Asahikawa Science Center "Sci-Pal", Science museum and planetarium in Asahikawa, Japan.
Asahikawa Science Center "Sci-Pal" is a science museum and planetarium in Asahikawa, Hokkaido, Japan. It is organized into themed exhibition spaces covering physics, biology, astronomy, and technology, with a planetarium and a public observatory in the same building.
Sci-Pal traces its origin to the Asahikawa Youth Science Museum, which opened in 1963 in Tokiwa Park. That museum closed on 30 January 2005, and on 23 July 2005 the facility reopened as the Asahikawa Science Center "Sci-Pal" in a new building in the Kita-Saito Asahikawa district.
The name "Sci-Pal" combines "science" with "pal", presenting the museum as a friendly companion for learning. The permanent halls are grouped by theme, including a northern-region corner with a low-temperature laboratory, an Earth corner and a space corner. In the space corner, visitors try NASA training equipment: a moon jump that simulates low gravity and a space top that simulates weightlessness.
Sci-Pal is in central Asahikawa and easy to reach by local bus or on foot from the city center. A visit covering both the exhibitions and the planetarium show takes at least half a day, as each requires a separate ticket.
Sci-Pal has a large reflecting telescope that visitors can actually operate themselves during scheduled observation sessions. These sessions do not run every day, so checking the calendar before your visit is worth the effort.
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