On February 16, a scientific event titled “Welcome to a Very Cold World & Universe” was held at Jindaiji Elementary School in Chofu, in the neighborhood of NAOJ Mitaka campus. At the event, students did scientific experiments with their parents and Yasunori Fujii (a research engineer at NAOJ), Takafumi Kojima (an assistant professor at NAOJ), Keiko Kaneko (a chief engineer at NAOJ), and Yumi Fujii (a research expert at NAOJ)

ALMA is equipped with a super-sensitive (low-noise) receiver to receive very weak radio waves from the universe. The performance of the receiver is evaluated by comparing a room-temperature signal (about 22 degrees C) and a low-temperature signal (-196 degrees C) which is cooled with liquid nitrogen. On this day, cooling experiments of various things were conducted with liquid nitrogen. The picture shows Yasunori Fujii demonstrating a cooling experiment of a rose before students.

In the lecture part, the researchers gave a presentation of a solar eclipse using a 4-dimensional digital space viewer called Mitaka, and an explanation of the ALMA telescope and its observation results obtained so far. The event was successful with the participation of 60 students and 40 parents.