Interview:
CIAO is a specialized instrument equipped with
a coronagraph. The first coronagraphs were made
for observing the Sun’s corona by blocking
the light from the Sun’s photosphere. CIAO
is designed to block light from a star so that
we can study proto-planetary disks and other faint
objects in the neighborhood of something bright.
The development of CIAO was a challenging for
Japanese astronomers because CIAO combines stellar
coronagraphy, adaptive optics, and an 8-meter
class telescope, all firsts for Japanese astronomers.
The objects that we would like
to study using CIAO are usually more than 1,000
to 10,000 times fainter then the central star.
Unless weather conditions are superb, even with
Subaru’s large aperture and AO system, it
is extremely difficult to remove the light from
the star that is dispersed by the Earth’s
atmosphere. We can expect CIAO’s best results
to come once Subaru implements a queue observing
system. Under a queue observing system, abserving
instruments are selected on the basis of weather,
and CIAO can be on the telescope only when atmospheric
conditions are good enough for coronagraphic observations.
In October 2002, Subaru began
a survey of the environment of young stars as
an observatory project. The survey is designed
to test theories on how the environment around
a young star evolves. We hope to have exciting
results in the next two to three years.
(From
a late 2002 interview with Koji Murakawa, CIAO
support astronomer.)
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An image of Uranus, its ring, and two of its satellites
Miranda (upper right) and Ariel (lower left) taken
by CIAO with 
