Japanese Astronomers Research Articles

The Subaru Telescope and Interimperial Intimacies Between Mauna Kea and Mt. Fuji

ABSTRACT This essay discusses the Subaru Telescope on Mauna Kea within a tradition of Japanese militarism and contextualizes the settler colonial dynamics of its construction in Hawaiʻi. The first half analyzes the telescope as a symbol of US-Japanese interimperial partnership and Asian settler colonialism through Japanese astronomers’ claim to “nostalgia” in Hawaiʻi. The second half analyzes Nicole Naone’s film “Mauna Fuji,” which counters Japanese temporalities of nostalgia by critically juxtaposing Mauna Kea and Mt. Fuji. Through a relational reading of Mauna Kea and Mt. Fuji’s shared conditions of militourism, this essay attends to the uneven atmospheric relations between both mountains.

Astronomers Lend Know-How to Cleanup

The Fukushima radioactivity cleanup is getting an assist from an unexpected source: Japanese astronomers.

Subaru is Public, Too

The News Notes item reporting that construction of Gemini South telescope had been completed ( Physics Today, Physics Today 0031-9228 55 1 2002 26 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.2408438. January 2002, page 26 ) states that Gemini North and South are “the only telescopes in the 8-meter class that are public, meaning that any astronomer in the seven partner countries … can apply to use them.” Actually, a set percentage of Gemini’s observing time is granted to each partner country in proportion to its financial contribution to the project. Within each country’s portion, proposals from that nation compete with each other. For most US astronomers, the share of Gemini observing time will be the most accessible source of observing time in the 8-meter class.All of the 8-meter class telescopes are “public” in one way or another. The four telescopes that make up the Very Large Telescope operated by the European Southern Observatory will be the only telescopes in the 8-meter class that are public in the sense that any astronomer in the member nations of ESO can apply to use them. Proposals from all member nations compete for observing time based on scientific merit.Subaru Telescope, operated by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, is the only telescope in the 8-meter class that is public in the sense that any astronomer in the world can apply to use it. Currently, two-thirds of all Subaru Telescope time is dedicated to open use. The other third of the time is for engineering, the director’s discretionary time, and for University of Hawaii observers. Of Subaru’s open-use time, 90% presently goes to Japanese astronomers and 10% to non-Japanese astronomers. This ratio reflects a current preference for Japanese proposals, but not a policy, and is subject to change in the future.© 2002 American Institute of Physics.

Submillimeter Astronomy Reaches New Heights

LLANO DE CHAJNANTOR, CHILE-- High in the Chilean Andes, over 5000 meters above sea level, astronomers are planning the world9s loftiest observatory: a 10-kilometer-wide array of dishes to peer into the universe9s cold recesses and open a sharp eye on celestial features ranging from surface markings on Pluto to extrasolar planets to the dusty central regions of active galaxies. Lying in one of the driest deserts on Earth and perched above 50% of the atmosphere, this plateau is the next best place to outer space for submillimeter studies. The array is being planned by a nascent collaboration between the European Southern Observatory, the U.S. National Radio Astronomy Observatory, and possibly Japanese astronomers as well.

Subaru Opens Up World for Japan

TOKYO-- This week, Japanese astronomers hope to capture the first scientific images from the country9s new Subaru Telescope atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii. Its 8.3-meter mirror makes it the world9s largest single-mirror telescope, and one of a handful of telescopes globally in the 8- to 10-meter range. As the country9s first major scientific project ever built on foreign soil, Subaru also marks Japan9s entry into the top tier of scientific nations with a global scientific reach.

超伝導サブミリ波ミキサーと宇宙・地球観測

In the past decade, great progress has been made in submillimeter receiver technology. The superconductor-insulator-superconductor (SIS) mixer has demonstrated ultra-low noise performance in a large frequency range up to 1, 000GHz. A breakthrough has been made with a new superconducting hot-electron bolometer (HEB) mixer that realizes a low-noise mixer even beyond 1, 000GHz. Such progress in submillimeter mixers, combined with the progress in submillimeter signal sources and low-noise IF amplifiers, has made many scientific programs in astronomy and earth atmospheric research feasible. Because of the large opacity of the atmosphere, submillimeter observation will be successful only on high mountains with extremely low humidity or in space above the earth's atmosphere. In Japan, a small submillimeter telescope, which was developed to find the distribution of interstellar neutral atomic carbon in the Milky Way Galaxy, is now under construction and scheduled to go into operation on the top of Mt. Fuji. Towards the future, on the other hand, there is a big plan for a next-generation radio telescope, called the Large-Millimeter and Submillimeter Array (LMSA), which is being investigated by Japanese astronomers. The LMSA, when built on a high mountain site overseas, under good atmospheric conditions, will have the remarkable capability to take a fine image of distant astronomical objects with a resolution of 0.1 to 0.01 arcseconds. Submillimeter observation from space will be quite fruitful both for astronomy and for atmospheric research. A small satellite, SWAS, was developed by NASA to observe the oxygen molecules and water vapor in interstellar space. European Space Agency (ESA) has a long-term project, FIRST, in which the objective is to build a 3-m telescope in space for far-infrared and submillimeter astronomy. Swedish scientists have built a small satellite, ODIN, for astronomy and aeronomy. The JEM/SMILES, which is proposed by NASDA and Communications Research Laboratory (CRL) as an experiment for the International Space Station, is a challenging mission to demonstrate the advantages of using a combination of submillimeter SIS mixer and closed-cycle cryogenic cooler for atmospheric observations.

Guest Stars: Historical Supernovae and Remnants

Supernova explosions occur in massive stars in their final stages of stellar evolution. The explosion leaves behind a collapsed object, usually a neutron star observable as a pulsar, and an expanding outer envelope of the star observable as a supernova remnant (SNR). Because of the large amount of energy in the range of 1050 −1052 ergs released in the explosion, the energy radiated by the exploded star is equivalent to that of millions of normal stars. Thus a "new star" seems to appear and is easily visible to the naked eye for several months. Astronomers have estimated that in our galaxy such supernova explosions occur once about every 50 years. In ancient times, the occurrence of supernova might have been noticed as appearance of a bright new star which faded away into obscruity after a few months. Thus the ‘guest stars’ in the ancient records are indeed possible occurrences of supernova explosions in the galaxy. The guest star of 1054 A.D., well recorded by Chinese and Japanese astronomers is the best known historic supernova (Brecher et al. 1983; and references therein); today its remnants the Crab Nebula and the pulsar are observable over the entire electromagnetic spectrum from radio to γ-rays. Of the 150 SNRs known in our galaxy, only about 10 have been identified with guest stars of historical supernovae.

A Suspected Supernova in A.D. 1181

SummaryThe new star which appeared in Cassiopeia in A.D. 1181 attracted considerable attention in the Far East. It was visible for about six months, and its position was carefully recorded by the Chinese and Japanese astronomers. Their observational evidence favours the identification of the star as a supernova of type I. It is proposed that the radio source 3C 58 is the remnant of the new star.

Derivation of Einstein Effect from Eclipse Observations of 1936

THE total solar eclipse of June 19, 1936, gave Japanese astronomers an excellent opportunity for solar research. The central line ran just parallel to the north-eastern coast of Hokkaido, facing Okhotsk Sea. More than twenty sites were occupied by Japanese and visiting observing parties. Our party, being the expedition from the Tohoku Imperial University at Sendai, decided to make observations at Kosimizu, the co-ordinates of which are: astronomical longitude: 144° 28′ 3″ E. = 9h. 37m. 52˙2s. E. astronomical latitude: 43° 51′ 21″ N.