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To Our Readers
VISITING the new Subaru Telescope, one of 13 at the summit of Mauna Kea, left me impressed by Japan's huge investment in pure science here in Hawaii and groggy from oxygen deprivation. At 14,000 feet, air thins out to 60 percent of what we usually breathe, making this week's day trip a cold, queasy experience. Very high tech,
Hawaiian styleThe Subaru -- pronounced "soo-BAH-roo" -- is not named after the company that built my wife's station wagon. It's the Japanese name for a star cluster also known as the Pleiades or Seven Sisters. Its full title is National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.
At the risk of sounding like Carl Sagan, I'll rattle off some numbers:
The primary mirror is 27 feet across and weighs 23 tons, the largest one-piece telescope mirror in the world. Made by Corning in Canton, N.Y., it took three years to fabricate and four more to polish.
Although it is eight inches thick, the mirror can flex like a contact lens, so 261 computer-controlled "actuators" support it, maintaining its precise shape as the telescope tracks celestial objects.
The entire telescope weighs 555 tons and lives in a 140-foot tall cylindrical building designed to channel the wind to minimize atmospheric image distortions.
About once a month, they remove the mirror to clean off accumulated dust with blasts of carbon dioxide and, once a year, they completely redo the reflective surface, using a vacuum chamber the size of a two-car garage.
Although still under construction, they say Subaru's early results are already as good or better than any other telescope's on earth, or even the Hubble's in space. For example, as Sagan would say, it has photographed a quasar billions and billions of light years away -- 14 billion in fact -- on the edge of the universe.
So, why spend billions and billions of yen to build a telescope in Hawaii instead of, say, atop Mount Fuji?
Mauna Kea is ideal, enjoying 240 cloud-free nights a year, low humidity and dark skies free of light from nearby cities.
Too bad about the thin air.
John Flanagan is editor and publisher of the Star-Bulletin.
To reach him call 525-8612, fax to 523-8509, send
e-mail to publisher@starbulletin.com or write to
P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, Hawaii 96802.