Connecting modern astronomy with its traditional roots — Okinawan perspective

Abstract:

Dating back several thousand years, astronomy is the oldest natural science. It has played important roles in many ancient cultures — from religious practices and timekeeping, to determining when to plant and harvest crops.

Okinawa is no exception:  an independent kingdom for over 400 years, Okinawa was the center of an international trade route, and astronomical equipment such as a water clock gate (15th century) and a Sun clock (1739 A.D.) were essential tools for marking time at Shuri castle. On the Yaeyama Islands, 250 miles south of Okinawa, residents relied on the stars rather than calendars to pace their lives. Some Okinawan folklore and folk songs center on celestial objects, including the pivotal Pleiades ("Subaru" in Japanese).

In this talk, I will first discuss the cultural and historical aspects of astronomy in my home island Okinawa and island of Hawai’i where I live now.  I will then introduce some of the current astronomical research at the Japanese 8.2m Subaru telescope on top of Mauna Kea, Hawaii, focusing on galaxy formation and evolution.

Galaxies are the basic bulging blocks of the Universe. Just like biologists study cells to understand how our body functions, astronomers study galaxies to understand the structure and evolution of our Universe.

Subaru’s new gigantic digital camera, Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) will soon start taking a cosmic census for billions of galaxies across a wide area of sky, giving us new insight into the evolutionary history and fate of the expanding Universe.

Short Biography of Yuko Kakazu, Ph.D.  Subaru Telescope

Dr. Yuko Kakazu recently joined the Subaru Telescope as an outreach specialist.  A native Okinawan, she began her journey into astronomy when she attended the NASA U.S. Space Camp program at age 13. Dr. Kakazu graduated from Tohoku University in Japan and then obtained her Ph.D. at the Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawai‘i at Manoa.  Since then, she has worked as a postdoctoral researcher in Paris, France (Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris), California (California Institute of Technology), and Chicago (University of Chicago).  Her research focuses on metal poor galaxies and distant galaxies in order to understand galaxy formation and chemical enrichment history.