| Staff at Subaru Telescope have been busy during the past two
months hosting two important meetings. The first was the international
conference entitled "Astrophysical Ages and Time Scales",
and the second was the annual Subaru Telescope Users' Meeting.
The Users' Meeting was held from March 7-9 at Subaru Telescope's
Base Facility in Hilo, the first time it's been held outside Japan.
The meeting brought together many of the users of Subaru Telescope's
first semester of Open Use, as well as researchers from the University
of Hawaii and those who had obtained data during the commissioning
phase of the telescope and instruments. The first day consisted
of reports and discussions on the status of the telescope and
its present and future use, while on the second and third days,
preliminary results of Subaru observations were presented by 22
users, followed by discussions about second generation instruments
and a forum where users and the Observatory discussed issues of
policy and support. In addition, 17 poster presentations were
available for participants to study.
One of the interesting aspects of the Users' Meeting was the
teleconferencing used to permit participation by Observatory staff
and users located at four different sites in Japan. Using telephone
connections to transfer live video and sound, not only could people
in Japan see the meeting as it was happening, they could actually
participate in the meeting too. This generally took the form of
asking questions after viewing the presentations being broadcast
from Hawaii; but on one occasion, the presentation originated
from Japan.
A month earlier, during the week of February 5-9, Subaru Telescope
and the Gemini Observatory hosted the very first international
astronomical science conference ever held in Hilo (where five
of the base
facilities for eight of the telescopes on Mauna Kea are now
located). The Astrophysical Ages and Time Scales conference attracted
170 professional astronomers from 18 countries to spend a week
discussing current understanding of what "time"
is and how we measure and use it.
Most conferences deal with a fairly narrow topic in astronomy
such as star formation or galaxy clusters, or a particular technique
like wide-field imaging. This conference chose to address the
broad topic of time in an astronomical context.
The opening session featured talks on the nature of time, and
views on what we mean when we talk about time. Later presentations
given by the participants ranged from measuring the age of the
Sun and Solar System, the ages of stars and galaxies, models of
galaxy and structure formation, the measurement of the Hubble
constant, and a review of the observational evidence supporting
the idea that the Universe is expanding. Also reported was the
first detection of Uranium in a star, which can be used to determine
its age in much the same way that carbon dating is used to measure
the ages of fossils and artifacts.
The conference was felt to be important enough that the Local
Organizing committee worked hard to share it with the local community.
Three evening public lectures were given by visiting astronomers
and funding was provided to allow a dozen high school science
teachers attend the conference. Several astronomers acted as chaperones
to guide the teachers through the jargon and help them understand
the science that was presented.
The conference was primarily sponsored by the Gemini and Subaru
observatories, with additional help from the Caltech Submillimeter
Observatory, the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Corporation, the
Joint Astronomy Centre, the University of Hawai`i at Hilo and
the Smithsonian Submillimeter Array. Further financial contributions
were provided by Mitsubishi Electric and Electronics USA, Inc.
and Fujitsu America, Inc.
The conference was very well received and it is hoped that there
will be many more conferences organized on the Big Island between
the various observatories that exist here.
|
