Astro-ph Today

(1)
Tomo-san introduced a paper concerning the possibility of a quasar as a standard candle. Standard
candles are a useful tool in astronomy since we can use them to estimate the distances of celestial objects and even use them to explore the expansion of the Universe.  It has been and interesting issue in astronomy.

(2)
Jimmy introduced the Green Bank Telescope and its current state. If anyone intend to conduct an observation with the telescope, it may be a good choice to apply for.

(3)
Kevin presented a paper concerning AGNs and Reionization of the Universe. A model was discussed  that an AGN-dominated scenario will satisfy the some observational constrains and considered that AGNs may mainly contribute during the epoch of reionization than the active star-forming galaxies.

  

Amazing old town Jiufen

Tetsuya and his family went to an old historic town, Jiufen (九份). The name of ``九 (nine)'' originates in nine families living there in Quing dynasty. The appearance of buildings is amazing and nostalgic.

Unfortunately it was rainy but there were still so many people in spite of weekday. We saw a lot of foreign tourists, especially Japanese students. If the ancient nine families saw the current town like festivity, they should be surprised.

Jiufen is famous for tea. We enjoyed Taiwanese style tea. Our baby was looking at tea but she can not drink yet.

This is my favorite famous dessert in Jiufen, ``芋圓'' which is made by a kind of potato. They have a lot of foods and souvenirs in Jiufen. I really recommend to go to Jiefen if you have a chance. Please do not forget to take an umbrella!

 

Tomo presented his latest results from HSC data at Subaru conference in Hiroshima. He had useful discussions with renowned astronomers around the world.

Tomo again won the 3000m race on the NTHU sports day. Hope students will join him next year.

Trip to Taipei

Moto, Justin, and Tetsuya took an excursion to Taipei.

’三重’ bus bound for Taipei is quite comfortable. Wi-Fi is available on the bus.

Our trip started with a celebration of Justin's graduation in a beef noodle restaurant.

The amazing National Palace Museum. The museum is huge and they have so many exhibits.

These are only small part of items. Chinese cabbage made by jadeite. Taking photos is basically allowed as long as we don't use flash.

Learning 'Kanji'. This is the origin of '保'.

Ancient painting. Not only painting is wonderful but also Kanji is quite beautiful. Moto sometimes reviewed scores of Kanji written by hand with respect. He has ability to judge them from B- to A+.

A photo of taking a rest. The museum has nice cafeterias! There were so many people in the museum.

What is this? It is very interesting to imagine that ancient people also needed a massage tool!

After the museum, we enjoyed delicious shaved ice! Ice on November. It is not crazy because we are in Taiwan! But, of course, we got much colder. Unfortunately they don't have mango flavor in this season.

Beer always makes our body warmer. We went to an excellent Germany style restaurant in the central area of Taipei.

'Taipei 101' is the highest building in Taiwan, which has 101 floors! It was too late to go up to 101. Taipei is a big city. We don't have enough time to see everything in a day. Finally I really thank Justin for his perfect planning of this trip.

Tomo took a 2am flight to participate the AKARI workshop in Tokyo. A busy schedule, but very fruitful, with useful discussions on Kevin and Ece's work. With the new release of ver.2 of the all sky catalog, AKARI's science is heating up. Fun never ends.

Cosmology Class Review

We had Tomo's cosmology class this Tuesday.
Our weekly practice in this class is:
to have someone review on the topic discussed in the previous week.

This week I am the one responsible for the review.
And my topic is:
Comoving, Angular Diameter, Proper Motion and Luminosity Distances, and their relations.

Nowadays people usually prepare slides for presentations.
But I am not used to inserting all the Greek and mathematical symbols on the computer,
so I came out with this idea:

To write down the notes beforehand and do the review in 10 minutes.

Luckily, other students taking the class didn't find it too hard to follow.

And my job was done! :D

Weekend in NTHU Campus

NTHU has a beautiful campus with hills and lakes. We usually go to Cheng-Kung lake during the weekends. My son, Ural (21 months old), loves to feed the fishes and the turtles.

 

Sometimes we watch squirrels having lunch.

This is not special for weekends, but he also loves to watch the garbage truck, he can spend half an hour just by watching it. I appreciate the garbage collector who visits the campus so often.

We visited the Lulin Observatory

Last weekend (2016/10/05~2016/10/06), we visited the Lulin Observatory for the Observational Astronomy class. Besides, we enjoyed hiking in the mountain with the extremely beautiful scene.

The observatory is located on the top of a mountain called 鹿林前山, which is 2862-meter height.

The 1-meter telescope!

Here come some photos of mountains view

We went hiking in the first day evening.

The "moonrise"! (Unfortunately, it was full moon on that day.)

Hiking again in the second day morning. We love mountains!

Colloquium on Sept. 30, 2016

After the long summer,
we started off our first colloquium at NTHU this semester with this talk:



(It was a pity that I did not take any picture during the colloquium...
'Cause I was busy taking notes! (Scribble... scribble...) )

It was an awesome talk by our alumnus - Dr. Yen-Chen Pan (潘彥丞).

(If I did not get anything wrong...)
I summarize the talk below :)

In 2011, Perlmutter, Schmidt and Riess won the Nobel Prize in Physics
"for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe
through observations of distant supernovae."
Detailed studies on 'supernovae' are therefore important in probing the cosmic expansion.
Especially, the Type Ia Supernovae (SNe Ia), which people often call them 'standard candles'
due to the consistent peak luminosity produced.
In their work, they studied the relation between SNe Ia and their host galaxies
using high quality photometric and spectroscopic data.
They concluded that:
1. SNe are Fainter in More Massive galaxies.
2. SNe are Fainter in galaxies with Higher Metallicity.
3. SNe are Fainter in Older galaxies.
4. Metallicity may have More contributions to systematic errors than stellar mass.

It was fun having a lot of discussions and asking lots of follow-up questions
when we were having snacks at the lounge after the talk!

Well... again... I did not take any picture during the tea time...
'Cause I was busy asking questions... QAQ

(By Valerie :D)

Welcome, Ece!

There is the new member in our group. 

Ece Kilerci Eser, welcome.
She got her phD from University of Copenhagen, and now is working with us as a postdoc.

She is working on the data from AKARI all sky survey and her phD thesis is "ACTIVE GALAXIES: A Study of Local Seyferts and Ultra Luminous Infrared Galaxies" 

Abstract: http://www.nbi.ku.dk/english/research/phd_theses/phd_theses_2014/ece_kilerci_eser/

We picked her up at airport. 

Welcome to Taiwan!
Hope you like everything of this small island.

Subaru Observation 20160910-20160911

Hey, it's me Valerie. :)
I went to Mauna Kea, Hilo, in Hawaii with Ji-Jia(NTU) and Motonari for observation last week.

Hi, we (Ji-Jia and Valerie) are at Subaru.

(Motonari is the one who took the picture :P )

Heartbeat and blood pressure? Normal :)

Our supporting scientists: Josh and Ji Hoon.

Wait! Where's Tomo!??

Tomo: Hello! I'm here!

Tomo the PI zoomed with us using this machine the whole night :D

Teru teru bozu? (てるてる坊主)

They helped us with the good weather that night :)

And we finished the observation quite successfully.

This is how the 8-m telescope looks like!

Sceneries here:

JCMT and SMA (only 7 antennas?)

Subaru and Keck I, Keck II viewed from CFHT, Gemini and UH 2.2-m Telescope.

(Below are CSO, JCMT and SMA.)

Thanks for stopping by :)

We hope you can go for observation very soon.

Wow !

 <= Dani`s defence

Congratulations !