Innovative Tech Applied to the Subaru Telescope Opens a Sharper View into the Universe | Matters & Bulletins

Equipped with a groundbreaking new instrument, the Subaru Telescope is opening a brand new window into the Universe, permitting astronomers to see deeper into area than ever earlier than utilizing a single telescope. The first-of-its-kind gadget, known as a photonic lantern, has set a brand new benchmark for a way scientists observe distant stars and planets.

Figure 1: Sébastien Vievard climbing on the SCExAO instrument, during which the photonic lantern is put in, to examine the purpose the place mild enters the gadget. (Credit: Sébastien Vievard/University of Hawai`i at Manoa)

The photonic lantern separates starlight into a number of channels, like breaking a musical chord into particular person notes, permitting computer systems to rebuild an ultra-clear picture. It’s a part of a brand new instrument known as FIRST-PL, developed and led by the University of Hawai`i (UH) and the Paris Observatory, and put in on the superior optics platform SCExAO (Subaru Coronagraphic Extreme Adaptive Optics) on the Subaru Telescope.

Figure 2: Photonic lantern, a specifically designed optical fiber, mounted on the FIRST-PL instrument on the Subaru Telescope. The yellow triangle signifies the trail of the sunshine getting into the lantern. (Credit: Sébastien Vievard/University of Hawai`i at Manoa)

“What excites me most is that this instrument blends cutting-edge photonics with the precision engineering done here in Hawai`i,” says Sébastien Vievard (UH/Subaru Telescope). “It shows how collaboration across the world, and across disciplines, can literally change the way we see the cosmos.”

Sharper Cosmic Views

The breakthrough observations used the brand new setup to check beta Canis Minoris (β CMi), a close-by star positioned about 60 light-years away within the course of the constellation Canis Minor.
The observations revealed that its fast-spinning fuel disk is unexpectedly lopsided, a element by no means seen till now.

“This device splits the starlight according to its patterns of fluctuation, keeping subtle details that are otherwise lost. By reassembling the measurements of the outputs, we could reconstruct a very high-resolution image of a disk around a nearby star,” says Yoo Jung Kim, a graduate scholar at UCLA, and lead creator of the research.

Figure 3: Reconstructed picture of the compact, fast-rotating uneven disc round β CMi. The white scale bar on the decrease proper marks 1 milliarcsecond — equal to a 6 foot scale on the distance of the Moon. (Credit: Yoo Jung Kim/UCLA)

The worldwide workforce included researchers from UH, UCLA, the Paris Observatory, the University of Sydney, and Subaru Telescope.

Toward Full Operation

Researchers are at present within the commissioning section, with the objective of constructing FIRST-PL obtainable to the broader scientific neighborhood inside the subsequent 12 months. Once full, it’ll turn into the first-ever commissioned photonic lantern–based mostly instrument on any telescope—a milestone for each the Subaru Telescope and the broader astronomical neighborhood.

These outcomes appeared as Kim et al. “On-sky Demonstration of Subdiffraction-limited Astronomical Measurement Using a Photonic Lantern” in The Astrophysical Journal Letters on October 22, 2025.