Yannie was raised on the island of O‘ahu and graduated from Moanalua High School. He is currently pursuing Bachelors’ in Astronomy and Physics at the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo. He then plans to continue onto graduate school and hopes to join the research field for planetary science. In his free time, Yannie likes to play video games, read books, and go to escape rooms.
Home Island: O‘ahu, Hawai‘i Island
High School: Moanalua High School
Institution when accepted: UH Hilo
Site: Institute for Astronomy, Hilo, Hawai‘i Island
Mentor: Sébastien Vievard
Project title: Monitoring the Temperature of Subaru Telescope’s Spider Vanes During Nighttime Observations
Project Abstract:
Direct imaging of exoplanets is difficult due to the small angular separation between the exoplanets and their host star. When used together, high contrast imaging and extreme adaptive optics make exoplanet direct imaging possible. However, high-contrast instruments, like SCExAO on the Subaru Telescope, are heavily limited by the Low Wind Effect that leads to image distortion in the visible and infrared. In particular, the effect arises when the wind is below 3 m/s and a temperature gradient is created between the cool telescope spiders and the warm ambient air. To investigate this problem, we obtained temperature data of the spiders over various nights. This was done using an FLIR E85 thermal camera with a 10mm lens. The camera data was streamed to a laptop using a USB cable at the summit and remotely accessed by another computer in Hilo. Monochrome photos were taken overnight, then downloaded onto a computer and put into a temperature extraction Python code. The code scaled each pixel’s RGB values (ranging from 0 to 255) to appropriate temperature ranges. The data were then used to accurately characterize the Low Wind Effect at the structural level of Subaru. In particular, we searched for temperature variations overnight, cross-checking the temperatures against different environmental parameters. The resulting dataset will be used for a future Computational Fluid Dynamics study of the Subaru telescope’s mirror supports.