Astronomical night: Waiakea High students earn observing time at CFHT

Waiakea High School students for the first time in the history of their school had the opportunity April 10 to work with astronomers from the remote observing room of one of the world’s most powerful telescopes.

The Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope opened its Waimea headquarters to the students for a night of remote observation. This is the second remote observing night in the Maunakea Scholars launch — the first one was in late March with Oahu’s Kapolei High students. Both groups of students were awarded with highly competitive telescope observing time based on their meticulously crafted science research proposals earlier this year.

“We’re glad to see the rapid development of the Maunakea Scholars program in its first year through the participation of the first two high schools,” said Mary Beth Laychak, outreach program manager for CFHT. “The students’ enthusiasm toward working in the actual remote observing room that astronomers use to study the universe nightly, was very palpable during the evening. We at CFHT are pleased to be part of the process that further piques their interests in STEM subjects like astronomy.”

Waiakea High School students Ana Bitter, Hannah Blue, Ramsey Goodale and Kylan Sakata and their teacher, Whitney Aragaki, spent the Sunday evening at the CFHT headquarters in Waimea observing the targets of their astronomical experiments from the remote telescope control room. They also learned more about how to study the universe from CFHT staff as they watched data stream live from the Mauna Kea summit to computer systems in the Waimea control room.

The Maunakea Scholars students worked with mentors from the University of Hawaii’s Institute for Astronomy and Gemini International Observatory for months to understand astronomical data analysis and formulate their research proposals. The projects were selected by a time allocation committee at CFHT and then granted a full night of telescope time to complete their observations.

The Maunakea Scholars program was launched earlier this year to bring Hawaii’s aspiring young astronomers into the observatory community. This is the first program of its kind internationally, using the most powerful collection of telescopes in the world for the direct educational advancement of Hawaii’s high school students.