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AI Model Unveiled to Pinpoint Stars’ Ages

Figuring out the ages of stars is fundamental to understanding many areas of astronomy – yet, it remains a challenge since stellar ages can’t be ascertained through observation alone.

So, astronomers at the University of Toronto have turned to artificial intelligence for help.

Their new model, called ChronoFlow, uses a dataset of rotating stars in clusters and machine learning to determine how the speed at which a star rotates changes as it ages.

The approach, published recently in The Astrophysical Journal , predicts the ages of stars with an accuracy previously impossible to achieve with analytical models.

“The first ‘Wow’ moment was in the proof-of-concept phase when we realized that this technique actually showed a lot of promise,” says Phil Van-Lane, a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Arts & Science’s David A. Dunlap department of astronomy and astrophysics who led the research.

Van-Lane worked on the project with Josh Speagle and Gwen Eadie, who are both assistant professors of astrostatistics in the departments of statistical sciences and astronomy and astrophysics.

The research draws on two existing approaches to better estimate stars’ ages.

The first stems from the fact that stars tend to form in clusters. This means researchers can often determine the age of all stars in the cluster by observing the evolutionary stages of a cluster’s higher mass stars, which progress more rapidly than those of lower mass stars. At the same time, researchers know that as stars get older, their spin tends to slow down due to the interaction of the star’s magnetic field with its stellar wind – a phenomenon that is well understood, but difficult to quantify with a simple mathematical formula.

From left: researchers Phil Van-Lane, Josh Speagle and Gwen Eadie (supplied images)

With ChronoFlow, the U of T researchers assembled the largest-ever catalogue of rotating stars in clusters, with about 8,000 stars in over 30 clusters of various ages, by using data from stellar surveys such as Kepler, K2, TESS and GAIA. Next, they used the dataset to train their AI model to predict how the speed at which a star rotates changes as it ages.

“Our methodology can be likened to trying to guess the age of a person,” says Speagle, who guided the project from start to finish. “In astronomy, we don’t know the ages of every star. We know that groups of stars have the same age, so this would be like having a bunch of photos of people at five years old, 15 years old, 30 years old, and 50 years old, then having someone hand you a new photo and ask you to guess how old that person is. It’s a tricky problem.”

The result? ChronoFlow has learned to estimate the ages of other stars with remarkable precision. This is because it models how rotation rates of populations of stars are expected to evolve over time.

The research could have important implications across many aspects of astronomy. Knowing stellar ages is necessary to understanding not only how stars work, but also modeling how exoplanets form and evolve, and learning about the history of the evolution of our own Milky Way as well as that of other galaxies.

The success of ChronoFlow also demonstrates how machine learning models could yield valuable insights into other astrophysical problems.

The model will be available to the public, along with documentation and tutorials which provide steps for anyone to infer the ages of stars from observations. The code can be found on GitHub .

/Public Release. This material from the originating organization/author(s) might be of the point-in-time nature, and edited for clarity, style and length. Mirage.News does not take institutional positions or sides, and all views, positions, and conclusions expressed herein are solely those of the author(s).View in full here.

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July 2, 2025
Studies Explore Control of Thrombotic Events in High-Risk PV

Patients with polycythemia vera (PV) require treatment to reduce hematocrit and maintain quality of life over a significant span of time living with the disease. In a recent in-person Community Case Forum event in Santa Monica, California, Mojtaba Akhtari, MD, professor of medicine at Loma Linda University, discussed the trials in high-risk disease that not only looked at response to treatment but showed promise in reducing thrombotic events that represent the greatest risk to patients’ survival. Trials that have been ongoing for several years are now producing longer-term data that provides guidance on how to manage treating patients with PV most effectively and what trends indicate worse outcomes.

This article is part 2 of a 2-part series from a Community Case Forum event.

Targeted Oncology: Could you describe the design of the MAJIC-PV study [ISRCTN61925716]in patients with higher-risk PV?

Mojtaba Akhtari, MD: The MAJIC-PV study was done in the United Kingdom; Claire N. Harrison, MD, of St. Thomas’ Hospital in South London, did the MAJIC-PV study for patients with PV with a 1:1 randomization of 190 patients: one group received ruxolitinib [Jakafi] and the other group received best available treatment. They looked for complete or partial response, and if they had complete or partial response, they continued ruxolitinib as long as they had a partial response for up to 5 years, and in the other arm they were allowed to change the treatment.

A complete remission was getting hematocrit below 45%, white blood cell [WBC] count below 10,000/μL, platelet count less than 400,000/μL, no phlebotomy, and normalization of spleen size. Looking at those given ruxolitinib, they did better [HR, 0.38; 95% CI, 0.24-0.61; P < .001].¹ Looking at the event-free survival [EFS], they did better [HR, 0.58; 95% CI, 0.35-0.94; P = .03]. The patients on ruxolitinib had fewer thrombotic events. This is the first time that an intervention has shown it reduces the risk of thrombosis.

What data support the long-term use of ropeginterferon alfa-2b (Besremi) in high-risk PV?

The PROUD-PV and CONTINUATION-PV studies [NCT01949805; NCT02218047] enrolled adult patients with PV who were [either] naive patients in need of cytoreductive [therapy] or some patients pretreated with hydroxyurea with a 1:1 randomization. One arm received ropeginterferon, the other one received hydroxyurea, and patients were able to continue through 12 months, and then for up to 3 to 5 years, they continued with either ropeginterferon or best available treatment.

For ropeginterferon alfa-2b, the rate of complete hematologic response and normal spleen size at 12 months was 21% [vs 28% in the control group].² The rate of complete hematologic response only at 12 months was 43% [vs 46%], and molecular response at 12 months was 34% [vs 42%].

Hydroxyurea is very like old-fashioned chemotherapy. Interferon is more like targeted treatment that works through the immune system. We are not treating patients with chronic myeloid leukemia with hydroxyurea anymore, unless you want to control severe leukocytosis…so I’m not sure why we should give hydroxyurea to patients with PV, but it’s good to have discussions. Patients can have adverse events, but it’s usually well tolerated; the discontinuation rate is low.

In the long term, in year 6 of treatment for ropeginterferon, 81.4% were keeping the hematocrit below 45%; in the control arm, it was 60%.³ EFS was better for ropeginterferon, so patients would have fewer complications if they were on ropeginterferon.

What did the REVEAL study (NCT02252159) show about disease outcomes of PV?

This is the largest prospective observational study of PV in the United States. More than 2500 patients were enrolled, and 2200 patients were eligible. A total of 142 thrombotic events were observed: 100 were venous thrombotic events and 42 were arterial traumatic events.⁴

If we look at what the [lower-risk] patients were given as treatment, 54.3% only had phlebotomy, 18.1% had hydroxyurea only, 15.7% had phlebotomy and hydroxyurea, 7% other, and 5% watchful waiting. I don’t think I have patients with PV on watchful waiting because they need phlebotomy or they need to be on aspirin.

Looking at cumulative incidence of thrombotic events for these patients, high-risk patients had more thrombotic events vs low-risk patients [5.2% vs 2.78%]. Heart attack and stroke were what killed these patients. They looked at blood values to see which patients could get more blood clots. Patients whose hematocrit was more than 45% had more trouble. Patients whose WBC count was more than 11,000/μL and patients whose platelet count was more than 400,000/μL did worse. This is another study showing that leukocytosis and thrombocytosis matter in patients with PV.

Looking at the thrombotic events in the high-risk patients, those with erythrocytosis or hematocrit of more than 45%, leukocytosis with WBC count more than 11,000/μL, or thrombocytosis with platelet count than 400,000/μL were associated with worse outcomes.

_{DISCLOSURES: Akhtari previously reported consulting or advisory roles with Abbvie, BMS, Incyte, Karyopharm Therapeutics, Pfizer, and Takeda; and speakers’ bureau with Incyte, Jazz Pharmaceuticals, and Novartis.}

_References:

_{1. Harrison CN, Nangalia J, Boucher R, et al. Ruxolitinib versus best available therapy for polycythemia vera intolerant or resistant to hydroxycarbamide in a randomized trial. J Clin Oncol. 2023;41(19):3534-3544. doi:10.1200/JCO.22.01935}

_{2. Gisslinger H, Klade C, Georgiev P, et al. Ropeginterferon alfa-2b versus standard therapy for polycythaemia vera (PROUD-PV and CONTINUATION-PV): a randomised, non-inferiority, phase 3 trial and its extension study. Lancet Haematol. 2020;7(3):e196-e208. doi:10.1016/S2352-3026(19)30236-4}

_{3. Gisslinger H, Klade C, Georgiev P, et al. Ropeginterferon alfa-2b achieves patient-specific treatment goals in polycythemia vera: final results from the PROUD-PV/CONTINUATION-PV studies. HemaSphere. 2022;6:97-98. doi:10.1097/01.hs9.0000843676.80508.b5}

_{4. Gerds AT, Mesa R, Burke JM, et al. Association between elevated white blood cell counts and thrombotic events in polycythemia vera: analysis from REVEAL. Blood. 2024;143(16):1646-1655. doi:10.1182/blood.2023020232}

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July 2, 2025
Using Earth’s Weather Satellites to Study Venus’ Atmosphere

How can scientists study the meteorology of Venus from Earth since there are currently no missions to Venus? This is what a recent study published in Earth, Planets and Space hopes to address as a team of scientists led by the University of Tokyo investigated how Japanese meteorological satellites could be used to study Venusian atmospheric and weather patterns due to the lack of Venus missions. This study has the potential to help researchers develop new methods for studying other planetary bodies without having to send missions directly to study them.

For the study, the researchers used data obtained from the Japanese meteorological satellites Himawari-8 and Himawari-9, which were launched in October 2014 and November 2016, respectively, to study atmospheric weather patterns on Venus, specifically cloud-top temperatures, between July 2015 and February 2025. The goal of the study was to fill a decade-long gap of scientific data resulting from a lack of missions to Venus.

Composite image displaying the size of Venus from Earth. (Credit: 2025 Nishiyama et al. CC-BY-ND)

In the end, the researchers found that past observations of temperature changes conducted from the Japanese Akatsuki spacecraft that studied Venus from December 2015 to April 2024 were underestimated by 15 to 17 percent. They also confirmed longstanding models regarding how temperature changes with altitude in Venus’ atmosphere.

“I think that our novel approach in this study successfully opened a new avenue for long-term and multiband monitoring of solar system bodies,” said Dr. Gaku Nishiyama, who is a visiting researcher at the University of Tokyo and lead author of the study. “This includes the moon and Mercury, which I also study at present. We hope this study will enable us to assess physical and compositional properties, as well as atmospheric dynamics, and contribute to our further understanding of planetary evolution in general.”

What new discoveries about studying Venus from Earth will researchers make in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!

As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!

Sources: Earth, Planets and Space, EurekAlert!

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July 2, 2025
How COVID Data Has Improved Disease Projection Models

Data from COVID outbreaks leads to new understanding of how human behavior influences disease transmission and progression models. Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University

Scientists sometimes compare predicting the course of epidemics to forecasting the weather.

But there’s a major difference — the impact of human behavior — says Alessandro Vespignani, director of Northeastern University’s Network Science Institute.

Consider what happens during a downpour, he says. “If we all open an umbrella, it will rain anyway.”

“In epidemics, if we all open the umbrella in the sense that we behave differently, the epidemic will spread differently,” Vespignani says. “If we are more risk averse, we might avoid places. We might wash our hands more and so on and so forth.”

That makes modeling the interplay between human behavior and infectious disease transmission one of the remaining key challenges in epidemiology, according to a paper Vespignani and colleagues published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

“It’s very difficult to integrate behavior in the models,” especially since existing behavioral models often lack real-world data calibration, says Vespignani, Northeastern’s Sternberg Family Distinguished Professor.

But now, thanks to what they learned during COVID-19, researchers say they have found a solution.

The pandemic released a global flood of data in terms of traceable illness and death, accompanied by electronic data such as geolocation from mobile phones that indicated changing patterns in daily commutes, Vespignani says.

Being allowed access to such large data sets led the researchers to novel, possibly groundbreaking, discoveries about the best ways to incorporate behavioral changes into models of disease progression, Vespignani says.

“We are really moving the frontier of epidemic and outbreak analytics and forecasting to the next level,” he says.

“All the data accumulated in the past few years and the knowledge is creating an understanding that hopefully will put us in a different place the next time we have to manage an infectious disease threat.”

Alessandro Vespignani, Director of the Network Science Institute and Sternberg Family Distinguished University Professor says, “During COVID there was an all-hands-on-deck effort and so we finally got data that was not available before.” Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University

The study in PNAS looked at three different behavioral models — one data-driven and two mechanistic — across nine geographic areas during the first wave of COVID to evaluate how well they were able to capture the interplay between disease transmission and behavior.

The mechanistic model, which describes the mechanism of behavioral changes, outperformed the data-driven model, which employs machine learning to find patterns, in coming up with both a short-term forecast and retrospective analysis, Vespignani says.

“In a sense that was a bit of a surprise,” given scientists’ traditional preference for data modeling, he says.

A major advantage of mechanistic models is how they took into consideration that individuals exposed to the news of the pandemic started to change their behavior even before mandates were established, Vespignani says.

And risk aversion grew as COVID spread and more people were infected.

“There is a spontaneous component to what people do that has to be integrated in which we think about the trajectory of the disease,” Vespignani says.

“That opens new scenarios in the way we are going to forecast and analyze infectious diseases in the future when we can finally (put) this behavioral component to work.

“In many cases in the past, we had to work with very limited data sets, generally about the flu. We didn’t have such large-scale data,” he says.

“Now with COVID-19 we have data from across the world at all geographical resolutions, so we can really test the models.”

For the PNAS study, researchers incorporated data from departments of health and government in Bogota, Chicago, Jakarta, London, Madrid, New York and Rio de Janeiro, as well as Santiago, Chile, and the Gauteng province in South Africa.

“We have data about deaths. We have data about infections. We have data about hospitalizations,” Vespignani says.

In addition to the health data, the researchers also had unprecedented access to tech company analytics on mobility and consumer behavior, Vespignani says. “During COVID there was an all-hands-on-deck effort and so we finally got data that was not available before,” he says.

In the future, researchers can use the models to incorporate behavior changes into projections not only of pandemics but also of flu seasons, Vespignani says.

It will help health and government officials develop best approaches to communicating risk and developing risk reduction strategies, he says.

“As soon as (disease) incidence grows, and you or your friends start to get sick, you will be more careful. You will start to behave differently,” Vespignani says. “Finally, through equations, through specific mechanisms, we can integrate (the behavioral changes) into the description of the progression of the disease through the population.”

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July 2, 2025
Determined Emma Raducanu topples fellow Grand Slam champion Markéta Vondroušová

Wimbledon 2025 – Emma Raducanu powers through into round two

The British Centre Court crowd were craving a positive result for their home favourites, having just seen qualifier Oliver Tarvet beaten in straight sets, while Katie Boulter saw her campaign curtailed over on No. 1 Court.

Up stepped Raducanu, no easy feat against a recent victor of the Venus Rosewater Dish, though in total control throughout the affair. The former major champion returned 81% of Vondroušová’s serves while breaking on four occasions throughout the evening.

“There were some points that I have no idea how I turned around,” Raducanu said post-match. “I knew playing Marketa was going to be an incredibly difficult match. She has won this tournament which is a huge achievement. I’m really pleased with how I played my game the whole way through.”

The Wimbledon faithful were treated to a vintage display from the Briton, Raducanu defending superbly on the baseline to counteract Vondroušová. Her persistence of returning paid off midway through the second set as he countered to take the point with a backhand winner.

Vondroušová had her moments to seize the momentum, but was not able to convert and exits the tournament in round two. The Berlin champion finds herself unable to build on her grass title, defeated at the hands of the British no. 1.

It is a crucial win for Raducanu’s confidence and hopes at her home Slam, where she has not made it past the fourth round. This will be her third appearance in the third round at SW19 and a chance to prove herself against the only remaining top five seed in the draw in Sabalenka.

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July 2, 2025
Bird strike forces plane to turn back to Liverpool airport

PA Media

The bird strike happened just after take off, EasyJet says

A plane which was due to travel from the UK to Turkey had to turn back after a bird strike.

The EasyJet flight from Liverpool to Bodrum “performed a routine landing” shortly after it took off at 16:15 BST and the flight was delayed, the airline said.

A spokeswoman said: “The pilot returned to Liverpool in line with our procedures and performed a routine landing where it will be inspected by engineers.”

She said the safety of passengers and crew was EasyJet’s “highest priority”.

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July 2, 2025
Major rail disruption around Birmingham New Street after wires damaged

Shyamantha Asokan

BBC News, West Midlands

BBC

Trains could be cancelled or delayed until the end of the day due to the damaged wires, National Rail said

Rail passengers faced major disruption after damaged electric wires led to lines being blocked in and out of Birmingham New Street.

The incident was first reported just before 14:00 BST on Wednesday and the delays and cancellations continued into the evening, with New Street posting on X that it had brought in extra staff to help passengers.

New Street is the busiest railway station outside of London and the damage was affecting services for many operators, National Rail said.

Services running from or through New Street to cities including London, Manchester, Glasgow and Cardiff were among those affected, as well as many services within the West Midlands.

On some affected lines, passengers could use their train tickets on other routes, National Rail said

Passengers were warned their trains could be cancelled, delayed by up to three hours or not run for their full route.

There was also a knock on effect with trains between Cambridge and Stansted Airport being cancelled as staff were displaced.

Those arriving at Birmingham New Street were confronted with electronic departure boards warning of severe disruption.

At Wolverhampton’s railway station, a BBC reporter said all the signs warned of delays.

Shel, a train driver, posted on X shortly after 17:00 BST that she had been stuck in Redditch for three hours due to the disruption.

“Today hasn’t quite gone as planned!” she posted.

Nick Cosgriff

The disruption was affecting services at Derby’s railway station, according to one passenger

Nick Cosgriff, a passenger at Derby’s station told the BBC that trains travelling to New Street from the north of the country were terminating at Derby instead, with trains arriving “every few minutes or so”, resulting in large crowds.

He said there were hundreds of stranded rail passengers were waiting in Derby for promised replacement coaches to arrive.

“Throughout the late afternoon the crowds grew larger, as further trains arrived, decanting more passengers at Derby,” he said.

Ian Farnell from West Bromwich got onto a train at Walsall which was headed for Birmingham.

He said: “The driver said New Street had lost power and that we could be stuck here for three minutes or three hours – he couldn’t say which.

“Thankfully I could get a bus home from Walsall instead.”

The wires were damaged between New Street and Water Orton in Warwickshire, according to post on X by Transport for West Midlands.

A spokesperson for Network Rail said that at 13:40 BST “damaged overhead power lines were reported on the approach to Birmingham New Street station, near to Curzon Street”.

Curzon Street is due to be the Birmingham terminus for the new HS2 line.

Network Rail

Repairs to the damaged wires would be carried out overnight, Network Rail said

A post on Network Rail’s New Street X account, showed a photo of the damage, with loose cables hanging from a metal gantry. Repairs would be carried out overnight, the post said.

On some affected lines, passengers could use their train tickets on other routes, while on other lines, replacement buses were being used or had been requested, National Rail said.

By about 16:10 BST, they added that some lines had reopened following the damage to the wires but urged passengers to check before they travelled.

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July 2, 2025
Clint Eastwood’s ‘addictive’ affairs exposed in new tell-all book – San Francisco Chronicle
1. Clint Eastwood’s ‘addictive’ affairs exposed in new tell-all book San Francisco Chronicle
2. Book Review: ‘Clint,’ by Shawn Levy The New York Times
3. Clint Eastwood’s ‘addictive’ affairs during first marriage exposed in new biography: ‘I was going to do as I pleased’ New York Post
4. Book Marks reviews of Clint: The Man and the Movies by Shawn Levy Book Marks
5. Clint Eastwood’s worthy new biography Washington Examiner
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July 2, 2025
reflective supercar peralta S takes after maserati boomerang

GFG style produces one-off reflective supercar peralta S

GFG Style rolls out Peralta S, a reflective supercar with a mirror-polished aluminum frame and a design that takes after the Maserati Boomerang. To debut at the Monterey Motorsports Festival on August 16th, 2025, the vehicle was first shown at the Pastejé Automotive Invitational in Mexico on March 22nd, 2025. It is the first one-off supercar made by the Italian car design company, GFG Style, created for a Mexican car collector named Carlos Peralta and his two sons, Juan Carlos and Nicolas. From the get-go, the body of the reflective supercar Peralta S mimics the surroundings because of the handmade mirror-polished aluminum covering the entire frame.

It gives the vehicle both a gleaming and silver look, as if the windows and the frame were one, turning the supercar into a monolithic ride. The driver steps inside the vehicle by lifting up the entire top part called the dome. The side windows can open separately, moving upwards like gull wings, and from the side, the reflective supercar Peralta S resembles a silver bullet, drawn from the singular-looking silhouette it has from the front to the back. When viewed from above, however, the vehicle features a teardrop shape, still glinting because of its mirror-polished body.

all images courtesy of GFG Style

Glowing lights under the vehicle’s frame

If one is to look for the lights around GFG Style’s reflective supercar Peralta S, they can find them hidden underneath the vehicle, both in the front and the back. When the driver fires up the ride, the rear lights appear within a glowing effect dubbed the shadow light. Then, the rear spoiler also lifts up to allow for better airflow and style, and when the vehicle isn’t used, the spoiler stays hidden. The company says that the only parts of the reflective supercar Peralta S that aren’t made from aluminum are the front spoiler, rear diffuser, and side sills. It is because these are forged from carbon fiber, making them lightweight and helping the vehicle speed away without adding a drag.

Inside the reflective supercar Peralta S, GFG Style brings back the look and colors of the vehicles from the 1970s. First off, the design team covers the seats and the dashboard in leather, refining them with a metallic chrome effect to continue the mirror-like exterior frame. The bucket seats wrap around the driver and passenger, and the steering wheel comes with built-in car controls, which is a modern touch from the design team. For the center console, there aren’t any frills or advanced technologies that are now common in modern cars. Instead, the design has a back-to-basic approach with the knobs and controls, colored in silver to mimic the mirror-polished aluminum body.

GFG Style rolls out Peralta S, a reflective supercar with a mirror-polished aluminum frame

Design influences from the 1972 Maserati Boomerang

The reflective supercar Peralta S by GFG Style has strong ties to the Maserati Boomerang in the 1970s. The designer of the 1972 vehicle is the renowned Italian automotive designer Giorgetto Giugiaro, and his son, Fabrizio Giugiaro, designed the Peralta S, drawing the design influences of his automobile from his father’s work. The Maserati Boomerang had a wedge shape, a series of sharp angles, and a futuristic look, three design elements that the reflective supercar Peralta S shares. The Maserati model, however, was just a concept car, unlike the Peralta S. During its time, the Giorgetto Giugiaro-designed vehicle was ahead of its time in terms of design. Most of the cars then had rounder and softer bodies, but the Maserati Boomerang owned its semi-rectangular frame.

It also embodied flat surfaces, straight lines, and a pointed front, which only came out over the years. Inside the Maserati model, the steering wheel and the dashboard were combined into a single unit, and the gauges and controls were placed inside the steering wheel. Then, the wheel itself turned around the instruments, which was found novel at the time. The vehicle also had a low roofline, and Giorgetto Giugiaro designed the body to look like a triangle from the side. Another feature that the reflective supercar Peralta S shares with the Maserati Boomerang is the two doors and the seating for two people. Then, under the body of the Fabrizio Giugiaro-designed vehicle is the Maserati MC20 platform, which means that the engine, including the twin-turbo V6, wheels, and other parts are the same as those in the MC20. So far, the reflective supercar Peralta S is a one-off vehicle from GFG Style.

the windows open upwards

rear view of the vehicle

there’s a single ‘door’ that opens upwards

the vehicle can accomodate two people

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July 2, 2025
Cinematographer Claudio Miranda talks Brad Pitt and ‘F1: The Movie’

Joseph Kosinski‘s racing drama “F1: The Movie” has been justly celebrated for its high-octane racing sequences, which incorporate cutting-edge filmmaking technology to convey a visceral sense of what it’s like to drive a Formula One car. However, those set pieces would not work if the entire film were a constant blur of speeding cars. The film’s quieter moments — focusing on actors Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, Kerry Condon, and Javier Bardem — also needed to have the same level of tension, beauty, and artistry, even when a starting grid was nowhere in sight.

For this, Kosinski turned to his longtime collaborator Claudio Miranda, the cinematographer who has shot all of the director’s films going back to “Tron: Legacy” in 2010. When it came to those character beats, the filmmakers were guided by the same principles as the racing scenes: Make them as grounded as possible. “There weren’t many sets on this movie,” Miranda told IndieWire. “The locations were our sets.”

And so, in a big way, were the cars. Although Miranda admired John Frankenheimer’s 1966 film “Grand Prix,” he felt that many of the other racing films he looked at were lacking when it came to capturing the actual speed and intensity of the sport. “ One of the things we really wanted to improve on was speed,” Miranda said. “A lot of movies use process cars or biscuit rigs, and those things only go maybe 60 miles an hour. And knowing that these cars go 200 miles an hour, that’s just way too slow.”

Miranda and Kosinski resisted suggestions to shoot scenes with a car on a platform. “That’s not our movie,” Miranda said. “We watched movies that were done in that style, and they do tricks like speeding it up or putting the vehicle on a gimbal or in the volume… but that seems a little bit sad. I think the audience can recognize that stuff, and they just feel when it’s AI or the volume, and it’s not real. The excitement level probably drops because of it.”

‘F1: The Movie’©Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett Collection

With that in mind, Miranda collaborated with Sony, Formula One, Mercedes, and other companies to create a system for filming the actors as they drove their cars at 200 miles per hour – no easy task given that even the slightest amount of extra weight slowed down the vehicles. “The smallest cameras that existed at the time were just way too big,” Miranda said, noting that this created a challenge he didn’t have to face on “Top Gun: Maverick,” where the planes he was mounting cameras on could handle hundreds of extra pounds — and didn’t require the same kind of visibility for the pilot.

“This wasn’t like ‘Top Gun,’ where I could block up the whole front view and it doesn’t really matter,” Miranda said. “These drivers really needed to see where they were going; that was critical.” Ultimately, Sony designed cameras that Miranda described as “sensors on a stick,” which could capture high-quality footage and relay it across the track to recorders via state-of-the-art radio frequency tech. Miranda was able to capture up to a dozen unique angles at a time on each car, and could pan and tilt rather than being constricted to a fixed camera position.

All of this led to the most kinetic and realistic racing movie ever made, but the methodology didn’t stop on the track. “The thing I love about Joe is that he’ll always try to shoot in a real place, a real environment,” Miranda said. That meant that not only did the racing sequences avoid process shots and green screen, but the more intimate moments did too — even when they theoretically could have been shot on a stage with much less expense and effort. At one point, Pitt’s character opens up about his regrets and failures to Condon on a hotel balcony in Las Vegas in what is the movie’s most emotional scene; it also, thanks to Miranda and Kosinski’s approach, is the most visually beautiful.

“We did that with just one camera — multiple set-ups, but one camera,” Miranda said. He noted that a dialogue scene like the balcony exchange could easily have been done on a set and would have looked convincing, but again, being on location in Vegas created an emotional effect that might otherwise have been elusive. “The city lights come from underneath, and it feels like they’re really lighting that scene. Sometimes, signs will blink and it lifts the whole scene up, but you probably wouldn’t make that choice on a stage where you’re trying to make things more consistent. And the fountains in the background give it a great view.”

‘F1: The Movie’©Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett Collection

The balcony scene is also emblematic of one of Miranda’s greatest and most underrated strengths, his talent for showcasing movie stars. While it’s not necessarily difficult to find a way of shooting Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt in ways that display their charisma, in “Maverick” and “F1” Miranda takes their star power to an extra level through his careful lens selection and lighting. Simple images of Pitt walking toward a long lens take on a mythic grandeur in Miranda’s hands; it’s the kind of pleasing classical style that used to be more common in the glory days of the Hollywood studio system but which has become more and more rare in recent years.

The precision of Miranda’s visuals is all the more impressive given how often he had to grab them on the fly, as the drama was staged in between breaks during real races where Kosinski and his crew were piggybacking on Formula One events to take advantage of their resources and scale. “They don’t give you grace,” Miranda said. “If you’re not done in 10 minutes, you have to get the car off the track. There were scenes we shot that we had one chance to get, and that was nerve-wracking.”

The company’s ability to execute difficult shots in tight windows was thanks largely to careful rehearsal and planning. “We just had to have everything really buttoned up,” Miranda said. “It was a collaboration between many people across different spectrums, not just my grips and the camera department and the art department, but Formula One and Mercedes and more — half the people helping us weren’t even in the film industry.”

The camaraderie between Formula One and the “F1” crew led to some of the movie’s most extraordinary shots, images that Miranda said would have been unachievable otherwise and which spoke to the special nature of the cross-industry collaboration. “One day, there was a red flag moment and they said some of the teams would help us,” Miranda said. “They all did. They all brought their cars out, and they were all out there for real — that’s not a CG shot. I was almost crying, it was such an emotional moment.”

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July 2, 2025