Star-gazers across Asia huddled outside in the pre-dawn chill yesterday to admire luminous flares of red and white streaking through the skies during the biggest meteor shower in decades. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) sent up research planes from a US air force base in Okinawa, southern Japan, in an attempt to glean hints about the origins of life on earth and the planet's relationship to the cosmos. From Thailand's highest peaks to the neon-drenched streets of Tokyo, people in Asia -- where the meteors burned brightest -- lifted their eyes to a magnificent spectacle of nature as the storm reached its climax in the direction of the constellation Leo. "It's wonderful," said Toshiaki Kogai, one of hundreds of Japanese who watched the storm from a park just south of Tokyo. "I never imagined it would be like this." In Tokyo and many other Japanese cities, public offices and private businesses heeded a government plea to dim their lights to enhance viewing of the storm, which peaks every 33 years. In Kanagawa prefecture near Tokyo, a 19-year-old trade school student died when she fell off the handrail of a bridge while trying to see the cascading stars with her friends, police said. Meteors could be seen every two or three minutes at the height of the shower. Some appeared to fizzle as they fell while others looked like moving dots. And each shooting star brought a wish. "I only wish I could think up wishes faster," said Ikue Oe, a housewife out watching the storm with her husband in the Tokyo suburb of Yokohama. In the United States, the best vantage points were wherever the sky was darkest and clearest. The crowds that gathered at sites in the Mojave Desert in California early Tuesday were enthusiastic. Sandra Macika, 36, of San Jose, saw about 30 meteors. "I could see in front of me big streaks of light falling on the highway," she said. Another group attempted to escape the city lights by camping out in the sand hills of central Nebraska. "We're catching an average of two or three meteors a minute, one of the best meteor showers I've seen in quite some time," Daniel Glomski said early Tuesday morning. In northern Thailand, tens of thousands of tourists swarmed to Doi Inthanon, at 2,565 metres the Southeast Asian country's highest peak, while others ascended Doi Suthep, another mountain with a famed Buddhist temple at its summit. But clouds and lightning hindered the viewing. Australians were also disappointed. "We didn't see a damn thing. I thought it was going to be amazing," said an Australian university student, among about 150 people who braved bitterly cold, drizzly and windy weather at the Mount Stromlo Observatory near Canberra. "The shower was there; the thing we didn't have was the clear sky to see it through," observatory astronomer Vince Ford said. "It was very disappointing." The view was clearer in Norway, where rescuers were swamped with calls from people who spotted what they thought were red distress flares fired from ships in trouble off the southern coast. "The meteors really changed colour, and sometimes they were bright red, so I can understand that people associated them with distress rockets," said rescue leader Ben Vikoeren. By sending two research planes to study the composition of both comets and meteoroids, NASA hopes to learn something about the beginnings of life on earth. "We have a unique opportunity here to get some information about the way life may have arisen," said NASA astrobiology specialist Gregg Schmidt. Some scientists believe the elements necessary for life on earth may have been brought here by comets or meteorites. The NASA planes will provide scientists with data to determine the cosmic debris' molecular composition -- and find traces of any organic material it may carry. The shower is caused by the earth's passage through the long tail of the Comet Tempel-Tuttle. It is called the Leonid shower because the meteors appear to come from the direction of the constellation Leo. Though the Leonids occur every November, they are usually not particularly spectacular. But every 33 years the comet speeds through the inner solar system and sheds swarms of particles as it nears the sun. NASA scientist Schmidt said the Leonid storm in 1833, for example, packed as many as 10,000 meteors per hour. "The 1833 Leonid shower started a religious revival based on what people saw," he said.
