Earthquake!

Of all places, one would never expect an earthquake to happen here in the UK. Afterall, if you look at this map here, UK is far away from any of the major fault lines, much further away than Singapore is from the Sumatran fault line that triggers the 2006 tsunami.

So it was a surprise when I felt the earthquake happened last night at around 12.55am. But I quickly remembered that there was once when nobody in Singapore ever believe we will be affected by earthquakes either. So never say never!

The earthquake felt like two very short bursts of vibration, separated by about 10 seconds. It is quite unlike the gentle swaying I felt in Singapore from my 17th floor flat from the tremours in Sumatra. In fact, I almost mistook it to be from the gusts of strong wind blowing at that time, if not for the fact that the vibration was coming from my cupboard, and not the window.

The earthquake has a magnitude of 5.2, and the epicentre is about 80km away from York. Because of the relative closeness of the epicentre, the vibration is stronger than what we experienced in Singapore, even though the magnitude is much smaller than the Sumatran earthquakes. I am staying on the 2nd floor (which is the 3rd storey, the British count floors starting from 0), and I can feel the shaking. In Singapore, earthquakes are mostly felt only above the 10th storey.

So if UK is so far away from any fault lines, what caused the earthquake? It seems that there is something call the Midlands Microcraton. This is an enormous block of rock running through Central England. The softer rocks on either side of the microcration are disturbed by the tectonic pressures that originate in the Atlantic Ocean, and this cause earthquakes when the pressures build up to a point where the rocks slipped. So, I supposed the mechanics of the earthquakes here are different from what we have in Singapore. It certainly felt different.

Well, according to the British Geological Survey, this type of earthquake happens only once in 30 years! So how lucky I am to feel it (must go buy 4-D!). But as I said earlier, never say never, who knows what other rare occurrences will I yet encounter?

Saturn!

I think I've mentioned somewhere in my blog before that I am in the Astronomy Society. The society meets every Saturday night. If the sky is clear, we'll proceed to the observatory （picture on the left) for some sky gazing. Well, as you might have guessed, given UK's kind of weather, it is not often that we get a clear sky, chances are even lower when you restrict it to just Saturday nights. Most of the time, we just make do with partly cloudy skies.

So it is a very rare opportunity last Saturday when the sky was completely clear of clouds. I had actually planned to attend a Chinese New Year Gala concert at York's Opera House, but a clear sky on a Saturday night is probably rarer here in York than CNY, so I decided it is not a chance to be missed. And boy, did I made the right choice.

First of all, the society's telescope wasn't working quite well, so the Astro Soc chairperson decided that we will use the main observatory telescope, which is several times more powerful. It seems that the professor in charge of the scope is quite particular about people going up to the observatory, so usually we just make do with the society's scope, placed outside the observatory. But last Saturday was just too clear a sky to observe the rules! But not to worry. The chairperson is a student of the professor, and is trained in using the main scope, so it's not like we are going up there and messing things.

And we were not disappointed. Not only is the main scope more powerful, it is also controlled by a computer, so all you need to do is to click on the object you want to observe and presto! the computer will point the scope in the correct direction.

So the chairperson brought us on a tour of the most interesting sights of the night sky: Crab Nebula, Andromeda Galaxy, Seven Sisters, Betelgeuse, Sirus etc. But the most magnificent of all is of course Saturn. It is really fascinating to see Saturn surrounded by its rings, and its moons. It looks something like the picture below, which was taken a few years back by the society. The angle of the rings was different this time round, and we were also able to see two of Saturn's moon. And of course, seen with your very own eyes, the image is much sharper.

Another pretty sight is what is called an open cluster. It is a group of faint stars which you can't see with the naked eye. So there is a patch of dark sky there, and you are thinking "ok, so why are you pointing the scope there?". Then you look through the scope, and you see so many points of light that look like jewels shining in the dark. Really amazing! The picture on the right, from Wikipedia, shows something like what we saw, but through the scope with your own eyes, it is much more fascinating.

In contrast, the nebulas and the galaxies are rather disappointing. They appear as blur blobs. One reason, I supposed, is because York suffer from light pollution like all urban centres, so the sky is really not dark enough to observe these faint objects. And of course the pictures we usually see in astronomy magazine are usually filtered to produce those sharp, magnificient colours. Through the scope, they all look more or less black and white, with reddish or bluish hues at best.

What a night! What a unforgettable 年初三. Now I know how the early astronomers felt when they see through the scope for the first time!

Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year comes at a wrong time here, when we are finishing our first block of subjects for this semester. So, over the CNY period, I have 3 assignments and 1 group project to tackle. In fact, I have to give the CNY dinner organized by the Singapore Society a miss, because we had postponed our project meeting till late afternoon so that the Chinese students on the team can call home.

But not to worry, I didn't really miss home or CNY. Perhaps because there is no atmosphere of CNY here at all, so there is nothing to remind me of it. Or maybe it is because I know I'll just be here for one year, and I'll be tied to TP and Singapore for the next 5 years when I get back. So subconsciously in my mind somewhere, it is telling me that I'll have more CNYs in Singapore than I like when I get back.

However, this experience makes me realise that CNY is not something you can pass by with just having a party with fellow country man. What I consider as CNY is really the whole atmosphere that comes with it: the pasar malam and festival goods that are only on sale during that period, the new year songs in the air, the smell of pineapple tarts baking and bar-kuah BBQing, the traffic jams near flower markets, the air of expectancy as the day draw nears, the busy markets which opened through the night, the quietness on the street during the Reunion Dinner hours, the sight of bright coloured clothes on the MRTs and buses on the first and subsequent days etc.

These are the things about CNY that cannot be re-created here. These are the things that are missing, and without them to remind me, I don't think of CNY at all.

新年快乐，万事如意!