KAVLI IPMU | THE UNIVERSITY OF TOKYO
Did you know? Maunakea is one of the best places for astronomical observations on Earth. For astronomers, minimal light pollution, high altitude, dry air, and a high percentage of clear nights produce the best results.
GOING TO EXTREMES TO STUDY STARS FROM EARTH Far from the white sandy beaches and palm trees of Honolulu, Hawaii, astronomers from around the world travel to the top of a volcano that looks like a plateau on Mars. Naoyuki Tamura, a project associate professor at the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe, has been making that same journey to the top of Maunakea to supervise the construction of a new instrument for the Subaru Telescope.
Q: You’ve been up to Maunakea many times. What is it like? A: I usually describe it as looking like Mars.
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I was a graduate student the first time I went up. The air was so thin at 4,139 metres that I got altitude sickness. My head hurt and I lost my appetite. Eventually we made it down to the dormitories at 2,800 m above sea level, but because the air was still thin, I had trouble getting to sleep. Even after we made it back down to base, it took a while before I got my appetite back.
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But even in those conditions, you have work to do and you still need to use your head. So those first trips were very challenging.
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Since then, I make sure I have three things. First, I don’t feel well when I’m cold so I make sure I am wearing warm clothes. I also feel worse if I stay hungry, so I always pack a few snacks. When I get headaches, it’s not terrible but my eyes start to hurt and my vision can get blurry, so I always make sure I have a box of aspirin on me.
Q: What does your typical workday look like on Maunakea? A: I leave the base at Hilo by 8am and head
by car to the dormitory on Maunakea at 2,800 m above sea level. There’s a half hour break there to acclimatize to the altitude. Once that is over, it is time to hop back into the car and drive up to the top of the mountain.
Further Assoc Prof Naoyuki Tamura | press@ipmu.jp information Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe University of Tokyo
Our work hours vary depending on what needs to be done that day. In general, we arrive at the summit around 10am and leave by 4pm to give the team using the telescope at night time to get organized. According to Tamura, working at a telescope has never been a 9 to 5 office job. The telescope's onsite staff can work for days leading up to a scheduled use to ensure that as many researchers as possible from around the world can carry out their observations at night. But that means all the maintenance and troubleshooting work on the telescope needs to be done during the day. That cuts into Tamura's time. Even though he is working on a next-generation science project,
