Topics & Announcements

The first Shadow the Scientists (StS) sessions by Japanese astronomers with the Subaru Telescope will be held for two nights on Friday, November 15, 2024.

Shadow the Scientists (StS) is a program that connects the public to professional scientists in a variety of scientific disciplines, which includes connections to professional astronomers through observing experiences with world-class telescopes. This program was launched in 2020 during the COVID pandemic by a researcher at the University of California Santa Cruz in collaboration with `Ohana Kilo Hoku, a native Hawaiian non-profit organization supporting astronomy and space programs, and other partners. Through the program, researchers invite members of the public to remotely experience observations with the Subaru, Keck, and Gemini North Telescopes near the summit of Maunakea, Hawai`i, the Lick Observatory in California, and many other telescopes around the world!

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Figure 1: A snapshot of a previous StS session on the Subaru telescope. (Credit: Shadow the Scientists)

Tadayuki Kodama, a Tohoku University professor, and Brian C. Lemaux, a staff scientist at the Gemini North Telescope who has hosted numerous StS sessions with his collaborators, will lead two sessions over two nights. One is a general English session, and the other is a dedicated Japanese session with brief English translations. Using the Subaru Telescope’s Multi-Object Infrared Camera and Spectrograph (MOIRCS), they will observe some of the most massive large-scale structures ever discovered in the early Universe, about 12 billion years ago, to figure out how galaxies in these structures formed and evolved.

In addition to being able to watch world-class astronomical observations, participants will have the chance to listen to mini-talks from the astronomers and to ask questions of the astronomers during the events. Why not join the StS sessions to remotely experience observations with the Subaru Telescope and to meet and talk with the astronomers?

[Session 1]
Date: Friday, November 15, 12:30 a.m. – 2:30 a.m. (HST)
※ Friday, November 15, 10:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. (UTC)
Language: English

[Session 2]
Date: Friday, November 15, 8:30 p.m. – 10:30 p.m. (HST)
※ Saturday, November 16, 6:30 a.m. – 8:30 a.m. (UTC)
Language: Japanese and English

Presenters:
From Subaru Telescope Hilo Base Facility
    Dr. Kumiko Usuda-Sato (Subaru Telescope, NAOJ) and Dr. Brian Lemaux (Gemini-North/NOIRLab)
From Subaru Telescope Summit Facility
    Dr. Ichi Tanaka and Sean Cunningham (Subaru Telescope, NAOJ)
From NAOJ Headquarters, Mitaka, Tokyo, Japan
    Dr. Tadayuki Kodama, Ryo Sutanto, and Hayate Hagiwara (Tohoku University)
From Tohoku University, Sendai, Miyagi, Japan
    Miku Funaki and Michiru Maruyama (Tohoku University)
From Gujurat, India
    Dr. Ekta Shah (University of California, Davis)
StS Coordinator
    Jameeka Marshall (Shadow the Scientists)

The English session (Session 1), held the night before the Japanese session, is also available on StS YouTube .