Art, music, writing, acting -- there are nearly as many ways to express one's creative impulses as there are people.</PARAGRAPH> <PHOTO> <TABLE WIDTH='250' ALIGN='RIGHT' BORDER='0'> <TR> <TD><IMG ALT='News photo' BORDER='0' SRC='../images/photos2006/nn20060811f3a.jpg' WIDTH='250' HEIGHT='161'/></TD> </TR> <TR> <TD><FONT SIZE='1'><B>The Megastar projects stars onto the wall of the observation deck at the Roppongi Hills complex earlier this month. </B> SATOKO KAWASAKI PHOTOS</FONT></TD> </TR> <TABLE> </PHOTO> <PARAGRAPH>Takayuki Ohira, 36, looks to the stars for his artistic inspiration; stars he creates himself in planetariums. 'It's like a musical instrument I created,' said Ohira, who designed Megastar-II Cosmos, which was recognized in 2004 by Guinness World Records as the world's most advanced star projector.</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>The machine can project about 5 million stars onto a planetarium dome and goes nature one better: With the naked eye, people can only see stars with a magnitude of six or brighter -- the brightest stars are magnitude 1 -- but Megastar-II Cosmos projects stars as faint as magnitude 12.5, allowing stargazers to see much more than they can from their backyards.</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>And Ohira's creation is also more than an educational tool. The planetarium event, which opened Aug. 1, is held in collaboration with the Africa Remix exhibition on the 52nd floor of the Roppongi Hills complex in Tokyo's Minato Ward. The exhibit projects stars on the ceiling, walls and windows of the building's observation deck. When combined with the lights of the city below, the effect is stunning.</PARAGRAPH> <PHOTO> <TABLE WIDTH='250' ALIGN='LEFT' BORDER='0'> <TR> <TD><IMG ALT='News photo' BORDER='0' SRC='../images/photos2006/nn20060811f3b.jpg' WIDTH='250' HEIGHT='369'/></TD> </TR> <TR> <TD><FONT SIZE='1'><B>Takayuki Ohira shows off a simplified Megastar planetarium projector behind him earlier this month in Tokyo. </B></FONT></TD> </TR> <TABLE> </PHOTO> <PARAGRAPH>'It is a collaboration of stars in the sky and 'stars' on the ground that normally would never be seen together,' Ohira said.</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>For the event, which runs through Aug. 31, Ohira built a smaller projector that show the stars as seen from Kenya, including the Southern Cross. He had to increase the brightness of the projector so viewers can see the stars against the city lights.</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>Ohira, a native of Kawasaki, became fascinated by astronomy in junior high, after seeing the Milky Way from Mount Fuji while on a hike with his father. To pursue his new passion, he bought a telescope and began photographing the stars.</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>In high school, Ohira visited Australia, and the view of the heavens from there stayed with him. 'You can see the most beautiful part of the Milky Way, the center of the galaxy, up above –

head from the Southern Hemisphere. You can't see it that high up in Japan," he said.

At the time, Ohira never dreamed he would re-create that spectacle with his own high-tech projector, but that's what happened. Soon after starting college, he began making star projectors and his enthusiasm for his hobby didn't wane even after he went to work for Sony Corp. as an engineer.

In 1998, he unveiled Megastar, the predecessor of his latest projector, a machine capable of projecting 1 million stars, at the International Planetarium Society convention in London.

After Megastar became a hit, Ohira quit his day job at Sony and began holding planetarium shows around Japan.