2005-3-9  astronomy group of scientific class

When talk about grassland, the famous expression “sky is so high and blue above the endless grassland, cattle and sheep are seen in the grass after wind” comes into peoples mind certainly. During the national holiday, 6 teachers and 9 students of scientific class were sent out to Mongolia Autonomous Province for night piece screen of the star-sky. With an imaginary of ancient grassland, they set off.  

After 9 hours hard journey on 1st, at nightfall we arrived at the destination finally. It was the weather north of the great wall, as soon as our getting off the car, cold was clearly felt. Wind and cold came to us suddenly, like all the hot of summer was whirled away. Entering into the camp, we immediately added more clothes and ate more for preparation of the night piece screen. 

At 9 in the evening, we wore all the warm clothes, took the screen equipments, drove half an hour to avoid city lights influence, selected a spot far away from our camp, flat and dark as a place for screen, then we divided into groups to do our task which theme was star order, constellation, and moon.

Our group’s screen theme was the star order of Polaris, we found the target immediately after our preparation because of the good visibility, the light from the noon was so strong that influenced our work. Thanks to the teachers’ help that we found the method to avoid the influence, and our work was ongoing smoothly. In order to achieve better effect, we had to wear off our gloves, our hand was frozen then (if in Beijing, it was definitely rare to encounter such weather, later, we knew that the temperature was 7 under 0). After 4 hours working, all the groups finished their task, experiencing the hardship of astronomy working.

Returning to our camp on the bus, we watched outside of the bus while calefaction our hands and feet, seeing the moon hanging in the sky above the grassland, clear and bright, so different from what we saw in Beijing, it was so free, leisure, and having no obstacles. Perhaps because there was no other objects as direction reference, the moon here seemed much bigger than in Beijing. The shining stars around the moon made a clear compare with the moon shadow, the moon night in grassland was so charming…..

Beside this, we also visited the middle school and the traditional Mongolian’s tent in Xianghuangqi, understanding more about Mongolian’s history and culture.

We returned back on 3rd, seeing the grassland outside, different from the ancient expressions, sandy soil and desolation, made us heavy-hearted, closing the eyes, the clear night of grassland came into my mind.

It was not so bad,at least we still had the moon night of the grassland .