ONAGAWA, Miyagi Prefecture -- A bit more than child's play was at work here Sept. 27 when the playground of the Onagawa Daini Elementary School was lit up like the night sky.
ONAGAWA, Miyagi Prefecture -- A bit more than child's play was at work here Sept. 27 when the playground of the Onagawa Daini Elementary School was lit up like the night sky.
Children, armed with hand-held light-emitting diodes (LEDs), placed the devices around the yard to mirror various constellations.
The project brought a ray of light into their lives after the dark months that followed the Great East Japan Earthquake.
This town in northeastern Japan was badly battered by the quake and the tsunami it spawned.
Fourth-graders at the school, helped by friends from another school in Onagawa, had huge fun creating the pageant of lights.
The LEDs were provided by a special "roaming" class of visiting instructors that included staff members of the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation in Tokyo's Koto Ward. The team arrived earlier in the day.
In total, 58 pupils were given instruction on how to create the displays. The class included children from the Onagawa Daiichi and Daiyon elementary schools who had to switch over to the Onagawa Daini Elementary School because of damage to school buildings caused by the March 11 disaster.
The children spent part of the evening creating starry patterns on the school grounds, including the Great Summer Triangle--an imaginary triangle in the Northern Hemisphere defined by the celestial bodies of Altair, Deneb and Vega.