Randi Brennon was prepared to see unfamiliar scenes when she took to the skies aboard NASA’s airborne observatory earlier this month, but she never expected to come in contact with an aspiring astronomer with ties to the isles.

"It was pretty funny because he just looked so familiar, and at first I was thinking (I knew him)," the Pahoa middle school teacher said last week regarding Ryan Lau, a 25-year-old Cornell University Ph.D. student who grew up in Manoa and Nuuanu.

"I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, he just looks like home,’" she said.

Brennon, who teaches at Hawaii Academy of Arts and Sciences, flew aboard NASA’s California-based Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, dubbed SOFIA, overnight Sept. 11-12 as part of the aircraft’s Airborne Astronomy Ambassadors program.

"Our job really was to be an ambassador; so to learn as much as we could about what they were doing and be able to talk about it to the public and inspire kids to pursue those kind of careers," she said.

Lau, who is a fourth-year graduate student at Cornell, said it was unique to run into a Hawaii teacher aboard SOFIA.

"It was pretty crazy," he said in a phone interview from California while waiting to embark on another nighttime trek above the clouds last week. "A lot of people have been (to Hawaii) and worked there a lot, but it’s pretty rare for someone from Hawaii to be really into that (astronomy)."

Lau said he’s been aboard SOFIA about eight times as part of an ongoing astronomical research project aimed at better understanding a loosely formed ring of dust and gas that orbits a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy.

"It’s something that’s one of a kind in our galaxy," he said. "What we’re looking at is life and events that happened there 25,000 years ago. It might not even be there right now, but we won’t know until 25,000 years after — that’s also one of the crazy things."

Lau said he’s been working on the project — which also involves observing an estimated 7-million-year-old cluster of extremely bright, massive stars near the dust cloud and black hole — since his second semester at Cornell. Before attending the school, he graduated from ‘Iolani School in 2006 and earned a physics degree from Reed College in Portland, Ore.

"That initial fascination (with space) draws you in," Lau said of his decision to study the sky. "Astronomy’s really interesting because there’s so many things that we just don’t know."

SOFIA is the world’s only flying astronomical observatory and home to the largest-ever flying telescope. Because the aircraft flies up to 45,000 feet, scientific instruments aboard are able to gather images above more than 99 percent of Earth’s atmospheric water vapor and other infrared-absorbing gases.

Observing at infrared wavelengths is useful because distant objects are speeding away from Earth and therefore undergoing a "red shift" from the Doppler effect.

Brennon described the modified Boeing 747 as looking like the inside of an airplane that had its seats removed and replaced with a computer lab and tables.

She said she enjoyed meeting Lau and that she plans to invite him to speak to her students. At one point, she said, she asked him whether he felt particularly smart or gifted growing up, and "he said, no, he just had good teachers and good opportunities, and he took them."

"I really appreciated that because I feel like I can go back and tell my kids, you know, ‘You can do this; you can actually do this,’" Brennon said.

Lau said students interested in space-related careers should never stop asking questions — because curiosity drives science — and never limit themselves.

"Ultimately what it comes down to is just putting the effort in," he said. "It’s important to sort of immerse yourself in it as much as possible, get involved in it, look for opportunities. … It really just comes down to your own personal drive to accomplish these things."