Interview:
The support astronomer’s main job is to
understand what researchers want to observe, and
to give them advice on how to achieve their goals.
Suprime-Cam is a super-large digital camera for
studying very faint astronomical objects. Subaru
is the only 8-meter class telescope with a prime
focus. Suprime-Cam takes advantage of this unique
capability. Smaller telescope or cameras with
a smaller field of view take a much longer time
to do what Suprime-Cam can do in a single exposure.
Putting a prime-focus instrument on a large telescope
is a huge technological challenge. It is extremely
unlikely that any existing 8-meter class telescope
could develop similar capabilities. Subaru took
on this difficult challenge to distinguish itself
from other 8-meter class telescope, and it has
succeeded.
With any sophisticated instrument, there is occasional
hardware trouble, which we handle through everyday
maintenance. Suprime-Cam does have some unique
complications. Getting to the instrument while
it is in the telescope is cumbersome. We need
to tip the telescope and climb into a crane to
reach the instrument, before performing delicate
manual repairs mid-air.
(From
a late 2002 interview with Suprime-Cam support
astronomer Yutaka Komiyama.)
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Even though Suprime-Cam's field of view is large
as the size of the full moon, there is no compromise
in sensitivity or the finest details it can capture.
The faintest details visible in this color image
are about 1000 million times fainter than what can
been seen with the unaided eye. The brightest features
in the image are stars belonging to our own Milky
Way Galaxy. (The streaks running vertically from
these stars are artifacts created when the detector
is over exposed.) The majority of the remaining
faint objects are external galaxies outside the
Milky Way. In total, approximately 30,000 galaxies
are found in this image. The close-up view (right
panel) shows a previously unknown cluster of galaxies.
The distance between the Earth and the cluster is
estimated to be approximately 5 billion light years.
This small fuzzy object is a galaxy 12.6 billion
light years from Earth. It shows evidence of forming
stars rapidly at a time when the Universe was
about a billion years old. Very distant galaxies
are brightest at a particular wavelength that
corresponds to their distance from Earth. By using
special filters that select light at a particular
wavelength, researchers are scouring the Universe
for faint galaxies. Suprime-Cam’s efficiency
in deep imaging of a large area of sky makes it
a favorite tool for finding the most distant galaxies
in the Universe.
At the end of their lives, both massive and light
weight stars return much of their material back
interstellar space. Light weight stars that weight
between 0.8 to 8 times the Sun end their life
by losing a large fraction of their weight by
repeatedly expanding and shrinking until only
their naked hot cores remain. Here, Suprime-Cam
has captured the intricate detail of ripples and
shells of the Ring Nebula.
