The Eagle Nebula shows its magesty even at video
rate from Subaru Telescope.
Catherine Ishida from Subaru Telescope explains
where the NHK camera is attached to the telescope.
The audeince watches the live images.
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On the evening of July 4, 2002, Mauna Kea lived up to her reputation
as one of the best observing sites in the world; As the clouds parted,
a high definition television camera attached to the Subaru Telescope
captured jewels in the sky. After the fireworks, an eager crowd
of 100 filled the conference room at Subaru
Telescope Hilo Base Facility to capacity to participate in possibly
the world's first public showing of live video from an 8-meter class
telescope.
The supersensitive high definition camera combined with Subaru
is 3 trillion times more sensitive than the human eye. The camera
was designed by NHK, the Japanese Broadcasting Corporation, specifically
for astronomical use, with a sensitivity 3000 times that of a
regular camera and a color response tuned to astronomical objects.
Subaru Telescope acts as an “eye” a million times larger
than a human's. At a video rate of 30 images per second, the two
together can capture images of astronomical objects as clearly
as photographs taken with smaller telescopes after hours of exposure.
The camera is one of the large suite of instruments that distinguish
Subaru from other telescopes of comparable size.
During the event, the control of the telescope was in the hands
of the audience. The audience in Hilo requested where to point
the telescope to staff on the summit of Mauna Kea through a video
conferencing system. Requests included objects both near and far.
Pluto is the last planet in our own solar system. The Eagle Nebula
where stars are being born out of clouds of gas and dust, the
Ring nebula where a dying star illuminates its own remains, and
the globular cluster M28, a dense gathering of old stars, are
all in our own Milky Way galaxy. The camera also captured several
nearby galaxies, the Sombrero galaxy known for its wide dust lane,
NGC4565, a spiral galaxy, M51, a pair of interacting galaxies,
and M87, and elliptical galaxy with a jet coming out of a black
hole at its center. The most distant object was 3C273, a quasar
about 2 billion light years away. As the telescope moved from
object to object, stars dashed across the television screen like
shooting stars.
The assembled crowd was a mixture of astronomers from Subaru and
other observatories, and members of the public that gathered at
the University of Hawaii at Hilo University Park to watch the
July 4th fireworks. Although the system for transferring the live
video using optical fiber cables is still under testing, Subaru
Telescope with the help of NHK and the Hilo Astronomy Club decided
to open its doors to the Hilo public gathered for the fireworks
so they too could enjoy the images from the television camera
attached to the telescope in preparation for a live broadcast
to Japan later in the evening. Subaru Telescope hopes to hold
similar events in the future.
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