NAOJ Mizusawa Campus

NAOJ Mizusawa Campus, in Oshu City, Iwate Prefecture, traces its roots back to 1899, when it began life as one of the world's six International Latitude Observatories.

About NAOJ Mizusawa Campus

NAOJ Mizusawa Campus is a research site of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, located in Oshu City, Iwate Prefecture, near latitude 39°8'N. It was formed in 1988 through the merger of the Tokyo Astronomical Observatory, the International Latitude Observatory of Mizusawa, and part of Nagoya University's Research Institute of Atmospherics.

History

The site's origins go back to 1899, when it was established as the International Latitude Observatory of Mizusawa, one of only six such observatories set up worldwide to monitor the wobble of the Earth's axis through precise latitude measurements. That original observatory became the core of today's NAOJ Mizusawa Campus following the 1988 merger that brought together several Japanese astronomical and geophysical research groups.

Telescopes & research

Mizusawa Campus today focuses on VLBI (Very Long Baseline Interferometry), radio astronomy, geodesy, selenodesy, galactic astronomy, and planetary science. Its key facility is VERA (VLBI Exploration of Radio Astrometry), a network of four remote-operated 20-metre radio telescopes located in Oshu City, Satsumasendai City in Kagoshima, Ogasawara Village in Tokyo, and Ishigaki City in Okinawa, combined into an array with an effective diameter of 2,300 kilometres. Data from the network is processed at the VLBI Correlator based at Mizusawa. The campus also hosts OSAM, a public science museum run by Oshu City, giving visitors a window into the site's astronomical work.

Location & getting there

The campus sits in Oshu City, Iwate Prefecture, in the Tohoku region of northern Japan, part of Asia. Its location was originally chosen for latitude observation work, and it remains a dedicated astronomical and geodetic research site to this day.

Visiting NAOJ Mizusawa Campus

The OSAM science museum on campus is open to the public for astronomy education, and further visiting details are available on the observatory's official website, miz.nao.ac.jp.

See your named star from here

NAOJ Mizusawa Campus works with the same coordinate systems, right ascension and declination, that pinpoint every star named through Star Register, so its exact position in the sky is well within reach of the kind of precision instruments used here. Browse the catalogue to find a star, or choose a naming package to name one yourself.