Join Yusei Koyama, Subaru Telescope’s assistant professor, for a presentation at 7 p.m. Friday, June 21, in ‘Imiloa Astronomy Center’s planetarium.
As part of the Maunakea Skies astronomy talk series, Koyama will discuss recent efforts to identify the rich diversity of galaxy clusters in the early universe and discover their origins.
Galaxies are very basic “species” living in the universe, but the natures of galaxies in the present-day universe are really diverse. Some galaxies show blue colors with prominent spiral arms, while other galaxies show red colors with more smooth, elliptical morphologies.
Why are the natures of galaxies so diverse?
An interesting hint is brought by studying the “ecology” of galaxies.
Recent observations revealed — like humans — the nature of galaxies living in the crowded regions and those living in less dense environments is totally different. The next big challenge for astronomers is to identify the origin of such environmental trends by observing the site of galaxy assembly in the past universe.
Observations of distant galaxies directly tells the history of galaxy formation and allows astronomers to deliver the nature of galaxies in the past.
Koyama also will introduce Subaru Telescope’s new instrumentation program, ULTIMATE, which delivers sharp image quality over a wide area on the sky assisted by adaptive optics. This will be a new instrumentation program for Subaru’s observation of the deep universe.
Born in Japan, Koyama received his doctorate in astronomy in 2011 from the University of Tokyo. He proceeded to do his first post-doctoral research at Durham University in England, where he stayed for about 2 years, and then moved back in Japan in 2013 to start his second post-doc at JAXA, the Japanese space agency.
He moved to Subaru Telescope in 2015 as a faculty member of National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. His main research field is galaxy formation and evolution in the context of structure formation of the universe.
‘Imiloa is located at 600 ‘Imiloa Place in Hilo. For more information, visit www.ImiloaHawaii.org or call 932-8901.