Welcome to Masafumi Matsumura's Page
(Last Updated on February 19, 2022, and June 4, 2025)
(Last Updated on February 19, 2022, and June 4, 2025)
============ Note on June 4, 2025 ============
Dear all,
I retired from professor of Kagawa University on March, 2025.
I would like to thank you all for your support in my academic time!
Being a professor emeritus, I will keep my research activities for a while.
Wishing you all the best, thank you again!
Masafumi Matsumura
P.S. My present e-mail address is the same as before.
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Thank you for visiting Masafumi's webpage. Masafumi Matsumura is a professor of Kagawa University, Takamatsu, Kagawa, Japan. He is an astronomer, studies light scattering by aligned nonspherical grains, and polarization of stars. He also studies Kume Tsuken (1780-1841), a scientist and engineer in Edo-era, in addition to astronomy education.
My Subject(1): Interstellar space is not a complete vacuum, but it contains gas and dust grain particles. Polarimetry of distant stars shows that the stellar light of those stars is linearly polarized, and this implies that grain particles are nonspherical and aligned in a direction. If such grains are exist in neighborhood of a star, scattered stellar light will be linearly and circularly polarized. We may deduce some information of grain properties, mechanism of grain alignment, and direction of alignment from information of polarization. I am studying polarization in astronomical objects with my colleagues, both theoretically and observationally.
My Subject(2): Kume Tsuken (1780-1841) is a scientist and engineer in Edo-era, in Sanuki. (Sanuki is an old name of Kagawa Prefecture). He studied astronomy and related fields at Hazama-Ke in Osaka, and observed comets, solar and lunar eclipses, etc. He performed many other things. I am studying with some researchers in Kagawa Prefecture about him. You may find more information from Kume's page (but sorry in Japanese).
My Subject(3): Astronomy education varies with time. In Japan, students in junior high schools learn about our Galaxy now, according to revision of the curriculum guidelines. The concepts of galaxies and our Galaxy are important to understand the universe today, and you may find such a sentence "Galaxies are to astronomy what atoms are to physics" in a book (A. Sandage "The Hubble Atlas of Galaxies"(1961). Unfortunately, you cannot see clearly those objects with naked eyes. How students, then, can learn about galaxies and understand them in class? I have not obtained a solution yet...
Kume Tsuken
(In Japanese only.
Updated on January 9, 26 and 29, 2008)
Manuscripts etc.
Links
Links to Universities, Institutions etc.
Faculty of Education
Kagawa University