SHOOTING STARS
The UK-China Leonid Meteor Shower
Observation Project

Introduction. The Shooting stars competition was organised by John and Sally Hodges for OMEN. The competition involved designing an Internet site about the possible threat to Earth from meteor impact. There were about 40 entries from all over the United Kingdom, in which I was one of the luck six winners that won a trip to China. The competition site is at the OMEN web site. The trip departed from Heathrow on 14th November and returned to Heathrow on 22nd November 1998.

What we did in China. The main aim of the trip to China was to observe the Leonid Meteor shower, during the night of 17/18th November and to forge links with Chinese students and schools, but having travelled all the way to China, we couldn’t not go and see the sites!

On the 17th November we travelled 3½ hours north of Beijing to the Mi Yun district, where we were to observe the shower. Mi Yun was selected because it held a dark observation point, where we would get very little light pollution to spoil our view. On arrival to the observation site, we, competition winners and Chinese students, converged into a meeting hall where we discussed the plans for our observations. The shower wasn’t as spectacular as expected, and with predictions of tens of thousands an hour, we were quite disappointed with a rate of about 30 and hour. The reasons for this were that the shower had happened 12 hours earlier, during mid day which was rather annoying. However, what we did observe was much more than we would have anywhere else in the world, so weren’t all that disappointed. The day after involved sleeping and trying to get warmed up after suffering hours of temperatures around the region of –14oc.

The other sites visited included the Great Wall of China, the Forbidden City, the Summer palace, a space and aviation museum and the Beijing ancient observatory. The best of all these trips was the visit to the Great Wall, which was spectacular. Being able to visit one of the two man made object visible from space was excellent. The other students and I took many photographs, which the best were to be seen at the Expedition Web Site along with other accounts of the trip. Another exciting event that took place was the falling of 6 inches of snow during our last fall day. Seeing the summer place and gardens covered in snow was quite ironic, but it got our hopes up that our flight home might be cancelled and we would have to spend an extra day in China.

After the trip After arriving home in Britain, I felt quite disappointed that such an excellent trip came to an end, and we were back to our daily routines. I did have trouble getting used to GMT again, and waking up at 4:30 in the morning and not being able to get back to sleep was quite annoying, but I managed it now.

Our first of many long and slow bus journeys was that from the airport to the Yan Shan Hotel. Millions of people on foot, bicycles and in cars, buses and taxis were all around us. Above us, in the air lay a thick haze from all the pollution. We saw giant gleaming hotels and banks, while on the other side of the road were the many identical run-down appartment blocks. Beijing appeared to be a city of poverty, just like we had studied at school.

Yet underneath this tarnished shell lay a majestic place, surrounded in history dating back for many thousands of years. We saw the palaces of Emperors gone by, with exquisite buildings and temples. More importantly, though, was our opportunity to meet the Chinese people themselves - something which a normal holidaymaker would miss. The students are just like those in this country; laughing and joking - I saw no evidence of oppression.

We sampled new food, a new culture and we have made new friends. I gained a wonderful experience, and would hope to be able to return to China someday with my happy memories of such an incredible place.

The trip to China was even more amazing than I had imagined it would be. When we arrived, everything looked so different, it was not hard to imagine that we were on the other side of the world. I enjoyed going to the Great Wall the most. It was so magnificent and peaceful after the city and it was so long, stretching for miles. I also thought that the Summer Palace was good. It looked very different in the snow and very beautiful and it was really fun having a snowball fight with all the other Chinese students. We never get that much snow in London and so can never have those sorts of snowball fights.

It was disappointing that we did not see as many meteors as we had hoped to, after going all that way but I still saw more than I had ever seen before and it was a good experience even though a little cold. I also thought that it was very interesting when we went for dinner at the Chinese student’s house. I tried making dumplings, calligraphy and playing a Chinese instrument. I would never have got to do this if we hadn’t gone.

I think that we had some very good experiences in China and I can’t wait to go back.

The trip to China was something totally new to me, in all ways (I hadn't even been on a plane before the flight for 14 years). China itself was completely different to the UK. The city, Beijing, was huge, crowded, with many bicycles and small vans replacing the family cars on the roads. Everything was so different - you couldn't help noticing the different smell of all the buildings, even the chinese food was very different from the chinese food available in the UK, although not any worse - in fact, most of the chinese cuisine was rather excellent. My favourite event of the trip was the visit to the great wall. What a view! Needless to say, we took a ridiculous number of photos throughout the trip ( I took about 100). Unfortunately the actual event didn't quite go as planned, as we stood around in the -14 degrees centigrade cold, yet fewer than expected meteors turned up. The ones we saw were, however, spectacular fireballs. It seems that there were infact many more meteors, which we didn't see. All in all, I would really like to go back to China sometime, and visit my new Chinese friends.

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