Team SKA
Takuya has been involved in the SKA project for many years; seen here visiting the SKA Organisation – forerunner of the SKAO – in the UK in 2015.
Dr Takuya Akahori – Scientist at NAOJ and SKAO The SKAO community stretches far beyond the Observatory’s current membership, with important contributions coming from partners in more than 20 countries. Among the SKAO’s prospective member states is Japan, an observer on the SKAO Council and future home of an SKA Regional Centre. The Japan SKA consortium, established in 2008, now has more than 270 scientists and engineers involved in the project. Among them is Dr Takuya Akahori, an astronomer at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) who has also been seconded to the SKAO. He spoke to us about revealing the hidden Universe, travelling the world, and sampling the traditional tipples of SKA partner countries! Let’s start with your early life, Takuya. Where did you grow up and what kind of things did you enjoy as a child?
So your interest started very early! Do you come from a scientific family?
I was born and raised in the vicinity of Tokyo, Japan, on the border between the city and the mountains. When I was a child, I often played in the river and forest, catching fishes and insects, but I dreamed of running a toy store that sold Gundam plastic models and remote control cars.
Not at all. My father was a banker and my mother was a homemaker. My parents gave me many opportunities, and through them, I became interested in science. My grandfather, although I never saw his work, was a veterinary surgeon, so maybe I have inherited a little sense of science from him!
What inspired you to follow the astronomy path? As a child, I wanted to build a time machine! When I was six years old, I received an illustrated book about space as a gift, which was my first encounter with astrophysics. In primary school, I visited the Usuda 64 m radio telescope and the Nobeyama 45 m radio telescope, and saw an immense human-made object making a loud motor sound while gazing at a single point in the sky, which made me feel romantic about the Universe. 36
C O N TA C T
In high school, I enjoyed studying physics and by that time I already dreamed of becoming an astrophysicist. I studied relativity and particle theory at university. My lab promoted X-ray astronomy, so I did theoretical research in graduate school as well as observational X-ray astronomy. Once I had the opportunity to operate the Nobeyama 45 m telescope as an assistant operator for a collaborator’s observation, and I was very impressed with the experiment. ISSUE
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