------------------------------------------------------------------------------- File name Size Date C o m m e n t | Astronomy & Nature | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contents in English: DALLASTX.AST (E) Attending the Texas Astronomical Society Monthly Meeting (E) The Planetariums In and Around Dallas, Texas, U.S.A. HEYDEN.RPT (E) Visiting the Heyden Planetarium in New Yok City MIR0989.TXT (E) MIR Can Be Seen in Japan Sept. 18-20 SOSKYHAS.ZIP (E) Under the Starry Skies of the South, from YAA Newsletter (1) Hongkong (2) Australia (3) Singapore (E) December Meeting of Yokohama Astronomical Association (YAA) YOKASTRO.O89 (E) Yokohama Astro. Obs. Evening - Oct. 7, 1989 Nature Text Files PSJPN815.ARC (J) Paddling & Sailing in Japan (jxWORD format) HOTARU.TXT (E/J) Fireflies (Hotaru) in Our Areas HANASHOB.TXT (E/J) Irises (Hanashobu) in Our Areas AYAME.AND (J) Finding and Growing Ayame Flowers Around Us --------------------------------------------------------------------------------Return to Big Blue Sky BBS Home PageAttending the Texas Astronomical Society Monthly Meeting
By Yoshi Mikami, Fujisawa City - 2/25/89 in Dallas, TX (This article has appeared in the May 1989 issue of the YAA Astronomical Newsletter, published by the Yokohama Astronomical Association, Yokohama, JAPAN) I have been staying in Dallas, Texas, on business since January. Dallas is the seventh largest city in U.S. However, you can drive 20 minutes out of downtown Dallas and come to a quiet hotel, surrounded by a ranch with horses and cows, where I now stay and where I eat breakfast each morning, looking at the beautiful sunrise over the completely flat landscape. On January 24, my colleagues Mark Giles and Mike Pringle brought me and Masa Tsuchiya (of Yokohama City, whom I met here) to the monthly meeting of Texas Astronomical Society of Dallas, Texas (TAS). The meeting is held each month on the third Friday. At 8:00 pm, about 80 amateur astronomers gathered at the auditorium of the Scottish Right Hospital for Children. The meeting started, under the coordination of President Mary Eads, with the reports from the special interest groups (SIGs). The Observation Sites SIG takes care of the club's two observation sites, one to two hours' drive from Dallas. Each lot at the sites has a concrete or wooden pad and can be rented for 200 to 400 dollars. This month's feature speaker was Vice President Jim Curry who talked about "Celestial Happenings---A Photographic Survey," with color slides he took, I believe, on his Celestron Super C8 Plus. He has contributed to the "Sky and Telescope" magazine many times. It is amazing that he can take such beautiful photographs in his backyard, in a large town like Dallas. Jim continued his talk from 9:00 to 10:00 pm, inviting the participants' questions. T.A.S. is the sponsoring club which holds the "Texas Star Party" in late May each year at Fort Davis, western Texas. Nearby is the MacDonald Observatory, of the University of Texas, with its 104, 84 and 36 inch telescopes. This year's T.S.P. will be held from May 29 through June 4. Unfortunately I cannot participate in this exciting event because I must go back to Japan in late March. Before the meeting and during the intermission before the feature topic of the month, the astronomy books were being sold that had been bought through The Astronomical League, a federation of astronomy clubs in U.S. "Uranometria 2000 Northern Hemisphere," for example, could be bought for 39 dollars, without tax. I was very much impressed by the club's well organized activities. I understand that we will discuss revising the constitution and by-laws of the Yokohama Astronomical Society, in our January meeting. I will bring home, for our reference, the TAS constitution and by-laws, the TAS Information Sheet and the TAS Spectrum, the club's monthly journal. End of articleThe Planetariums In and Around Dallas, Texas, U.S.A.
By Yoshi Mikami, Fujisawa City - 3/19/89 in Dallas, TX (This article has appeared in the June 1989 issue of the YAA Astronomical Newsletter, published by the Yokohama Astronomical Association, Yokohama, JAPAN) In my last report, I talked about the Texas Astronomical Society. In this report, I would like to discuss the planetariums in Dallas. The Dallas district, including Fort Worth 45 kilometers to the west, is called Dallas/Fort Worth or "Metroplex" and is the largest city in the southwestern U.S.A. There are three planetariums in Dallas/Fort Worth. The planetariums at the Museum of Science and History, Fort Worth, and at Richland College, Dallas, have old Spitz Laboratories projectors that use black steel balls with a lot of holes which, when projected by a lamp inside, show blurred image of stars on the dome screen. They both, however, have laser light equipment which is used in the "Laser Shows," where you can enjoy computer graphics projected on the dome screen, together with classical, jazz or rock music in the background. There is an OMNI Theater at the Museum of Sience and History, that is very similar to the planetarium at the Yokohama Science Museum, with the 180 degree screen, from top to bottom. This ONMI Theater, unfortunately for the astronmy buffs, shows motion pictures for science-oriented, but general entertainment. The best of the three planetariums is at Science Place II in Dallas. It is located in State Fair Park, a cultural green belt, where there are the music hall, the science museums, the aquarium and the famous Cotton Bowl stadium in which a college football game is played on New Year's Day. When I visited the park in March 1989, the great Egyptian exhibit of "Ramses the Great" had just started in the Automobile building. And the park was full of early spring flowers such as daffodils, pansies and white flowers on little trees which to me looked like cherry blossoms. Minolta's MS-8 Projector (established in 1971), which uses lenses to show clearer image of stars, was in the middle of the dome. This month's show was "Egypt's Eternal Skies," a 30 minute presentation of the sun-god "Ra" in ancient Egypt, the flooding of the Nile every July, the temple which was built to predict this flooding by observing Serius in the eastern skies before dawn, the hole dug into the pyramid with the intention that the dead king could observe the immobile north star (different from today's North Star, Polaris), etc. The dome is about 24 feet (8.4 meters) in diameter and can accomodate about 60 people. It is such a small facility compared to the Sunshine Planetarium in Tokyo which uses Minolta MS-18 Projector (established in 1979) in a 17-meter diameter dome, accomodating up to 300 people. Very interesting for me to see was the original Spitz A-I Planetary Projector, on display at the Science II building, that was used here since 1956. The A-I projector is actually in the size that you can embrace easily with your two arms. The question is why planetariums are so unpopular in Dallas, a city where the parents work in such hi-tech companies as Texas Instruments, a city near to Houston where the Manned Space Mission Control is located? Even Fujisawa City where I live outside of Tokyo will have a decent municipal planetarium this year. As has been said since the late 1950s, do the entire United States have difficulty in science education? Or is it better to spend the money for science education on acquiring personal computers, with the assumption that we learn the movement of stars and planets in the "personal computer planetarium" at school? Isn't it better for Fujisawa City to spend that kind of planetarium money to introduce personal computers in school? These are the questions that cannot be answered easily by a non- professional whose only experience in science education is having seen three local planetariums in U.S. I was merely trying to re- discover during my business trip the beauty I had seen at the Gotoh Planetarium in Tokyo during my college days. End of articleMIR Can Be Seen in Japan on Sept. 18,19 and 20
(Uploaded to The Space Board BBS 045-832-1177) Yesterday's major newspapers in Japan, including the Asahi Shimbun, reports a story about the forecast done by Yoshiro Yamada of Yokohama Science Center (Sysop of this BBS) that the Soviet Union's Mir Space Station can be observed in the southern sky on Sept. 18 at 6:00pm Japan Standard Time, in the southeastern sky on Sept 19 at 6:18pm and in the northern sky on Sept. 20 at 6:56pm. Mir should be moving slowly for about one minute, with brightnes of Magnitude 1. This forecast was done by Yoshiro on his super-minicomputer at YSC, according to the story. The articles were accompanied by a handsome picture of Yoshiro. Unfortunately, it rained yesterday evening in this area and no one could observe Mir. A model of Mir (meaning "Peace" or "World" in Russian) is on display at the Soviet Union section of the International Pavilion at Yokohama EXPO now underway near the Port of Yokohama and is one of the many very popular attractions there. I happended to be seeing and entering Mir on Sept. 16 at the Expo site with the members of Yokohama Astronomical Association, and to visit Yoshiro on Sept. 17 at YSC with a Canadian visitor. Yoshi Mikami, Sysop of Big Blue BBS 0466-24-6090 09/19/89Under the Starry Skies (of the Planetariums) of the South
"Under the Starry Skies of the South" (Hong Kong, Australia and Singapore), originally written in Japanese by Yoshi Mikami, Fujisawa, Japan, was published in Yokohama Astronomical Association Circular and uploaded in FSPACE Forum of NIFTY-Serve. Its English translation (see the bottom half of this file) was done by the author in Taipei, Taiwan, and was uploaded to Asia Link Forum of International FidoNet. The author can be contacted on Modem Way BBS 3:720/13.(1) Hong Kong
By Yoshi Mikami, Fujisawa, Japan 03/01/90 English translation of the original Japanese text by the author in Taipei, Taiwan 07/15/90 Late last November, I had a quick trip to Hong Kong, Australia and Singapore. I had to attend an international conference of computer usage in Sydney to which the key subsidiaries in Asia and Oceania of the company that I work for sent their represen- tatives, and visited Hong Kong on the way there and Singapore on the way back. I was so busy everyday at that time that I had difficulty in finding time to prepare for this conference, and was in office working on November 23, a national holiday in Japan (Culture Day). Further, a friend of mine had lent me an IBM 5499 On-Line Note notebook PC, which made me busier because I had to learn how to use its built-in modem (2400 bps/ MNP 5), so that, when I hopped on a flight to Hong Kong, I suddenly realized I had left the star charts and binocular at home. I was anxcious to see the southern stars of the season, such as Hoku-Raku-Shi-Mon (Fomalhaut or Alpha Piscis Austrini), because Hong Kong is on 22 degrees in latitude, a little south of the Tropic of Cancer. However, it was a rainy and later cloudy night, and I could not see the stars. I stayed at the Kowloon Hotel on Nathan Road, a busy street, on the peninsula side, within a few minutes' walk from which was the Hong Kong Space Museum and its main attraction, the Planetarium. It has a dome of 300 people capacity with the star projector made by Carl Zeiss. The explanation was done in Cantonese, a rather soft dialect compared to the harsh Beijing dialect, with English naration available from the headphone. The Cosmic Perils was the program I wanted to see, but the tickets were sold out on the busy Saturday. Instead, I saw The Beavers, a nature movie picture, taken in Canada. The constellations of the late fall, however, were introduced before the movie show. The dome of the planetarium is enclosed in another bigger dome, on which the astronomical stories are displayed. I was quite impressed with most of the displays there: the astronomical history, for example, was showed with the Western astronomical achievements on the upper half and the Oriental, mainly Chinese, astronomical achievements on the lower half. There was a statement: "In the fourth century B.C., Shi Shen made the world's first star chart." I didn't know that. Also interesting to me was how the Western names, such as Copernicus, Galilei and Newton, were written in Chinese characters. "Love- Cause-Thus submitted the Special and General Theories of Relativity." You now know who it was! At the planetarium shop, I bought a "rotary star chart" (planisphere). It shows the Southern Cross very clearly, compared to a typical planisphere sold in Japan in which the Southern Cross is hidden in the horizon. It, however, was probably for the elementary shool children, because it does not have the proper ecliptic line, etc. Some of the Chinese constellation names are the same as the names that we use in Japan (Ursa Major, Ursa Minor and Leo), but the others are: Flying Horse (Pegasus) and Heavenly Lizzard (Scorpion), that I could guess; and Fairy Lady (Andromeda), Fairy Woman (Cassiopeia), Fairy King (Perseus) and Secluded Lady (Virgo), that made me think a little bit. Hong Kong, an area of half the size of Metropolitan Tokyo, with a population of six million, will return to China in 1997, and is relatively unstable, I felt. Both Kowloon Peninsula and Hong Kong Island are a big metropolitan city and not a good place to watch stars. Maybe, I could have visited one of the 235 islands in order to watch stars. I came back to the hotel that night, made a quick report with my notebook PC, called up a TYMNET port and sent the report to Japan. From "YAA Astronomical Circular (Tenmon Kaihoh)," March, 1990, of Yokohama Astronomical Association, Japan(2) Australia
By Yoshi Mikami, Fujisawa, Japan 05/08/90 English translation of the original Japanese text by the author in Taipei, Taiwan 07/15/90 In late November when I visited Sydney, they had already started the Day Light Savings Time and would offcially enter the summer season from Dec. 1. The school would go on vacation from mid-December to early February. I had two consecutive cloudy nights, a rare occasion in this area, and met with the starry, southern skies only on the third night. Orion and Canis Major were just above my head, and Gemini and other familiar constallations were seen upside down in the nothern sky. In the southern part of the sky, the stars rise from the east (the left side as you face the south) and go clockwise around the Southern Celestial Pole. I had hard time in trying to find the names of the constellations, because there are no major stars near the Southern Pole and because I had left my star chart at home in Japan. With the help of the simple Southern Skies chart on my astronomy pocket diary, which I always carry, I could barely found that Canopus, Achernar and Fomalhaut can be connected almost in a straight line, in the southern skies. On the following evening, I changed my strategy: I declined my friends' invitation to have dinner together, went to bed early and got up early in the morning at 3:00am. I went out to the swimming pool and sat on the chair on the poolside. I was so excited when I saw Southern Cross having risen in the south- eastern sky, with the "Sham Southern Cross" just above it,and the three constellations of the Ship Argo (Compass, Stern and Sails) marching along in mid-skies. The constellations I saw were in general those of the spring sky, as I know them: Leo, Virgo and Centaurus. I sat there, watching the sky enchanted, till 5:00pm or so, when the unfamiliar southern birds started noisy songs of dawn in the tall southern trees nearby. On Thursday, we had some spare time in the international conference that we were attending, and went to Koala Park Sanctury in the nearby town of West Pennant Hills. We, from Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Japan, Korea Taiwan and Hong Kong, enjoyed ourselves like kids, having sandwich for lunch, feeding kangaroos and taking pictures, holding koalas or wombats in our arms. The Australians still live in the good old days, when the stores are closed on Sundays and after 5:00pm on the other days. The only exception is Thursdays when the stores are open till 9:00pm, Thursdays being the days when they receive weekly salaries. I went to a nearby shopping center and bought some astronomy books at the bookstore. I found in "Guide to Australian Astronomy," an annual issue, good description of the aborigins' artifacts of astronomical observation, the discovery (by the Westerners) of the Magellanic Clouds, the Anglo- Australian Optical Telescope (4 meters) at Siding Springs, and the Australian Telescope Group at Narabri. Australia, along with Capetown, Soth Africa, in the old days, or Chili in South America now, is the keystone of the southern sky observation. The Australians, too, should be having difficulty in finding the South Pole, lacking the stars like Cassiopeia, Big Dipper and Little Dipper to find North Star. According to David Ellyard's article in this Guide, there are four ways to find the South Pole: (1) Extend the larger line of Southern Cross by 3.5 times (2) Connect Alpha and Beta Centauri (called the Pointers) and, from its mid-point, draw a perpendicular line till this line hits the line defined in (1) (3) Find the mid-point of Southern Cross and Achernar (4) Define the third point in making an equilateral triangle with Large and Small Magellanic Clouds Methods (1) through (3) cannot be used unless Southern Cross is in sight. (In the northern hemisphere, when Big Dipper is below the horizon, Cassiopeia is above the horizon.). Method (4) cannot be employed in a city like Sydney. Frankly, you should not go to Australia, without any preparation, as I did. After I returned to Japan, I found an excellent book by Fumitoshi and Tatsuji Isogai, "The Starry Skies of Southern Cross" (in Japanese), published by Chijin Shokan, Tokyo, 1984. It is based on these brothers' experience of living in various parts of Australia for 12 months from January, 1980. It's such a good book, full of beautiful pictures and tips on where and when to observe stars in Australia, that you have a feeling of actually seeing the Australian nightly skies, without moving there. It was a pity that there was no planetarium in Sydney. There seems to be a small one in Bondi Junction in Sydney's south- western suburb, but, when I called, there was only an answering machine, telling me: "If a school teacher would like to make an appointment, etc." It's probably a small planetarium for the sckool children. Sydney is a beautiful town full of nature. Why would they need a planetarium which only create the artificial sky? However, it's a large city and suffers from the bright lights. Next time when I come to Australia on business, I will take vacation after work and go visit Alice Springs in the middle of the continent, where I will see Ayers Rock, the world's largest monolith and, on my way back, meet the night sky in the desert, with the stars falling on me! I, of course, summarized an astronomy report on my notebook PC and immediately sent it over to Japan through a modem. From "YAA Astronomical Circular" (in Japanese), May, 1990, of Yokohama Astronomical Association (Slightly modified by the author 5/13/90)(3) Singapore
By Yoshi Mikami, Fujisawa, Japan 05/13/90 English translation of the original Japanese text by the author in Taipei, Taiwan 07/15/90 Singapore was my most favorite of the three countries I visited late last November. It's an island country of about the same size as Awaji Island, with a 2.6 million multi-racial population which need the subway announcement in English, mandarine Chinese, Malay and Tamil. I had the impression that it is politically stable, economically thriving, and safe. I did not enjoy fine days for good astronomical observation, as in Hong Kong, because they were in the rainy season between late November through Chinese New Year (early February). The planetarium is located in the Singapore Science Center, within ten minutes' walk from Jurong East subway station, about 30 minutes west from the center of town. It is an amphitheater- type building with a 276 people capacity and houses a Spitz Laboratory planetary projector, made in U.S.A. I wanted to see The Hidden Universe show, which describes the particles world to the expanse of the universe, but, because of the scheduling problem, saw The Beaver, the same movie I saw at the planetarium in Hong Kong. There must be a worldwide distribution network of the planetarium/OMNIMAX movies. This particular movie picture was made by the funds from the Chubu Electric Power Company, Japan's third largest electric power company, which serves Nagoya City and its vicinities. I wasn't much impressed by the displays beside the planetarium because, except one or two Chinese astronomy displays, they were mostly on Copernicus, Galileo, Newton and other Western astronomy. I had expected displays reflecting the multi-racial culture and unique astronomy, but apparently the whole thing must have been designed by a Westerner. Singapore is a young country, without much of the infra-structure found in Hong Kong. (By the way, are we paying any attention to the Japanese astronomical achievements in the displays at the National Science Museum, Ueno, Tokyo?) Within the planetarium building was a Cassegrain-type 40-inch reflector telescope, which had its opening ceremonies on the day before I visited. According to The Straits Times, the Minister of Education himself invited the Japanese Ambassador and other dignitaries, including Dr. Hiroshi Shimono, of the Earth Science Division of Japan's National Research Institute of Education, who gave the keynote speech. Japan probably gave the largest donation to this telescope facility. There was a small shop within the planetarium building, but the real Astro Shop is located on the second floor of the main science center building. I wanted to buy a planisphere made in Singapore, but I saw only those made in U.S.A. I thought about it a while to find that you cannot use in Singapore the type of planisphere which has a round rotating window on a round plane of the starry sky, because Singapore is located on the equator and always faces the north and south poles at the same time. Is there a good way to project a cylindar to a plane? It's a problem we must solve with our Japanese technology, for those amateur astronomers who live in Singapore, Equador, Christmas Island, and other places, just on the equator. I want to talk about Sentosa Island, although it is not related to astronomy. It is a leisure island, like Enoshima near my house in Japan, which can be accessed in ten minutes by ferry or cable car from the southern tip of the main island. There is a house on the hilltop, called The Pioneers of Singapore and Surrender Chambers. There you can see how the Malay, Indian, Chinese and Western people came to Singapore in which circumstances and, more interestingly, how the Japanese during World War II renamed Singapore as Shonan-to, made it the center of the southern part of the Southeast Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, and forced the Singaporeans to accept the radio calisthenics, neighborhood system and imperial education. In the two Surrender Chambers are the scenes of the surrenders of the British forces with the victorious General Hobun Yamashita at the beginning of the war, and of the Japanese forces at the end of the war. Since I don't know of any museum in Japan which shows the life during World war II, I must come to Singapore to get proper education. I was going to send my summary report to Japan from my notebook PC, but was prevented from doing so because I could not locate a TYMNET port in Singapore, as I did in Hong Kong and Sydney for my connection to TYMPAS and dialing-up B&B Shomokitazawa BBS, for further NetMailing to my Big Blue Sky BBS at my home. There was not enough "liberalization" of telecommunications in Singapore to allow TYMNET ports. It was Sunday, December 1, when I returned to Japan. On my way from the airport, I could see from the Tokyo-Yokohama expressway Venus and the moon in the western sky, against the white Mt. Fuji in the background (actually, foreground). There was an eclipse of Venus a little after 5:00pm on the previous day in Japan, which I missed because I was eating Teochew dishes in the Hawkers Center at Newton Circus, in Singapore. Will I have to wait till the twenty-first century to see the next eclipse of Venus? From "YAA Astronomical Circular" (in Japanese), June, 1990, of Yokohama Astronomical Association (Slightly modified by the author 05/13/90)December Meeting of Yokohama Astronomical Association (YAA)
The December, 1988, general meeting of YAA was held on Saturday, Dec. 17, 1988, 2:30-4:30 pm, at Yokohama Education and Culture Center, near JR Kannai Station. 13 attendees (including 5 female members). Agenda: 1. This summer's observation trip will be on the August 4, 5 and 6 weekend, in consideration for the phase of the moon and the meteor showers. Place: Manasul Cottage, in the northern tip of the Soutern Alps, Nagano Prefecture. Initial peak do the Perseids. 2. The Yokohama City Observation Night will be on Saturday, October 7, 6:00-8:00 pm. 3. Volunteer astronomy instructors are needed for the astronomy classes to be held at the Nishi Ward Children's Facility during the spring vacation, March 27-31. 4. Don't forget the Quadrantids in the wee hours of January 4. The January, 1989, general meeting will be held on Saturday, Jan. 21, 2:30-4:30 pm, at Education and Culture Center. We'll discuss revision of the YAA constitution and bylaws. Phone: 045-671-3717. By Yoshi Mikami 12/18/88