My name is Ryoko Ishioka. I am a Japanese astronomer working at Subaru Telescope. I was born in Hiroshima Prefecture in Japan. After I finished high school, I moved to Kyoto and studied science and astronomy at Kyoto University for 10 years. I just finished my PhD course last March and have worked at Subaru Telescope since last May.

Journey Week is a good opportunity for me, because I have no experience in the field of education and outreach, except for assisting with annual open days at the university observatory. I am looking forward to visiting classrooms.
My research subject is a special kind of variable stars, called cataclysmic variables. They change their brightness on timescales from seconds to years and often become 100 times brighter than their usual values. These change can be detected by small telescopes or binoculars (or even by naked eyes sometimes). Thus not only professional astronomers but also many amateur astronomers are observing cataclysmic variables.

If I have enough time, I want to talk about cataclysmic variables in addition to the general topics of how large, how beautiful, and how interesting the universe is. I am glad if someone in the classrooms are interested in astronomy, especially in cataclysmic variables.