Photo/Illutration Thirteen drawings beamed to Altair, 16.7 light years from Earth, in 1983 (Provided by Shinya Narusawa)

NAGANO--Astronomers are anxiously awaiting first contact from intelligent life to a message beamed into the cosmos 40 years ago.

Their hope is that a reply from Altair 16.7 light years from Earth could conceivably arrive around now, given the relative proximity of the star system and the time that has elapsed.

Symbolically, the star gazers decided that Aug. 22, when the July 7 Tanabata star festival featuring celestial “lovers” Altair and Vega falls on the lunar calendar, was as good a time as any to be on standby for a message from “out there.”

A team led by Shinya Narusawa at the University of Hyogo will deploy an antenna 64 meters in diameter in Saku, Nagano Prefecture, in the hope of observing radio signals in response to the message sent in 1983.

The message, which was comprised of 13 drawings depicting the history of life on Earth, what humans look like and other information, was created by astronomers Masaki Morimoto and Hisashi Hirabayashi.

Radio signals representing those drawings were transmitted from the United States on Aug. 15, 1983, as part of a space-themed project commemorating the 15th anniversary of the weekly comic anthology Shonen Jump, according to Narusawa.

Morimoto, a Japanese pioneer in the field known as the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), worked at the Tokyo Astronomical Observatory of the University of Tokyo, now part of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. He is now deceased. Hirabayashi is a professor emeritus at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

Narusawa, 58, said intelligent life outside of Earth should exist somewhere in the universe.

“A large number of exoplanets have been detected since the 1990s,” said Narusawa, who is also a SETI researcher. “Altair may have a planet whose environment can sustain life.”

His team will train the antenna at JAXA’s Usuda Deep Space Center for one hour from 10 p.m. on Aug. 22.

In Tanabata, Japanese pray that a cowherd and a weaver, lovers separated in mythology by the Milky Way, can meet at least once a year, on July 7. The cowherd is represented by Altair in the constellation Aquila, while the weaver is identified with Vega in the constellation Lyra.

Tanabata falls Aug. 22 on the lunar calendar this year. In 1983, when the “hello, is anybody there?” message was beamed to the heavens, it fell on Aug. 15.

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