An astronomy class at a school in the tiny village of Katsurao, Fukushima Prefecture, was treated to breathtaking images of the universe when it was linked to a observatory in Hawaii 6,000 kilometers away via videophone.

Being a remote, mountain village, the air in Katsurao is very clean and the nighttime sky is quite beautiful. It was thought that children living in such an environment might take an interest in space, so the village decided to use the videophone system to give them an up-close view of the stars.

All 470 homes in Katsurao, as well as its schools and the village office, have been linked by videophones since two years ago, installed free of charge under an experimental project funded by the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications and Fukushima Prefecture.

To take advantage of this link, the Hawaiian outpost of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) was contacted for cooperation in conducting an astronomy class. To share the images taken by one of the world's biggest optical telescopes, the school invited other elementary and middle schools in the county to join the project by temporarily setting up videophones.

On January 21, 68 fourth, fifth, and sixth graders at Katsurao Elementary School clustered together in the music room in front of two large monitors. The class was led by Mr. Tetsuharu Fuse, who works at the observatory in Hawaii. Dressed in a bright-colored aloha shirt, he explained how the observatory's telescope, named Subaru (Pleiades), was made and how it takes photos of faraway stars. The students saw around 15 photos of galaxies and stars, some 300 million light-years away. There was also one of a star about the size of the sun that is about to end its life.

"I never thought about how a star would die before," said Yurie Matsumoto, a sixth-grade girl. "I was thrilled by the way the dying star was glittering so beautifully."

Mr. Fuse said he grew up in a big city and frequently visited a neighborhood planetarium, dreaming of one day becoming an astronomer. All the students nodded when he asked them to look up at the nighttime sky once in a while, since the students in Katsurao are able to see so many stars.

Photo: Stunning pictures of distant stars are beamed live from Hawaii to a Japanese school. (Asahi Shogakusei Shimbun)