Press Release

2009

First Direct Imaging of a Young Binary System
First Direct Imaging of a Young Binary System
December 11, 2009

A team of astronomers from The Graduate University for Advanced Studies, the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, and other universities have captured the first direct image of a young binary star system. Using the Coronagraphic Imager with Adaptive Optics (CIAO) mounted on the Subaru Telescope, the team observed the young binary star SR24, which is located in the constellation Ophiuchus, 520 light years away. The data from the team’s observations provide the first solid basis for testing and refining theoretical models of star and planet formation in binary systems.

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Discovery of an Exoplanet Candidate Orbiting a Sun-Like Star: Inaugural Observations with Subaru's New Instrument HiCIAO
Discovery of an Exoplanet Candidate Orbiting a Sun-Like Star: Inaugural Observations with Subaru's New Instrument HiCIAO
December 3, 2009

The first observations with the world's newest planet-hunter instrument on the Subaru Telescope, HiCIAO (High Contrast Instrument for the Subaru next generation Adaptive Optics), have revealed a companion to the Sun-like star GJ 758. With an estimated mass of 10–40 times Jupiter's mass, GJ 758 B is either a giant planet or a lightweight brown dwarf. Its orbit is comparable in size to Neptune's, and its temperature of 600 K makes it the coldest companion to a Sun-like star ever resolved in an image. A second companion with a similar mass at the Uranus's orbit is also suggested. The presence of such massive planets at these large distances challenges standard assumptions about planetary system formation based on the Solar System. Since a strategic search for exoplanets and their formation sites has just started, further observations will eventually answer questions about whether the Solar System is ubiquitous or not.

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Infrared Image of Circumstellar Disk Illuminates Massive Star Formation Process
Infrared Image of Circumstellar Disk Illuminates Massive Star Formation Process
November 20, 2009

A team of astronomers from Ibaraki University, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Kanagawa University, University of Tokyo, Academica Sinica, and National Astronomical Observatory of Japan have used the Subaru Telescope’s Cooled Mid-Infrared Camera and Spectrometer (COMICS) to capture the first direct, well-resolved infrared images of a circumstellar disk around a young massive star—HD200775. Their findings contribute to understanding the role of circumstellar disks in massive star formation in particular and to the birth of stars in general.

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Maps Unveil the Source of Starburst Galaxy's Winds
Maps Unveil the Source of Starburst Galaxy's Winds
November 17, 2009

A research group at Kyoto University has discovered that shocks are the primary energy sources that excite the galactic wind region of starburst galaxy NGC 253. Their images of the center of this galaxy, bright with intense star formation, have generated findings that substantially increase our meager knowledge of the physical properties of galactic winds and move us closer to understanding galaxy evolution.

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Discovery of a Retrograde or Highly Tilted Extrasolar Planet
Discovery of a Retrograde or Highly Tilted Extrasolar Planet
November 12, 2009

Two teams of astronomers have found that extrasolar planet HAT-P-7b, discovered in 2008, has a retrograde or highly tilted orbit. On UT May 30, 2008, a Japanese collaboration led by Norio Narita (National Astronomical Observatory of Japan) used the Subaru Telescope’s High Dispersion Spectrograph (HDS) to observe the HAT-P-7 planetary system, which is about 1000 light years distant from Earth, and found the first evidence of a retrograde orbit of the extrasolar planet HAT-P-7b.

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“Dropouts” Pinpoint Earliest Galaxies
“Dropouts” pinpoint earliest galaxies
November 6, 2009

Pasadena, CA―Astronomers, conducting the broadest survey to date of galaxies from about 800 million years after the Big Bang, have found 22 early galaxies and confirmed the age of one by its characteristic hydrogen signature at 787 million years post Big Bang. The finding is the first age-confirmation of a so-called dropout galaxy at that distant time and pinpoints when an era called the reionization epoch likely began. The research will be published in a December issue of the Astrophysical Journal.

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Shedding Light on the Cosmic Skeleton
Shedding Light on the Cosmic Skeleton
November 3, 2009

Astronomers have tracked down a gigantic, previously unknown assembly of galaxies located almost seven billion light-years away from us. The discovery, made possible by combining two of the most powerful ground-based telescopes in the world, is the first observation of such a prominent galaxy structure in the distant Universe, providing further insight into the cosmic web and how it formed.

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Subaru Participates in Observations of Momentous Lunar Impacts
Subaru Participates in Observations of Momentous Lunar Impacts
October 9, 2009

Does water-ice exist on the Moon? The answer to this longstanding scientific question is the main goal of NASA's mission with LCROSS (Lunar Crater Observing and Sensing Satellite), which was launched together with the LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) by an Atlas rocket on June 18, 2009. The culmination of the mission occurred on October 9, 2009, when the 2nd stage of the Atlas rocket crashed into Cabeus crater (98 km in diameter) near the south pole of the Moon at 1:31am HST, followed a few minutes later, at 1:35am HST, by LCROSS’s impact into the Moon's surface, exactly according to NASA's plans.

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Star Formation Activities at the Outskirts of Spiral Galaxy NGC 6946 - Young College Students Celebrate the 10th Birthday of Subaru Telescope -
Star Formation Activities at the Outskirts of Spiral Galaxy NGC 6946 - Young College Students Celebrate the 10th Birthday of Subaru Telescope -
September 21, 2009

This beautiful image of spiral galaxy NGC 6946 was obtained by the Subaru Observation Experience Program Team, a group of 10 young, qualified undergraduate students from various universities in Japan. The Subaru Observation Experience Program gives undergraduate students an opportunity to consider a career path as astronomers by conducting and experiencing real observations with the Subaru Telescope.

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UH Astronomer Finds Giant Galaxy Hosting the Most Distant Supermassive Black Hole
UH Astronomer Finds Giant Galaxy Hosting the Most Distant Supermassive Black Hole
September 2, 2009

University of Hawaii astronomer Dr. Tomotsugu Goto and colleagues have discovered a giant galaxy surrounding the most distant black hole ever found. The galaxy, which is 12.8 billion light-years from Earth, is as large as the Milky Way galaxy and harbors a supermassive black hole that contains at least a billion times as much matter as does our sun.

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A Ninth-Magnitude Messenger from the Early Universe
A Ninth-Magnitude Messenger from the Early Universe
August 20, 2009

Old stars are keys to understanding the nature of the first stars and the earliest stages of the formation of the universe. Observations with the Subaru Telescope, fitted with its High Dispersion Spectrograph (HDS), have yielded data about the chemical composition of an old, bright star—BD+44 493— that shed light on how the early stars may have developed during the infancy of the universe.

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A Fireworks Display in the Helix Nebula
A Fireworks Display in the Helix Nebula
July 2, 2009

Astronomers at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan and at universities in the UK and the USA have revealed new features in molecular hydrogen emissions in the Helix Nebula, a planetary nebula (PN). Optical images tracing ionized gas show that the nebula is filled with diffuse gas. In contrast, a new, near-infrared image of molecular hydrogen emissions revealed that the nebula has comet-shaped knots within it. These features look like a fireworks display in space. This image is one of the highest resolution images in the infrared wavelength with such a wide coverage of this large PN. The central star of the planetary nebula exposes the nebula to strong UV light, which usually dissociates molecular hydrogen into neutral and ionized hydrogen; nevertheless, hydrogen molecules can survive as long as they remain within knots. This important research contributes to an understanding of the chemistry and photo-ionization that occur in space.

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Discovery of New Tidal Debris of Colliding Galaxies
Discovery of New Tidal Debris of Colliding Galaxies
June 9, 2009

Astronomers are announcing today that they have discovered the new tidal debris stripped away from colliding galaxies. The report is being presented by Dr. Jin Koda (Stony Brook University, New York), Nick Scoville (Caltech, California), Yoshiaki Taniguchi (Ehime University, in Ehime, Japan), and the COSMOS survey team in a press conference at the American AstronomicalSociety meeting in Pasadena, California. New debris images are of special interest since theyshow the full history of galaxy collisions and resultant starburst activities, which are important in'growing' galaxies in the early Universe.

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Astronomers successfully obtained images of an extra-solar planet
Astronomers successfully obtained images of an extra-solar planet
May 21, 2009

Astronomers successfully obtained images of an extra-solar planet orbiting HR 8799 using Subaru Telescope. The epoch-making discovery of the planetary system of HR 8799 was first announced in November 2008 with “images” of three planets taken at Gemini and Keck observatories. Because this HR 8799 was observed with Subaru back in 2002, the Japanese team analyzed the data carefully in an optimized way to extract planets, and the outmost planet was indeed found. This result promises the success of the big project that is about to begin to find more planets using new adaptive optics and coronagraph on Subaru.

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Mysterious Space Blob Discovered at Cosmic Dawn
Mysterious Space Blob Discovered at Cosmic Dawn
April 22, 2009

Pasadena, CA—Using information from a suite of telescopes, astronomers have discovered a mysterious, giant object that existed at a time when the universe was only about 800 million years old. Objects such as this one are dubbed extended Lyman-Alpha blobs; they are huge bodies of gas that may be precursors to galaxies. This blob was named Himiko for a legendary, mysterious Japanese queen. It stretches for 55 thousand light years, a record for that early point in time. That length is comparable to the radius of the Milky Way’s disk.

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Creating Diamonds in Space
Creating Diamonds in Space
April 14, 2009

Do you know that there are countless diamonds in space? Loads of tiny diamonds, each measuring less than one micrometer (much less than the width of a human hair) are located in the material that surrounds some stars--their circumstellar disks. Although circumstellar diamonds account for little of a disk’s weight, their combined volume would be as large as part of a moon. Nevertheless, few stars have been identified which show clear evidence of diamonds in their disks. Why are only a small number of stars adorned by diamonds? How can we find more of them? Astronomers have been using the Subaru Telescope to seek the answers to these questions. They have learned that creating diamonds in space requires very special conditions.

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Massive Galaxies Born Earlier than Expected
Massive Galaxies Born Earlier than Expected
April 3, 2009

Astronomers have discovered large galaxies that have not changed much in size for the last 9 billion years—a finding that conflicts with widely held views of when and how galaxies form.

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Subaru Reveals History of Star Formation in M33
Subaru Reveals History of Star Formation in M33
March 6, 2009

The Subaru Telescope in Hawai’i has produced a beautiful high-resolution view of the nearby galaxy M33 that reveals fine structure in its spiral shape. The image, which covers an area of sky roughly equivalent to eight full moons and shows details in a region measuring 90,000 x 60,000 light-years across, shows the spatial distribution of stars, star clusters, and star-forming regions in M33 in detail.

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Strong UV Radiation Detected in the Most Distant Galaxies
Strong UV Radiation Detected in the Most Distant Galaxies
February 24, 2009

A team of astronomers from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, Osaka Sangyo University, Tohoku University, and Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille, France have used the Subaru Telescope in Hawai’i to detect strong ultraviolet (UV) radiation from galaxies that lie about 12 billion light-years away. This radiation, which ionizes hydrogen atoms, marks the end of the “cosmic dark age” and heralds the so-called “epoch of reionization” that occurred about a billion years after the beginning of the universe. Although this cosmic reionization was spurred by ionizing radiation from the first generation of galaxies, there have been only two definite detections reported so far. As a result, it has been unclear how much galaxies contributed to the cosmic reionization.

Thanks to the unprecedented performance of the prime-focus camera on the Subaru telescope, the team detected ionizing radiation from 17 galaxies at once. This result suggests that galaxies with strong ionizing radiation could well have played an important role in the cosmic reionization and helps astronomers understand the processes that led to the end of the cosmic Dark Age.

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Water ice in the young planetary system - future ocean of the planets?
Water ice in the young planetary system - future ocean of the planets?
February 17, 2009
What is the origin of the ocean on the Earth where the life began? Researchers think that the Earth was formed by the aggregation of a huge amount of dust particles in the circumstellar disk around the Sun during its birth. There is a hypothesis that water ice in the dust at that time is the material of the sea on the Earth. The observation from Subaru Telescope shows that there is water ice in the gas and dust disk around a young star HD142527 toward the constellation Lupus. The ice discovered by Subaru may become the sea on a planet revolving around HD142527 in the future.
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Subaru Head Count of Low-mass Stars in W3 Main
Subaru Head Count of Low-mass Stars in W3 Main
January 29, 2009
The number of stars in the Universe is staggering. Because there are billions of stars in each galaxy and there are billions of galaxies, the total number is hard to comprehend. When astronomers at the Subaru Telescope think about this colossal number of stars, questions come to their minds that include, what is the population distribution of these stars in terms of the weight? How many stars are heavier or lighter than the Sun? What is the mass range of the stars formed in the Milky Way Galaxy?
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