Astronomy on Tap Hawai’i 3 July 2025

Join us for Astronomy on Tap on Thursday, July 3rd from 7–9 pm at Hilo Town Tavern! Enjoy an evening of stellar talks by Trinity Parascandola and Suzanne Zhang, plus games, drinks, and plenty of time for conversation.

Trinity Parascandola****

What do ancient Polynesian voyagers and future astronauts have in common? The answer might be sweet potatoes and taro. As NASA prepares to return humans to the Moon through its Artemis missions, scientists and students are exploring how to grow food in space to support long-term lunar living. At the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo, a student team called the Lunar Vulcans is working to grow traditional Hawaiian canoe plants, like ʻuala (sweet potato) and kalo (taro), in a volcanic medium that’s similar to what you’d find on the Moon. These plants, once carried across vast oceans in canoes, are now being studied for their resilience and potential to thrive beyond Earth. The team is designing a specialized lunar growth chamber as part of this innovative project, and has participated in the NASA MINDS competition. Could these hardy Hawaiian crops help feed the first moon settlers in over 50 years?

Trinity Parascandola recently graduated from the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo with a degree in Astronomy and Physics. During her time as a student, she engaged in several research projects, including analyzing lunar soil spectra from the Apollo missions and contributing to the Lunar Vulcans team, where she rose to the role of team lead. Trinity is passionate about cultural astronomy and has spent over two years working at the ʻImiloa Astronomy Center as a Planetarium Operator, where she shares her knowledge of astronomy and wayfinding with the public and local schools. She also recently joined the operations team at the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) through the East Asian Observatory.

Suzanne Zhang****

Have you ever looked up at the night sky and wondered why the stars twinkle? The famous painting by Vincent van Gogh, The Starry Night, explains why it is. The Earth’s atmosphere consists of pockets of air with different temperatures and thus different index of refraction. It distorts the incoming starlight and bends the light in different directions dynamically, making the stars look as if they are blinking at you. Despite how pretty it is seen by our naked eye, the twinkling makes astronomical observations more difficult. Therefore, we use a technique called adaptive optics (AO) to negate the effect of the atmosphere to obtain better image resolution in astronomical observations. This presentation will offer a detailed explanation of how AO works.

Suzanne Zhang is a 5th year PhD student at the Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii at Manoa. Her primary research is in astronomical instrumentation, specifically adaptive optics. She works with Mark Chun on developing a new generation of adaptive secondary mirrors, and with Christoph Baranec on a robotic and self-driving adaptive optics system called Robo-AO-2.