Astronomer Ohashi to speak Saturday at Universe Tonight

Astronomer Ohashi to speak Saturday at Universe Tonight

Astronomer Nagayoshi Ohashi will be the guest speaker at 6 p.m. Saturday for The Universe Tonight, a monthly program at the Mauna Kea Visitor Station at the 9,200-foot elevation on Mauna Kea.

Ohashi will focus on how astronomers discover exoplanets with infrared and radio wavelengths. Stargazing will follow the presentation until 10 p.m.

“The formation of planets: Where do we come from, and are we alone in the universe?” This is one of the questions many people may ask. Since the first exoplanet was discovered outside of our solar system in 1995, more than 700 exoplanets have been found. Some of them might have environments where life could exist, suggesting possible discovery of life in near future.

On the other hand, many exoplanets are very different from those in our solar system. It is therefore getting more important to understand how these planets are formed. Planets are disks around young stars, called protoplanetary disks, formed as by-products of star formation, and are mostly observed at infrared and radio wavelengths.

Such observations of protoplanetary disks at infrared and radio wavelengths have been carried out with telescopes on Mauna Kea, includingthe Subaru telescope and Submillimeter Array.

“Please join us as Dr. Ohashi will introduce infrared and radio observations, which are different from those carried out in visible light, and summarize observations of protoplanetary disks using Subaru telescope and Submillimeter Array,” said Janet Nathani, a spokeswoman for the visitor station, which is operated by the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy. Visit www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/vis.