A smashing time in North Wales!

This year marks 60 years since a meteorite smashed through the roof of a quiet hotel in North Wales. The Prince Llewelyn Hotel in Beddgelert was the scene of this rare event in the early hours of 21st September 1949. People from across North Wales and Cheshire saw a bright light travelling across the sky, and the owner of the hotel heard a series of dull explosions followed by three or four seconds' silence, ending with a buzzing sound ‘like a light aeroplane' which grew in intensity until a sound of shattering roof slates was heard.

A neat, round hole was later found in the slates of the hotel roof and the dark-coloured stone, which had made a jagged hole in the ceiling was identified as a meteorite - only the second ever known to have come from Wales.

To celebrate this event, as part of the Down2Earth project, the Faulkes Telescope Project team together with Heather Jackson from the National Museum Wales (NMW), travelled up to Beddgelert in the week leading up to the anniversary, to talk to local schoolchildren and residents of Beddgelert about this visitor from space.

In all, 6 local primary and secondary schools were visited, with Heather, Paul and Sarah talking to over 300 students during the course of the week. A public day was also held at Beddgelert Village Hall on Saturday 19th September, where villagers could come and view part of the actual meteorite which landed in their village. Older villagers were also encouraged to record their memories of the event for the National Museum of Wales’ archives. Over 200 people attended the public event, which displayed artwork of the meteorite landing made by the pupils of Beddgelert Primary School, displays by local amateur astronomy societies, and the chance to blow holes in the Earth with a specially designed impact calculator (which you can find here).

This week-long event up in this beautiful corner of North Wales was a great success and hopefully inspired some of the children in this quiet village to be the scientists of the future!