Topics March 27, 2017

9th SPSS Award Given to Dr. Joten Okamoto

The Society for Promotion of Space Science (SPSS) gave the 9th SPSS Award to Dr. Joten Okamoto, an NAOJ fellow who is engaged in research activities at the NAOJ Chile Observatory.

Events March 16, 2017

Publicizing NAOJ and Playing “Mitaka” at the AAAS Meeting

NAOJ had an exhibit booth at the 2017 Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), held from February 17 to 19 in Boston.

Science March 8, 2017

Ancient Stardust Sheds Light on the First Stars — Most distant object ever observed by ALMA

Astronomers have used ALMA to detect a huge mass of glowing stardust in a galaxy seen when the Universe was only four percent of its present age.

Topics March 3, 2017

An Extraordinary Celestial Spiral with a Twist

An international team of astronomers has found a way of deriving the orbital shape of binary stars that have orbital periods too long to be directly measured.

Topics February 28, 2017

First Public Data Release by the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program

The first dataset from the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program (HSC-SSP) was released to the public on February 27th, 2017.

Science February 24, 2017

Saturn’s Rings Viewed in the Mid-infrared

A team of researchers has succeeded in measuring the brightnesses and temperatures of Saturn’s rings using the mid-infrared images taken by the Subaru Telescope in 2008. The images are the highest resolution ground-based views ever made.

This article is including a link to a article for kids.

Topics February 17, 2017

Two Researchers in the Division of Theoretical Astronomy Receive Awards from the Inoue Foundation for Science

Two researchers in the Division of Theoretical Astronomy, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, received awards from the Inoue Foundation for Science.

Science February 8, 2017

Protostar displays a strange geometry

Using observations of molecules taken by the ALMA observatory, researchers have uncovered new clues to understanding how dust in a collapsing molecular cloud can shed angular momentum and penetrate beyond an area known as the “centrifugal barrier”.

Science February 2, 2017

Tail of Stray Black Hole hiding in the Milky Way

By analyzing the gas motion of an extraordinarily fast-moving cosmic cloud in a corner of the Milky Way, astronomers found hints of a wandering black hole hidden in the cloud.

Science January 31, 2017

Tracing the Cosmic Web with Star-forming Galaxies in the Distant Universe

A research group led by Hiroshima University has revealed a picture of the increasing fraction of massive star-forming galaxies in the distant universe.