The University of Tokyo Atacama Observatory (TAO) Project is to construct the 6.5m optical-infrared telescope at summit of Cerro Chajnantor, an altitude of 5,640 m (18,500 ft) in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. As the construction work at the telescope site progresses, and the summit facilities including the enclosure have been completed, a commemorative ceremony was held on April 30, 2024 in Santiago, the capital of the Republic of Chile, to celebrate the completion of the TAO telescope site and to pray for safety and success in the operation of the TAO telescope. Link to Graduate School of Science.
A research group led by Shinji Fujita, a Research Fellow at the Graduate School of Science, University of Tokyo, has identified approximately 140,000 interstellar molecular clouds from detailed observations of the Milky Way galaxy using the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan's Nobeyama 45m radio telescope. Using artificial intelligence, they estimated the distance of each of the clouds, calculated the size and mass of interstellar molecular clouds in the Milky Way galaxy, and successfully drew the most detailed distribution of interstellar molecular clouds in the Milky Way galaxy's disk. This research is expected to have an impact on various astronomical studies, such as the calculation of the frequency of "collisions between interstellar molecular clouds," which are considered important events in creating large stars and star clusters.
Since 2007, astronomers have been observing fleeting bursts of bright, energetic radio waves lasting milliseconds to microseconds in space. They call them Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs). But what produces these high-energy bursts baffles astronomers. To understand the origins of FRBs, a team of scientists led by Bunyo Hatsukade, an Assistant Professor at the University of Tokyo, probed the molecular gas of their host galaxies.
Video observations by Tomo-e Gozen have discovered 22 very fast and powerful optical flares from red dwarfs, which have been difficult to be detected. Such very fast and powerful flares are likely to be produced by instantaneous energy release of strong magnetic fields, potentially giving an impact on planetary habitability around red dwarfs.
Tomo-e Gozen carried out video observations of 60 tiny (diameter less than 100 m) near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) and successfully derived rotational periods and axial ratios of 32 NEAs. The distribution of the tiny NEAs in a diameter and rotational period (D-P) diagram is truncated around a period of 10 s. The dependence of the tangential YORP effect on the rotational period potentially explains the observed pattern in the D-P diagram.
Tomo-e Gozen and the X-ray telescope NICER on the International Space Station carried out simultaneous high-speed observations of the dwarf nova SS Cyg. Highly correlated optical and X-ray variations and optical lags ranging from 0.3 to 3.1 s were successfully detected.
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