Some time back, a friend of ours told us that she read in the papers that there is going to be a meteor shower seen at night... apparently they are saying there are going to be a 1000 meteors lor...
And to add icing to the cake, the Dubai Astronomy Club said they are going to organize a meteor shower viewing event and it is going to be a FREE event. I have never seen a single meteor wishing star, let alone a meteor shower... and so I was somewhat interested to attend the event...
Max read the email about it and as we had just finished watching My Love From The Star, he said maybe we should go and see if we will see Do Joo Min there:) wahhahaah...
To my surprise, my group of friends were all also very excited and we all decided that we will all go and watch the meteor shower together. We started planning who to bring what and on and off, someone will provide more information about the event (because there was nothing much info on the internet.
According to the website...
"Join us to witness a potentially ‘once
in a lifetime’ event. Predictions suggest that a new meteor shower will
be seen on the 24th May as Earth is expected to cross the
debris trail left by comet 209P/Linear. Based on professional forecasts
this meteor shower could turn out to be a unique meteor storm. A
meteor storm could see dense outbursts of bright multiple meteors and
provide in excess of 1000 shooting stars an hour during its peak.
Lowest expectation would be 60-100 meteors an hour. You won’t want to
miss this…
This Dubai Astronomy Group event will
also provide visitors an opportunity to look through the club telescopes
at other celestial objects including; Saturn, Mars, double stars,
globular clusters, nebula and other deep sky objects. In addition, the
Moon rises in the morning, just before sunrise, in a close conjunction
with the planet Venus. The event will feature live presentations and
videos about the night sky plus featured online broadcasts to the wider
international astronomy community."
Then leh, after ALL the planning, I had to fall sick.I was sneezing quite terribly throughout
the day and I had a really bad headache. I think a few days of drinking
very little water and sleeping very little gave me this big problem... And to make things worse, I was ls-ing the whole day too...
I tried really hard to sleep it off and recover... by the end of the day, I still had a very bad headache.. so I asked Ace if it was ok that we pass and we just dun go because I still wasnt feeling well..
You would have thought my caring son will say ok right... nope, he gave me a super black smelly face and went to his room to sulk and said he is very disappointed..
WHY?
Because his dad told him we are going to see meteor showers and he can make wishes and his wishes can come true.. he wanted to go and wish for more trash packs. DUH..
See his smelly face I also dam super sian and super DL.. so I thought, I will go and take a shower.. if I feel better after tat, then we will go lah... I rather sick and die there than see his super smelly face lor.. KNS...
Interestingly, the shower sort of cooled my body down and I really felt much better after that! And so we packed our stuffs and made our way to the location...
It was a long long drive... and following the Google Maps, we were led to this place in DUbai I have never seen before.. there was this gate there and when we drove in, there is a sign that said, "No hunting of animals allowed..." We were thinking like.. wah.. wat were we getting ourselves into...
And then as we drove furthur in... we realized we are in the middle of nowhere lor.. no street lamps.. super dark... side look out cannot see anything one.. heng in the same rd there were three cars in a row and we were number 2.. so in the middle.. quite safe..
Max says maybe that is why they chose this place because no light pollution... then can see the stars really clearly...
When we looked out, can only see the sand next to the cars where the car lights are shining upon... I saw these patterns made on the sand and wonder how and why they are there..
Apparently, they are called sand ripples and Max says they are formed when the wind blows over and lifts the lighter sand away... leaving the heavier sand behind.
We also saw many slow down signs tat asked us to slow down as there are deers and horses in the area..
At one point, there were many signs to various stables....
We saw many cars just stopping by the side of the road in the middle of the desert lor.. we wonder if they intend to just park there to wait for the meteor showers.. or is this some "romantic hot spot " for people to hanky panky out in the dark like the car parks of East Coast Park.. hahahah :)
Anyway, once we got out of the dark dark area into the main road again, we got caught in a jam.. We were wondering how come and event tat states they were expecting 500 pax had so few cars coming along on that road there... turns out that there are a few roads to get there... now that we are caught in a jam, Max says tat means there are 5000 pax there.. wahahaha :)
But at least we were finally near the resort...
Just making a super slow crawl towards the resort.. hahahah
And then you know this sort of resort in ulu area one..usually they have a main gate.. and then the car has to travel long long distance to read the main resort area one right.. we saw alot of pple park when they saw the gate and then they attempted to walk inside lor..
One girl, took off her shoes to walk.. and after walking some time, she realized it is not as short a walk as she thought and put on her shoes again lor.. and she was dressed to the nines in a little black dress.. I wonder what these people are thinking... I was in tshirt and slacks because I expect we will be sleeping and lying around out in the open.. who in their right mind will wear dress and high heels...
BUT I guess many people not in their right minds there cos when I reached.. I saw quite a large number of young girls in nice dresses and heels!:) wahahaha
cam whoring cos boring and nothing to do...
Trying to take photo of the sand ripples.. haha
It was quite an adventure no doubt but quite an "ardous" journey for me.... reason being I drank alot of water to fight my headache and flu... and then at dinner, I drank MORE water.. and the ride was a slow, long one... and I was almost bursting at my bladder! :) wahahaha
When we arrived, I just wanted to quickly find a toilet lah...
Found a toilet and quickly went toilet to relieve myself. PHEW....
Then leh, we tried to find our friends... It was people mountain people sea lor... I think at least a thousand pax there...
Our friend Chris brought a tent there becos she said I am not feeling well.. can sleep inside..
No prizes for guessing though.. WHO got to sleep in the tent whole night that night lor:) wahahahha....
It was people mountain people sea and everywhere... anywhere you went, there is always a mat, some people and some food...
I was afraid I might step on someone when I walked about!
The pre-event email they went us said they were going to sell red light torches etc there at the event and said people should bring red right...
Our gang just brought a red cloth to put over our camping lights:) wahahaha.. And we also brought candles.. BUT leh, the other people mostly just brought their mobile phones or tablets!:) wahahahaa.. And there was no sale of anything there at all!
Chris told us they set up some telescopes and you can queue up to take a look at Saturn... so we went to queue lor... Just to let Ace see Saturn...
Ace peeped into the telescope... and intially, he did not see anything.. and then the person standing there told him.. "YOu have to put your eye closer to the eyepiece and look right in.... do you see it now..."
And suddenly, Ace went... "Wahhhhhhhh..." And we knew he saw it:) wahahaha
Since I also queued so long with Ace.. so I also see see lah...
This is how Saturn looked like in the telescope... I found pic online lah..
The man told us his telescope can actually be magnified even more to see more detail of saturn but the conditions tonight is not suitable for that...
If you asked me, I think it is cos that night hor too many pax, and the resort too much lights... too much light pollution.. so the sky is too bright...
We met a friend there and he said he thinks this place looks like a refugeee camp! Wahahahaah
Anyway, by 11pm or so, I asked Ace to go to his tent and zzz... and then meanwhile, we chatted amongst ourselves....
As I lay down to look at the stars that night, the stars seemed to move. I found out that if you closed one of your eyes, then the eyes will stay still.. but if you opened both of them.. somehow they feel like they are moving..
Also, for some unknown reason, instead of seeing stars twinkling like in the song Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, I seem to see them shoot out light... hahahaha.. maybe this is hallucination after staring out at the stars for way too long...
Some time at 1plus in the morning, someone clapped. Didn't even know what happened and which direction to look cos ths sky was so vast! Dun even know which direction was the meteor shooting down from.
So continue to stare and see see look look.. true enough... I saw a shooting star!!!!!! But by the time I saw it, already left little bit of the path only so it was like gone in less than a second! But I was so happy... I began to make a wish... okay, made it a few wishes... actually same as my daily prayers lah...
Wished for our parents good health, Ace's good life, Max's good career and if possible, another sibling for Ace lah:) hahahahah... I told the universe.. if it is meant tat i will have another kid, pls send me another shooting star:) haha...
Then leh, while I was lying down and staring at the sky, suddenly saw another one fly across the sky again. This one was big and flew a huge distance across. But leh, too bad Max was away, he was looking around for beer to buy:) wahahahahaha.....
BEcos saw two liao... i quickly wake Ace lah.. cos i promised i will wake him if I see shooting star.. but he wake liao.. lie on my lap and zzz again.. I realized that the stars shoot across the sky really quickly so unless you have your eyes at the sky, you will most likely miss it if you need someone to wake you... and as it was getting chilly, eventually, I asked him to go back to the tent to zzz...
When Max came back, the two of us snuggled next to each other on the mat and just chatted. Actually to be honest, quite pleasant to lie down with your loved one under the stars and chat.. sort of romantic..
I remembered that whenever I watched those romantic shows and the male and female lead will see a shooting star and wish upon a shooting star together, I wished I will get the chance to do that...
Anyway, for a long time, we saw nothing and I was just happ to snuggle
with max.. so much so for 1000 meteor showers man:) hahahaha..
That is a beam of laser being shot out from the telescope so that they can point out the stars to us. Max found free wifi and downloaded some app that tells us what stars we are looking at.. we tried out the app but cannot make head out of tail of most of the stars:) wahahahaha
No star to take picture of, take pic of the quite nice moon:)
I tried to take a picture of the twinkling stars.. sorry... my samsung phone can only take.. one patch of darkness!!!:) wahhahaha
I was telling max, so romantic, we should take photo of ourselves lying down on the mat mah :)
Anyway, around 3am.. both me and Max saw this really large meteor!;)
Looked something like tat:)
But not as many colours:)
Anyway, after tat.. fell asleep liao.. cos too tired.. while I was sleeping, some people clapped.. so tat means another sighting...
We all woke at 4 plus am and decided to make our way home..
I was afraid that Ace might be too disappointed with the whole excursion since he did not get to see ANY meteor at all...
I casually asked him if he enjoyed the night and he said YES.. hahahaa.. I asked him which is his favourite part.. and his fav part is sleeping in the tent!:) Wahaahahahah
Too bad we dun have a balcony in our home in dubai.. if got big balcony, next time he can camp in balcony:) wahahahaha...
Anyway, the whole jim gang said we can go eat breakfast together.. but while we were driving home, Ace zzzzz in the car again.. and so we decided to message our friends that we were going straight home lah... I was also super tired...
The view on the way home.. as the sun slowly rose..
Really an adventure as we drove past many areas in Dubai I have never been to before...
Was a long long time before i FINALLY saw a familiar building lor:)
Anyway, the whole thing left me so tired, I was zzzing alot for the next two days to catch up on sleep! Old liao.. torn night tired like shit... hahahaha..
PS: I followed news about the Camelopardalid Meteor Shower for the next few days as they expected to see it for a few days. Turns out that they say actually not supposed to even see in the middle east region leh... plus.. that night.. even the luckiest people only saw like 8... so I got to see 3 already dam lucky :) wahahahaah.. cos my friends who went with me were mostly zzzing and only saw one or two... Was a very bad estimation done by the astrologers and it was because they only discovered this in the last 40 years.. so not much is known about them or their path... bleah..
