NAOJ Nobeyama Radio Observatory newly established an exhibition room showing the projects of the National Institutes of Natural Sciences and its affiliated institutes with posters, miniature models, movies, and others. The exhibition will be open to the public during summer in Nobeyama highlands where people can enjoy fresh and cool air for summer retreat.

The National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) is an inter-university research institute corporation dedicated to a wide variety of fields related to natural sciences, which is comprised of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ), the National Institute for Fusion Science (NIFS), the National Institute for Basic Biology (NIBB), the National Institute for Physiological Sciences (NIPS), the Institute for Molecular Science (IMS), and the Astrobiology Center.

The exhibition of the NAOJ section shows various projects such as ALMA and 4D2U Theater with a flat screen that provides stereoscopic view. ALMA exhibition includes a miniature model of the Japanese 7-m antenna with a reduction scale of 1/20, an actual Band 10 receiver developed by the NAOJ Advanced Technology Center, and a diorama model of the ALMA Array Operation Site (AOS) located at an altitude of 5000 meters in Chile.

The exhibition room is in a building which was used as observation facilities for the Nobeyama Millimeter Array (NMA) until around the mid 2000’s and thereafter for instrument tests. These old observing instruments and computers have been removed from the building and a nap room demolished to create a new wide space for exhibition. However, some of the old observing instruments such as an interferometer operation desk and dedicated high-speed computers (correlators) were preserved to be a part of the exhibition to show how observations were carried out at that time. You can feel and learn how the Japanese astronomical observation technology has been developed and extended in Nobeyama, one of the birthplaces of ALMA.

The exhibition room will be open until September 30, while 4D2U Theater will be closed a month shorter on August 30. For further details of the exhibition and program schedules of 4D2U Theater, visit the website of NINS Nobeyama Exhibition Room (Japanese only).