UH scientist leads mapping of Milky Way’s neighborhood

At the age of 71, with 39 years’ worth of astronomy research at the University of Hawaii, professor R. Brent Tully already was a legend. And now this:

The Thursday issue of the journal Nature features a cover story on the work that Tully led in finding the boundaries of the supercluster of galaxies that include Earth’s own Milky Way. It’s as if Tully and the international team of researchers he led followed up on the discovery of America by figuring out just how big the continent of North America is — and then gave the Renaissance world a three-dimensional map of it all.

Tully gave the supercluster a Hawaiian name to boot.

On Sept. 17, Tully will fly to Armenia, where President Serzh Sargsyan will present him with his $125,000 share of the $500,000 2014 Viktor Ambartsumian International Prize for his body of astronomy work. That does not even include the research that culminated in Thursday’s paper in Nature.

Tully will then follow up his Ambartsumian prize on Oct. 1 with a trip to Connecticut, where he’ll be awarded another $125,000 for his share of the $500,000 2014 Gruber Cosmology Prize, which also does not include the Nature research.

"The Gruber is quite prestigious and is one of the major awards in the field," said Bob McLaren, the Institute for Astronomy’s associate director. "It’s rare that someone would receive this number of prizes in such a short period of time."

McLaren neglected to mention the Wempe Award that Tully was given on June 30 at Germany’s Potsdam Observatory.

A quarter-million dollars from the Ambartsumian and Gruber prizes would certainly come in handy for a divorced father who still teaches an intermediate class called "exploration of the universe" and who drives a 13-year-old Toyota Tercel that’s on its second engine.

But there’s no exotic upgrade in Tully’s future.

He plans to donate all of his $250,000 prize money to fund an endowment at the Institute for Astronomy to bring in students, researchers and academics to further the study of astronomy in the islands.

Tully’s plans for his prize money was news to his graduate student assistant, Po-Feng Wu, 29, of Taiwan, on Wednesday.

"But it is not surprising," Wu said. "Dr. Tully has a passion for science. And he is concerned about the future of science."

Wu did not know Tully when he came to study at UH three years ago, but certainly knew of Tully’s reputation.

"He is quite famous in the field for his very important work describing the fundamental properties of the galaxies," Wu said.

At the peak of his game, Tully can now be excused for retiring at the end of a distinguished career in astronomy.

Instead, Tully laughed at the suggestion that he would do anything else but study the universe.

"I’m having too much fun right now," Tully said just before his smartphone rang with an eerie, 1950s sci-fi ring tone.

After answering the call, Tully said, "I can’t imagine what I’d rather be doing."

He started out as a physics undergrad at the University of British Columbia and thought he would become an engineer.

Instead, he found opportunity in the vast amount that was unknown about the universe, and especially about our own Milky Way galaxy.

"In the ignorance of what we knew, there was a recipe for success," Tully said.

In 1977 he helped create a fundamental methodology known as the "Tully-Fisher Relation" that’s still used today as a building block for measuring distances of galaxies.

Then in 1987 he published the "Nearby Galaxies Atlas" that describes the Milky Way’s relationship to its celestial neighbors and remains in use today.

Both works helped lead Tully and his fellow astronomers from France and Israel to make sense out of the so-called "supercluster" of hundreds of galaxies that includes the Milky Way.

Using sometimes decades-old research and modern observations from telescopes atop Mauna Kea and out in space, Tully and his team mapped the relationships, distances and outlines of various galaxies.

And they gave a Hawaiian name to the Milky Way’s supercluster, Laniakea, which means "immense heaven."

It’s an apt name for a supercluster that’s 500 million light-years in diameter and hefts the mass of 100 quadrillion suns in 100,000 galaxies.

The name Laniakea came from Nawa‘a Napoleon, an associate professor of Hawaiian language and chairman of the Department of Languages, Linguistics, and Literature at Kapiolani Community College. The name was meant to honor the Polynesian navigators who used the stars and other techniques to get to Hawaii.

But it was not the first name that Napoleon suggested.

"It was a big long name and Nawa‘a said — ‘It has your name embedded in it,’" Tully remembered. "I said, ‘That’s not going to work. We have to have a name they can pronounce in China and Africa and around the world.’"

Some of the people around the world who first hear the name Laniakea in reference to a supercluster of galaxies might one day come to the islands, courtesy of Tully’s endowment.

And that seems right to Tully’s graduate student, Wu.

"I can feel his passion about what’s coming next years ahead," Wu said. "For me, he is an example of what can happen when you find something you love. He is an inspiration."

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On the Net:

» Nature: www.nature.com/news/earth-s-new-address-solar-system-milky-way-laniakea-1.15819