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Normal Galaxy in the Very Early UniverseIfA astronomer Regina Jorgenson has obtained the first image that shows the structure of a normal galaxy in the early Universe. The galaxy, called DLA2222-0946, is so faint that it is virtually invisible at all but a few specific wavelengths. It is a member of a class of galaxies thought to be the progenitors of spiral galaxies like our own Milky Way.

These galaxies are known to contain most of the neutral gas that is the fuel for star formation, so they are an important tool for understanding star and galaxy formation and evolution. Discovered and classified over 30 years ago, they have been notoriously difficult to see directly. DLA2222-0946 was initially detected not by its own light, but by absorbing some of the light of an even more distant quasar. Galaxies detected in this way are called damped Lyman-alpha systems, or DLAs, based on the specific color of light they absorb due to their copious reservoirs of hydrogen gas.

Na Kilo HokuTHE ONES WHO LOOK TO THE STARS

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A Newsletter from theInstitute for AstronomyUniversity of Hawai‘i

What’s InsideGrowth of Massive GalaxiesNew Sloan Fellow pg 3

Akamai Interns Exoplanet Kudos pg 4

Mauna Kea or Maunakea?Renaming of ATST pg 5

HI STAR Participants at Science Fairs pg 6

IfA Manoa Open HouseApril Lunar EclipseUpcoming Events pg 7

From the Director pg 8

The University of Hawai‘i is an Equal Opportunity/

Affirmative Action Institution.

ATLAS Has First Light by Louise Good ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) is now automatically scanning the sky with a prototype camera and telescope located on Mauna Loa on Hawai‘i island. It achieved first light on December 12 with a seven-inch Pathfinder telescope mounted in an existing dome. By 2016, ATLAS should have two observatories, one at the current location on Mauna Loa and the second possibly on Haleakala. The two telescopes will search the entire sky that is visible from Hawai‘i. The goal of the project is to provide an early warning of asteroids that will hit Earth within days.

The camera used to achieve first light was an off-the-shelf Canon digital camera, but by the time you read this, it will have been replaced by a small scientific camera that will double the amount of sky and triple the sensitivity. Even with the first camera and the small telescope, ATLAS was able to observe hundreds of main-belt asteroids. These were not new finds, but the quality of the observations was good enough to be reported to the Minor Planet Center (MPC), the worldwide center for receipt and distribution of positional measurements of asteroids, comets, and small moons of the major planets.

John Tonry, the head of the ATLAS project, is more than pleased with the progress Please see ATLAS, pg 2

While thousands of DLAs are now known thanks to the large Sloan Digitized Sky Survey, the usual method of detection tells us only about the small part of the galaxy pierced by the background quasar’s light. This is akin to trying to map a fog bank from a single headlight shining through it.

A full understanding of the distant galaxy requires a direct detection, which had eluded astronomers until now. “These galaxies are extraordinary for being ordinary—they represent normal types of galaxies, rather than the brightest, extreme, and most rapidly star-forming galaxies that are typically observed at these distances,” Jorgenson explained. “But this normalcy makes them nearly impossible to detect directly from the light they give off because first, that emission is relatively weak, and second, the bright background quasar used to find the galaxy hampers the detection of fainter foreground emission from the galaxy itself.” Please see Early Normal Galaxy, pg 2

ATLAS software engineers Andrei Sherstyuk (fore- ground) and Larry Denneau Jr. inside the dome on Mauna Loa with the prototype Pathfinder telescope equipped with a Canon digital camera. This December 2013 photo shows Sherstyuk aligning the telescope mount with Earth’s rotation so that the telescope would accurately track the motion of the stars while Denneau concentrated his efforts on the dome control software.

Photo by John Tonry

Join us for the Manoa Open House on April 6, 11:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.

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The galaxy is located at a redshift of 2.354, which corresponds to a time when the Universe was about 20 percent of its current age, about 10.8 billion years ago. This time in the Universe’s history was a key period of galaxy formation, and hence observing typical galaxies from this time will potentially provide great insight into the relevant physical processes. Determining exactly how galaxies such as these, which are essentially massive reservoirs of neutral gas, turn that gas into stars is a key missing piece of the star and galaxy formation puzzle.

Jorgenson, an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellow at IfA, worked with the late Arthur Wolfe of the University of California, San Diego. They used the advanced technologies of the W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea to obtain the images. The results were presented at the winter American Astronomical Society meeting held near Washington, DC, in January, and the paper will soon be published in the Astrophysical Journal.

Talk by Regina Jorgenson at a press conference during the January 2014 American Astronomical Society Meeting: www.ustream.tv/recorded/42573271

Early Normal Galaxy Continued from page 1

so far. He says, “We must be at full productivity in two years, so the current situation puts us way ahead of schedule.” He gives a lot of the credit for the progress made so far to the project’s software engineers, Larry Denneau Jr. and Andrei Sherstyuk. Denneau predicts that even before the final telescope and camera are installed next year, ATLAS will find a hitherto unknown near-Earth asteroid.

DFM Engineering, the company building the ATLAS telescopes, is making rapid progress. These wide-field telescopes will have a mirror to collect light and lenses to make exceedingly fine images over a 7.5-degree field of view. The mirrors have been ground, the lenses are being fabricated, and the mechanical parts are designed and about to be machined. The heart of the system is the CCD cameras, which will have 110-megapixel detectors housed in a cryostat (device for maintaining a very cold temperature, like a thermos) the size of a coffee can. The detectors and CCD controllers are being purchased, and the IfA is busily designing and building the cryostats. The telescope mounts are being built, and the domes are being acquired.

The job that ATLAS performs for NASA requires as much vigilance as possible, so ATLAS needs to run robotically, operating any time the sky is dark and clear enough. To that end, the team is installing a variety of equipment to determine whether conditions are safe for opening the domes, and they are in the process of writing

ATLAS Continued from page 1

Top: A map of the star formation in DLA2222- 0946. The mapped region, which covers only a portion of the galaxy, is about 16,300 light-years across. The position of the background quasar is marked by a “Q.” Bottom: The corresponding map of the movement of the gas in the galaxy. Red means moving away from us; blue is moving toward us. Credit: R. Jorgenson

the software that judges whether observations can take place and then carries them out. This equipment includes an all-sky infrared sensor that can detect clouds or rain, the usual temperature, humidity, and wind sensing equipment, and a fisheye camera that can image all the stars in the sky at once and determine the presence of clouds by whether known stars are not seen or are not as bright as they should be. The system will be smart enough to figure out that, for example, if the eastern part of the sky is cloudy, it should observe in the western part if that part is clear. Also, a plan is in the works to dramatically increase the bandwidth from Mauna Loa so that the observations can be downloaded almost immediately, thereby lowering the time between observing the sky and reporting detections of asteroids to a few minutes.

Compared with Pan-STARRS, which is trying to find dangerous asteroids years before they hit our planet, ATLAS is relatively simple, but still complicated. There is the software that controls the robotic telescope; image acquisition software to make the observations; reduction software to make the image into something scientifically useful; PHOTPIPE, software used by several observa- tories that compares the image with old images to see if the object has been observed before; and the Moving Object Pipeline Subsystem (MOPS), originally developed for Pan-STARRS, that actually detects the asteroids and sends notification to the MPC. It all has to work together.

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Sloan Research Fellow Christoph Baranec

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Study Reveals the Growth of Massive Galaxies in the Early Universe “FMOS has clearly revolutionized our ability to study how

galaxies form and evolve across cosmic time,” said David Sanders, the principal investigator of the FMOS-COSMOS project at the IfA. “It is currently the most powerful instrument we have to study the large numbers of objects needed to understand galaxies of all sizes, shapes, and masses—from the largest ellipticals to the smallest dwarfs. We are extremely fortunate that the Kavli IPMU-IfA collaboration is giving us this unique opportunity to study the distant Universe in such exquisite detail.”

The team has concluded that star formation during the epoch studied was 20 times greater than it is now. They also learned that the galaxies observed with FMOS have significantly lower levels of chemically enriched gas in their interstellar medium than galaxies of the same mass in the local Universe. This finding supports the view that galaxies that have room to grow accumulate pristine gas that fuels their intense star formation. Larger amounts of dust and metal content indicate that the more massive galaxies 4 billion years ago were similar to later, fully mature local galaxies that have stopped star formation.

The FMOS-COSMOS survey has reached the halfway mark toward its goal of observing approximately 2,000 galaxies to map the large-scale structure. Future efforts with FMOS may expand the areal coverage, and the team may also use complementary instruments on other telescopes that can cover other parts of the spectrum or have deeper penetrating power but are limited by a small area of coverage. Such complementarity may allow FMOS to detect the first structures that likely evolved into the massive clusters of galaxies that we see today.

In addition to Sanders, former IfA astronomer Lisa Kewley (now at Australian National University), IfA graduate students Jabran Zahid and Jason Chu, and IfA alumna Jeyhan Kartaltepe are working on the project.

Over nine billion years ago, galaxies provided a nurturing and orderly environment for the birth of new stars at remarkable rates. A study, undertaken as part of the Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS), shows that even at this early time, there were signs of mature galaxies that were surrounded by dust and included elements heavier than hydrogen and helium.

A team of astronomers, including several from the IfA, used the Fiber-Multi-Object Spectrograph (FMOS) mounted on the Subaru Telescope on Maunakea for this work. They sought to answer the question, “What was the Universe like when it was maximally forming its stars?” according to John Silverman of the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU) in Japan, who serves as the principal investigator of the FMOS-COSMOS project. COSMOS’s research is designed to examine how the environment of large-scale structures influenced the formation and evolution of galaxies over cosmic time. Determining whether the individual properties of galaxies, such as their rate of growth, are connected to the larger-scale environment helps scientists understand what factors in the early Universe shaped the current form of local galaxies. To do this, the team has been carrying out an intensive program of research using FMOS on Subaru to map the distribution of about 2,000 galaxies when the Universe was only 4 billion years old.

FMOS typically acquires spectra from 200 galaxies simul- taneously. Being able to capture so many objects in such a wide field of view is useful for a range of purposes, from studying galaxy evolution and the variation within the galaxy environment to investigating star-forming regions, cluster formation, and cosmology. FMOS provides unprecedented views of the distant Universe by using fiber optic cables to collect the light of multiple objects over an area of the sky equal to that spanned by our full Moon and also by using a built-in filter to remove unwanted bright light from the warm night sky.

IfA astronomer Christoph Baranec was selected as one of 126 recipients of a 2014 Sloan Research Fellowship in February. Awarded annually since 1955 by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the two-year fellowships are given to early-career scientists and scholars whose achievements and potential identify them as the next generation of scientific leaders.

In nominating Baranec for the award, IfA Director Guenther Hasinger said, “Dr. Baranec is a rising star in the field of astronomical instrumentation. Even at this early stage of his career he has amassed a record of outstanding contributions to the field of adaptive optics, which removes the blurring effects of the Earth’s atmosphere for ground-based astronomical telescopes.”

Baranec’s most significant work has been the development of a replicable, cost effective, and fully automated adaptive optics system called “Robo-AO” that enables modest-size (1- to 3-meter) telescopes to

image objects 10 times more sharply than without the system. Installed on the Palomar 1.5-meter (60-inch) telescope in California, it enabled Baranec and his colleagues to confirm numerous exoplanet candidates found by NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope. He plans to implement such a system on the UH 2.2-meter (88-inch) telescope on Maunakea.

After majoring in astronomy at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Baranec studied optical sciences at the University of Arizona and received a PhD in 2007. He spent six years as a postdoctoral scholar at Caltech before joining the UH faculty in July 2013. Baranec works at the IfA Hilo office.

Since the beginning of the program in 1955, 42 Sloan Research Fellows have received a Nobel Prize in their respective fields, 16 have won the Fields Medal in mathematics, 13 have won the John Bates Clark Medal in economics, and 63 have received the National Medal of Science.

Baranec Named Sloan Research Fellow

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Thomas “Tip” Kackley spent the first five years of his life in Sunnyvale, California, before his family moved to Hilo, Hawai‘i. The son of two mechanical engineers, Kackley grew up in an environment filled with construction toys that included wood blocks and LEGOs. Kackley transferred from Waiakea complex public schools to the Kamehameha School Hawai‘i campus in the fourth grade. While at

Kamehameha, Kackley took classes in AutoCAD and machining, and he designed and fabricated the baseball team’s bat rack, which was used for several seasons. After graduating from Kamehameha in 2010, Kackley enrolled in Seattle University in Washington state, where he is majoring in mechanical engineering as a senior this fall.

Kackley learned about the Akamai internship program from his father, who works as a software engineer at Subaru Telescope. Kackley worked with IfA Instrument Technician Marc Cotter to design and fabricate a telescope primary mirror cover actuator system, and hoped his prototype would be adapted for use at the IfA’s UH 2.2-meter telescope located on Maunakea.

E’lisa Lee calls Rancho Palos Verdes in Los Angeles, California home. A senior at University of Hawai‘i at Hilo (UHH), she is majoring in astronomy and minoring in Japanese. The interest in Japanese began in middle school from her love of manga and anime, and growing up in Japanese communities. Lee has enjoyed volunteering at the Maunakea Visitor Information Station, helping visiting tourists find their way around the night sky at the facility located at the 9,200-foot elevation of Maunakea.

Lee also worked with Cotter. Her project was to build a telescope simulator. The model telescope is controllable by a user on a computer, through a computer board that interfaces with the drive motors. Her experience as a UHH Robotics Club member and with information learned in entry-level computer science courses helped Lee understand how hardware and software interact for her project.

The Akamai Workforce Initiative (AWI) prepares Hawai‘i college students for science and technology jobs with internships on Maui and Hawai‘i island. Last summer, Thomas Kackley and E’lisa Lee were two of the interns who worked on Hawai‘i island on projects related to telescopes on Maunakea.

Profiles: Two Summer 2013 Akamai Interns by Gary Fujihara, IfA Science Education and Public Outreach Officer, Hawai‘i Island

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Exoplanet Kudos The editorial board of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has selected the paper “The Prevalence of Earth-size planets orbiting Sun-like stars,” by Erik Petigura (Berkeley and IfA), Andrew Howard (IfA), and Geoffrey Marcy (Berkeley), to receive a Cozzarelli Prize as an exceptional paper in the physical and mathematical sciences published in 2013. The paper estimates that one in five stars like the Sun has Earth-size planets with a surface temperature conducive to life, making it statistically likely that the nearest Sun-like star with an Earth-size planet in its habitable zone is only 12 light-years away (For more details, see Na Kilo Hoku no. 49.)

In addition, the American Physical Society, on its “Physics Newsmakers of 2013” webpage, says “2013 was another banner year for the search for another Earth.” It specifically cites the above-mentioned study and one that found three planets orbiting star Gliese 667C in the habitable zone. IfA’s Nader Haghighipour participated in the latter (see Na Kilo Hoku no. 42).

E’lisa Lee soldering a wire lead on an amplifier circuit board.

Cozzarelli Prize winners Erik Petigura and Andrew Howard.

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The Advanced Technology Solar Telescope, now under construction on Haleakala on Maui, was renamed the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) on December 15. The name honors the late senator’s profound commitment to fundamental scientific education and research, particularly in astronomy.

When completed in 2019, the four-meter Inouye telescope will be the world’s most powerful ground-based solar telescope. It will enable astronomers to gain new insights into solar phenomena, thereby protecting the nation’s vital space-based assets, the power grid, and communication and weather satellites. It will provide incomparable data to allow researchers to see more clearly into the heart of sunspots, flares, and other manifestations of solar activity. Befitting the legacy of Senator Inouye, the telescope will be pivotal in training the next generation of

Jennifer Sabas (formerly Inouye’s chief of staff), William Smith (AURA president), Irene Inouye (the senator’s widow), David Lassner (University of Hawai‘i interim president), James Ulvestad (director of the NSF Division of Astronomical Sciences), and Valentin Pillet (director, NSO) unveiled the plaque naming the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope. The plaque reads, “The Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope is dedicated to the memory of Senator Inouye in honor of his distinguished service to his country, to his beloved Hawai‘i, and to the advancement of scientific understanding and expansion of knowledge for all mankind.”

ATST Renamed the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope solar physicists and instrument builders as it hosts undergraduate and graduate opportunities and imparts curriculum development for local schools.

“Over five decades of national public service Senator Inouye was a strong proponent of American science and innovation,” said NSF Acting Director Cora Marrett. “This remarkable facility in his beloved state of Hawai‘i will expand our knowledge and advance our nation’s scientific leadership over many decades to come.”

“The senator’s enthusiastic support for our nation’s science and technology enterprise was unwavering,” said William Smith, AURA president. “AURA is confident that the facility that will bear his name will result in scientific discoveries that will vastly expand our knowledge of the Sun and its interactions with Earth and our atmosphere.” AURA, which operates the National Solar Observatory (NSO), is building and will operate this NSF-owned, state-of-the-art telescope.

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Mauna Kea or Maunakea? Why have we changed the spelling of Mauna Kea to Maunakea? While the name Mauna Kea (white mountain) is simply descriptive, “Maunakea” is a name that in Native Hawaiian tradition is short for “Mauna a Wakea,” the mountain of Wakea, one of the progenitors of the Hawaiian people. Maunakea is believed to connect the land to the heavens. The UH Hilo School of Hawaiian Language recommends the one-word spelling, and recently the Office

of Maunakea Management started using the one-word spelling (but their abbreviation remains OMKM). Ac- cording to Stephanie Nagata, director of OMKM, the name Maunakea has been accepted by the official Hawai‘i Board on Geographic Names, and the federal government has also accepted the name change, so new maps will now use the one-word name.

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Thirteen out of 14 students who participated in the IfA-sponsored 2013 HI STAR (Hawai‘i Student/Teacher Astronomy Research) week-long summer program at UH Manoa completed projects and entered them in their respective district science fairs, a new record. Moreover, they won more awards at the district level than previous HI STAR classes. The goal of HI STAR is to have students conduct astronomy research projects, enter their projects in the science fair, and eventually major in science, engineering, or technology when they go to college. The students usually work with mentors who advise them on their projects during the school year. The mentors are often, but not always, IfA scientists.

At the Maui District Fair, Matthew Strum and Christopher Kim (grade 11, Maui High School) scored a first place win for their project that looked for gravity waves in the Sun. Like all first and second place winners in the Senior Research Division, they will take their project to the Hawai‘i State Science and Engineering Fair in Honolulu and then to the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, the world’s largest pre-college science competition, being held in Los Angeles this year.

Also at the Maui fair, Celeste Jongeneelen (grade 8, homeschooled) took the first place award in the Junior Research category for her project, “Disk-O Stars Part 2,” which built on last year’s project in which she found candidates for stars with disks. This year she tried to improve the method she used, and she plans to further improve it next year.

McKayla Wandell (grade 11, Baldwin), who studied the correlation between Earth’s weather history and Sun activity, received a certificate of achievement from the American Meteorological Society.

On O‘ahu, Zoey Fox, a tenth grader at Kaiser High School and a three-summer HI STAR participant, found a

mentor in Canada, Gary Billings, who is a member of the American Association of Variable Star Observers, to assist her with her project. She investigated binary star systems for her project.

At the Honolulu District Fair, Stephanie Spear (grade 11, Kaiser) received a first place award in the Senior Research Division for her project about classifying asteroids based on their emission spectra and colors, which are believed to correspond to their surface composition. She was mentored by Marco Micheli, an IfA student who has since received his PhD and who wants to start a HI STAR-like program in his native Italy.

Leilani Gamboa (grade 9, St. Francis) competed in the Hawai‘i Independent Schools Science Fair with a project entitled, “Do Galaxies Evolve?” and qualified to go to the state fair.

At the Kaua‘i District Fair, Kayla Ishida (grade 11, Waimea High School) won second place in the Senior Research Division for a project that focuses on determining if there is a correlation between solar flare strength, sunspot size, and sunspot magnetic properties.

Kelsey Barber, a ninth grader who came from Utah to participate in HI STAR, will be moving on to the state fair with her project entitled “Violating the Spin Barrier.”

Other 2013 HI STAR science fair participants include Gabriel Salazar (grade 12, Maui High School), Conor Leigh (grade 11, homeschooled), Mailani Neal (grade 11, Kamehameha School), and Cameron Chaffey (grade 10), who is participating in a science fair on the mainland.

In addition, Christopher Lindsay, who took part in the 2012 HI STAR program, won first place in the Senior Research Division of the Hawaii Independent Schools Science Fair, and Sarah Jenkins, a 2010 HI STAR alumna, won second place in the Maui District Science Fair.

HI STAR Participants Excel at District Science Fairs

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The annual IfA Manoa Open House will take place on Sunday, April 6, from 11a.m. to 4 p.m. at 2680 Woodlawn Drive. Admission and onsite parking will be free.

There will be activities, displays, and talks for people of all ages. For the keiki, we will have bottle-rocket launching, face painting, shows in the StarLab planetarium, and the opportunity to make a glider out of a foam plate, or to make a sundial, comet, or crater.

Both children and adults will have the opportunity to ask astronomers questions. At the Fun with Physics booth, you can explore the physical laws of spinning objects. In the CAVE, you will have the opportunity to explore a 3-D virtual environment. The Pacific Aviation Museum is bringing its P-40 flight simulator. There will be many other activities and displays. Please join us.

www.ifa.hawaii.edu/open-house/

IfA Manoa Open House

On the evening of April 14, there will be a total lunar eclipse visible in Hawai‘i. The IfA will hold eclipse parties for the public at Kapi‘olani Park (soccer field on Paki Ave. near Monsarrat) and behind the Kahuku Public Library beginning at 7:00 p.m. until 11:30 p.m. to give the public an opportunity to see the eclipsed Moon and other celestial sights through telescopes and binoculars.

Though the eclipse will start at 6:53 p.m., it will not be visible until 7:58 p.m., and the most interesting part, when the Moon will be very dark and possibly blood red, will take place from 9:06 p.m. to 10:24 p.m.

You may hear media reports saying the eclipse is on April 15, but in Hawai‘i it is on April 14, so don’t miss it!

April Lunar Eclipse

Upcoming Eventsinformation online:

www.ifa.hawaii.edu

Please check with the sponsoring organization to confirm times and locations for all events.

O‘ahu Events: call (808) 956-8566

Sunday, April 6, Mānoa Open House, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the IfA, 2680 Woodlawn Drive in Mānoa. Family event with activities for all ages. Free.

Monday, April 14, Lunar Eclipse Viewing, 7:00 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. at Kapi‘olani Park and Kahuku Library. Free. More information:

Saturday, May10, Sheraton Waikiki Explorers of the Universe public lecture: Prof. Alex Filippenko (UC Berkeley), "The Big Bang Theory, Inflation, and the Multiverse: An English Major's Introduction to the Birth and Early Evolution of the Universe," UH Mānoa Kennedy Theatre, 7:30 p.m. Ticket information:

Maui Events: call (808) 573-9516 Maui Maikalani Community Lectures usually occur on the second Friday of the month.

Hawai‘i Island Events: email: fujihara@ifa.hawaii.eduFor Hawai‘i Island events, see

Saturday, May 3, AstroDay, a celebration of astronomy and Hawaiian culture, Prince Kuhio Plaza, Hilo, Free. 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

VISITING MAUNAKEA

The Onizuka Center for International Astronomy Visitor Information Station (VIS) at Hale Pohaku (9,200-foot level of Maunakea) is open daily, 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m.

Na Kilo Hoku“The Ones Who Look to the Stars”

No. 50 • 2014Published by

The University of Hawai‘i

Institute for Astronomy

www.ifa.hawaii.edu

Günther Hasinger IfA Director

Louise H. Good Editor

Karen Teramura Design/Production

Roy Gal Education & Outreach

Na Kilo Hoku is also online:www2.ifa.hawaii.edu/newsletters/

UH Institute for Astronomy2680 Woodlawn DriveHonolulu, HI 96822-1839IN

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When the Keck I and Keck 2 telescopes of the W. M. Keck Observatory were completed on Maunakea

in 1993 and 1996, respectively, UH received a percentage of observing time on each telescope, but not

representation on the Board of Directors of the California Association for Research in Astronomy,

which governs Keck. Last year, this changed, and these changes are now bearing fruit. UH now has a

nonvoting representative at Board of Directors meetings and two representatives, rather than one, on

the Science Steering Committee. We also have an IfA co-principal investigator on the proposal to the

National Science Foundation to fund the next generation of adaptive optics for Keck, and we are

looking forward to extending our cooperation to build additional instruments for these two telescopes.

This is very advantageous for UH and IfA.

I wish to say aloha and thank you to outgoing Keck Director Taft Armandroff for all his hard work

and success since assuming the Keck directorship in 2006. During his tenure, the observatory

continued to be a global leader in optical and infrared astronomy. Armandroff is stepping down as of

June 1 to become a professor at the University of Texas at Austin and director of its McDonald

Observatory.

I am also glad to note that on February 20 the University of Hawai‘i Board of Regents approved the

Scientific Cooperation Agreement and the associated sublease for the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT),

the penultimate approval required before construction can begin.

Please join us at our Manoa Open House on April 6 and to view the total lunar eclipse on April 14.

From the Director

Günther Hasinger