Okayama is one of the best sites for optical observations in Japan owing to the fine weather and dark sky at night, and there are rich activities related to education and public outreach of astronomy. “Okayama Science Café” is among such activities, and I was invited to Kurashiki in Okayama Prefecture as a lecturer for the event on December 13. The site for the science cafe was Salon Hashimaya, which is located at picturesque area, but is rather far from the main road with tourist attractions. The salon is a part of a very old kimono shop, and remains elegance of oldies. I talked about the history and the current status of solar system exploration in Japan. The audiences enjoyed many images and movies that I showed, particularly the movie of quadped robot for military use (this cannot be used for planetary exploration due to severe liminatation in energy consumption) that I showed as a reference.

「晴れの国」岡山は日本の光学天文学の観測サイトの一つで、天文学の教育普及に関する取り組みも充実しています。その一つの「岡山サイエンスカフェ」の招きに応じて12月13日に倉敷に行ってきました。会場となったのは「夢空間はしまや」。美観地区の、往来の多いあたりからさらに少し入ったところにある、老舗の呉服屋の一部を改装した室内は、昔ながらの倉敷の風情を残しています。今回は世話人からの求めに応じて日本の惑星探査の話を重点的にお話ししてきました。いろいろな画像などをお見せしましたが、探査ローバーの話と同時に見せた軍事用の四足歩行ロボット(エネルギー消費量に厳しい制約が付く探査ロボットとしては不適)の動画がウケたようです。
http://www2.city.kurashiki.okayama.jp/lifepark/ksc/sciencecafe/scoka16.html
http://www.hashimaya.com/

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This entry was posted on Monday, December 21st, 2009 at 3:37 am and is filed under public-lecture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.