explosions that were detected in 2021. Through near-infrared interferometry, a process that combines light from multiple telescopes, the CHARA Array was able to capture in high resolution the rapidly changing conditions of their early post-explosion phase. A nova is an astronomical phenomenon that occurs in a binary system when a white dwarf strips its companion star of hydrogen-rich gas, causing a thermonuclear runaway reaction on the white dwarf's surface. The name derives from the sudden brightening that makes it appear as though a new star has appeared in the night sky.

In the pursuit of advancing holographic display technology, we face a unique yet persistent roadblock: the inflexibility of learned holography in adapting to various hardware configurations. This is due to the variances in the complex optical components and system settings in existing holographic displays. Although the emerging learned approaches have enabled rapid and high-quality hologram generation, any alteration in display hardware still requires a retraining of the model. Our work introduces a configurable learned model that interactively computes 3D holograms from RGB-only 2D images for a variety of holographic displays. The model can be conditioned to predefined hardware parameters of existing holographic displays such as working wavelengths, pixel pitch, propagation distance, and peak brightness without having to retrain. In addition, our model accommodates various hologram types, including conventional single-color and emerging multi-color holograms that simultaneously use multiple color primaries in holographic displays. Notably, we enabled our hologram computations to rely on identifying the correlation between depth estimation and 3D hologram synthesis tasks within the learning domain for the first time in the literature. We employ knowledge distillation via a student-teacher learning strategy to streamline our model for interactive performance. Achieving up to a 2x speed improvement compared to state-of-the-art models while consistently generating high-quality 3D holograms with different hardware configurations.

It was Google's turn on Wednesday to announce a litany of devices and updates. The Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro were the headline acts, though there was lots of interest further down the bill including the reveal of the Pixel Watch 2 and the public version of Android 14 making its way out into the world. You can catch up on everything by watching the Made by Google event yourself or checking out our liveblog for real-time insight and analysis. Alternatively, we've rounded up all the major announcements for you right here. The stars of the Made by Google show are, of course, the company's latest smartphones.

We construct a physically-parameterized probabilistic autoencoder (PAE) to learn the intrinsic diversity of type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) from a sparse set of spectral time series. The PAE is a two-stage generative model, composed of an Auto-Encoder (AE) which is interpreted probabilistically after training using a Normalizing Flow (NF). We demonstrate that the PAE learns a low-dimensional latent space that captures the nonlinear range of features that exists within the population, and can accurately model the spectral evolution of SNe Ia across the full range of wavelength and observation times directly from the data. By introducing a correlation penalty term and multi-stage training setup alongside our physically-parameterized network we show that intrinsic and extrinsic modes of variability can be separated during training, removing the need for the additional models to perform magnitude standardization. We then use our PAE in a number of downstream tasks on SNe Ia for increasingly precise cosmological analyses, including automatic detection of SN outliers, the generation of samples consistent with the data distribution, and solving the inverse problem in the presence of noisy and incomplete data to constrain cosmological distance measurements. We find that the optimal number of intrinsic model parameters appears to be three, in line with previous studies, and show that we can standardize our test sample of SNe Ia with an RMS of $0.091 \pm 0.010$ mag, which corresponds to $0.074 \pm 0.010$ mag if peculiar velocity contributions are removed. Trained models and codes are released at \href{https://github.com/georgestein/suPAErnova}{github.com/georgestein/suPAErnova}

Game day is right around the corner, which means it's one of the best times of the year to upgrade your TV. Aside from the holiday shopping season, the few weeks leading up to the Super Bowl have some of the best TV deals you'll find throughout the year. Sets from Samsung, LG, Hisense and others can be hundreds of dollars off and you can even find devices like soundbars and streamers for less, too. Just keep in mind that often the best discounts will be on more expensive TVs. But retailers like Amazon and Best Buy still have a bunch of TVs under $500 that are worth considering if you don't want to spend too much -- and it's possible to save money on those, too.

The conceit is a simple one: If you already rely on a suite of Alexa-powered smart home devices and you're excited by the prospect of rounding out the armada with an Alexa-integrated TV, the Omni is aimed squarely at you. Several of its most enticing features have yet to roll out, but it's easy to envision them working seamlessly within an established network of Alexa doorbells, cameras, and speakers. But traditionally, a suite of smart functions is only one of the prerequisites for a satisfactory TV experience--in many cases, smart features are almost an afterthought when considering a TV's value, and buyers interested in the Fire TV Omni will have to make do with the Omni's limitations in other areas. For example, due to its middling hardware, it's not a good pick for showcasing HDR, nor is it a good fit for gamers. The Amazon Fire TV Omni feels like a proof of concept for better-performing Amazon TVs sometime in the not-so-distant future. If you're an Alexa power user, the proof of concept is good enough to warrant a look.

For years, LG was the only TV manufacturer making OLED models. While Sony has since jumped into the fray, LG continues to lead the pack when it comes to producing the widest array of OLED options. The company's CX model is its second-most affordable option in 2020, but despite being much more affordable than a lot of the competition, you're still getting everything that makes OLED great: perfect black levels, vivid emissive colors, and excellent response time for movies and video games. If you're looking for a new TV in 2020 that'll put you right at the front of the pack where the most premium TV tech is concerned, the CX is a fantastic investment. Its HDR performance is stellar, it's a great pickup for avid gamers, and it features a thin, sleek design that's sure to turn heads.

After spending more than 100 hours testing LED TVs, including new 2018 models, we think the TCL 6-Series--available in both a 55-inch and 65-inch size--is the best value we have ever seen in a TV series. It produces images with noticeably more detail, brightness, and color than most TVs that cost hundreds more--in fact, even when viewed side-by-side with TVs that cost twice as much, we still prefer the TCL. After the success of the 2017 version, we had high hopes for the 2018 TCL 6-Series TVs, and overall they have delivered. They offer superb performance for their price, including high dynamic range support for both HDR10 and Dolby Vision formats that looks incredible in use. They also include our favorite built-in streaming media interface from Roku, so you don't need a separate device. With excellent performance and no serious flaws, the TCL 6-Series is an easy recommendation. If you want a more accurate image with better motion clarity and you're willing to spend more than twice as much as the TCL for it, you should consider the Sony X900F. The Sony also comes in 49-inch, 55-inch, 65-inch, 75-inch, and 85-inch versions for those looking for a bigger screen than you can get from TCL. With HDR content, its highlights are even brighter and more saturated than TCL's. The price increase is steeper than the image quality increase, though. The TCL is easier to set up, however, and the Sony's Android TV interface, though it offers useful voice search, is harder to use than TCL's Roku interface. I've been reviewing TVs and home theater equipment since 2008. I am an ISF Level II Certified Calibrator, so I am aware of what makes for a good TV image and how to get those things out of a TV. I have all the necessary test equipment and software to provide objective measurements to back up my subjective opinions. Additionally, I enlisted my non-videophile neighbors to take a look at our finalists to make sure our priorities were in line with what normal people look for in a TV.

We're all about being disruptive,

Today, Vizio announced a new flagship display, the 65-inch 2018 P-Series Quantum 4K HDR Smart TV. It has up to 2,000 nits of peak brightness and is billed as Vizio's brightest TV so far. The bezel-less display also has an Active Full Array Max backlight with 192 local dimming zones for the company's "purest black levels." Quantum Color Spectrum technology means that this display can produce over one billion colors. A 240Hz refresh rate equals a natural, smoother picture.