Koichi Itagaki, 75 is an ardent chaser of Supernova.
A resident of, Yamagata, Japan, 290 kilometres north of Tokyo, Koichi Itagaki is an amateur astronomer and semiretired snack food executive, according to Science.
Skimming the sky and hunting for supernova has been his long-time hobby. His keen observance and passion towards it have made him a 'Star' among the astronomers' community, Science said in a piece headlined "The Starwatcher."
Below is an excerpt from the article on the amateur astronomer carried by Science.
Though he completed his formal education only till high school, he has co-authored a couple of dozen scientific papers and he is the most sought-after person for astronomical data.
He has his private observatory in the hills above his home which is equipped with dozen monitors used to control seven telescopes at three locations across Japan.
Itagaki monitors each telescope that focuses on more than 1000 galaxies. He closely checks the exposure for a few seconds and moves on to the other. On that cloudy night, he left home as the sky was blanketed with clouds. However, the telescopes were put on auto.
SN 2023ixf, the universe’s newest exploding star
While scanning the overnight's image the next morning, he spotted a new, bright object in a spiral arm of the Pinwheel galaxy, 21 million light-years away. It was so bright that it can never be missed.
Surprisingly, he was the first to post the news to the Transient Name Server (TNS), the International Astronomical Union’s database of new celestial objects. As word spread on TNS and the Astronomer’s Telegram, an email alert service, professionals and amateurs alike began pointing their instruments toward SN 2023ixf.
Such discoveries are routine for him and SN 2023ixf is his 172nd supernova.
“I am not an astronomer,” says Itagaki
Cheerful, friendly, and easy-going, Itagaki is trim with white hair and rimmed bifocals, with a great sense of humour. He says that his search for new celestial bodies is his hobby. He traces his path into astronomy to a boyhood fascination with playing with lenses. He fondly recalls how he spent his allowance on a DIY telescope kit and used it to spy on the neighbours and study the Moon a bit.
In 1963, Itagaki was amazed AT a 19-year-old Japanese amateur named Kaoru Ikeya, who discovered a comet with a more substantial homemade telescope. Within Itagaki’s hut, a framed newspaper clipping of Ikeya’s achievement hangs in homage.
After high school, Itagaki went to work at a local confectionary company, saving up to buy a 15-centimetre telescope with which he discovered his first comet at age 20. He joined Itagaki Peanuts, a snack food company started by his father, and eventually became its CEO. He is credited with being the first in Japan to sell snack “minipacks” that provide just a mouthful of peanuts, cashews, or candy-coated almonds.
As business prospered, he invested an amount worth a house to pursue his interest in astronomy. At 60, he handed over his 30- employee firm to his sons, devoting his time to astronomy. Itagaki gave up on comets and searched for supernovas when NASA set up a near-Earth object program, which enlisted major observatories to detect and track threatening celestial bodies.
Observatories of Itagaki
To escape Yamagata’s lights, Itagaki rented a plot in the hills above the city, and over time added the stainless-steel domes that now house his 60-, 50-, and 11-centimetre.
About 8 years ago he set up the second observatory in Okayama, and 5 years ago he added a third observatory with another two telescopes in Kochi, 800 kilometres away on Shikoku, the smallest of Japan’s four main islands, they are distributed such that one of them always provide a view of clear sky.
Spectacle under a close watch
Giants such as the 8.1-meter Gemini North telescope in Hawaii, NASA’s Hubble and JWST space telescopes are also observing the supernova, which will fade over the course of many months.
Analysis of the light curve suggests the exploding star was a red supergiant hundreds of times bigger than the Sun. Having exhausted its nuclear fuel, the star’s core collapsed, launching a shock wave that blew apart the star and produced a cosmic light show.
Critical data from Itagaki
''Critical data from Itagaki and other amateurs indicate an early, extra brightening of SN 2023ixf that supernova models don’t predict,'' says Howell. According to him the three possible explanations for the excess light are a precursor explosion or eruption; dense shells of material around the star, lit up by the emerging shock wave; or unusual emissions from a nonspherical progenitor star. He also adds that most of the time, supernovae had not been caught this early and SN 2023ixf is different from the previous ones.
Supernova 2006jc
Itagaki’s previous discoveries suggested it might be possible to see signs of unrest on a massive star even before it explodes. In 2004, he spotted a bright object in a spiral galaxy 77 million light-years away from Earth.
No professionals verified his sighting before it disappeared 10 days later. Itagaki periodically checked the location. In 2006, he (and two other amateur astronomers all working independently) discovered supernova 2006jc.
The explosion produced unexpected x-rays that Andrea Pastorello, an astronomer at Italy’s Astronomical Observatory of Padova, thought were a clue to the 2004 outburst. Pastorello and his team concluded that what Itagaki saw was the progenitor star shedding its outer layers in a burst of light. Those layers lit up again with X-rays 2 years later when the supernova ejecta caught up and collided with the shed material. Howell says that Itagaki`s observation of the 2004 pre-cursor event changed the perspective that stars were quiet before being a supernova.
For discovering and explaining the never-before-seen phenomenon, Pastorello’s team and Itagaki were rewarded with a paper in Nature in 2007. It was Itagaki’s first scientific publication, and Supernova 2006jc remains his most memorable discovery. Itagaki hardly bothers much about papers.
Since then, Pastorello has collaborated and worked extensively with Itagaki on many papers and says Itagaki has provided important accounts of pre-explosion data. Papers on SN 2023 are expected. Itagaki is happy that his childhood dream of being busy in the tent atop the hills with the telescopes has become a reality.