What would you want to introduce to readers in this series

Astronomers obtain most information on the universe by analyses of light from celestial objects. The most powerful and generally used analysis technique is spectroscopy, which resolve light to wavelength or frequency. A rainbow on the sky is the Sun's light resolved to wavelength by water droplets. Hence, watching a rainbow is a sort of spectroscopic observation of the Sun.

Stellar spectroscopy since 19th century has dramatically changed our understanding of the universe. Nevertheless the long tradition of stellar spectroscopy, the recent progresses in the observational technique are remarkable. Even though the principle used in the observation is the same, unprecedented data quality or efficiency of observations sometimes have opened new astronomy. This series introduces such recent topics on stellar spectroscopy.

My research field and current interests

I have been working on spectroscopy for a variety of types of stars. Stellar spectroscopy reveals not only stellar evolution and atmospheric structures, but also provides unique information on structure and evolution of galaxies, planets around stars, and so on. I'm recently working on early generations of stars, which should have been formed within several hundreds million years after the Big Bang, and contributed to the formation of first galaxies. I'm also interested in the measurements of isotope abundances in stellar atmospheres, which have crucial information on the nucleosynthesis in the universe, by increasing the quality of the spectroscopic analysis.

Data

Name

Wako Aoki

Affiliation

Division of Optical and Infrared Astronomy

Job Title

Assistant Professor

Field of Expertise

Stellar Physics, Astronomical Spectroscopy