A Fascinating Talk Delivered

Mr. Frederick “Bamm” Gabriana conducted a talk last January 19, 2013 about his experiences in Sokendai Asian Winter School in Tokyo, Japan. The talk was held at the Astro-1 room of the Research and Development Building.

The talk started at about 1:30 in the evening, with the room filled with RTU Bachelor of Science in Astronomy Technology students. At first, Mr. Gabriana presented a series of powerpoint presentations which are directly from the instructors of the Sokendai Winter School. The First presentation was about the scholarship offerings of Sokendai (tr. Graduate University for Advanced Studies). As they were encouraged by their instructor in Japan, Mr. Gabriana encouraged the students to take the MEXT scholarship too. The MEXT scholarship of Sokendai is by far the scholarship offer that grants a student a significant amount of allowance than the other offers. All of the students were suddenly enticed to take the scholarship but it is only recommended for 4^th year students. The next presentation afterwards was about the Strategic Exploration of Exoplanets and Disks (SEEDS) with Japan’s Subaru telescope. Various methods of detecting and observing different properties of exoplanets were then discussed such as the Radial-Velocity method, Transiting Method, Gravitational Microlensing and also Direct Imaging.

To end the discussion, Mr. Gabriana showed the students an amazing infrared image of an exoplanet that they themselves “took” and processed. Mr. Gabriana explained how they processed the image of a star GJ 178 with complex commands just to make the exoplanet GJ 178b visible. This fascinated the students especially those who are fond of astrophotography.