【英语时差8,16】皇家格林尼治天文台

The Royal Observatory¹ Neil: It’s the Prime Meridian² line. Yang Li: It’s the centre of world time and space. Neil: It’s the Royal Observatory at Greenwich. I’m David Rooney and I’m the Curator of timekeeping here at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. Well, the Royal Observatory has been here since 1675, it’s a very old scientific institution. And it’s known throughout the world as the home of time. In fact the Prime Meridian of the world, which is the line from which all time is measured, passes through our courtyard. So we are very much the home of Greenwich Mean Time which is the basic time for the world. We are standing³ here at the heart of Royal Observatory, Greenwich, and we are surrounded by clocks and watches and telescopes. It’s a fantastic site that we are on and it’s full of world history and it has been around here since 1675. Yang Li: They are all in excellent condition, aren’t they? David: Yes, we look after these clocks. They need to be wound up once a day or once a week and it’s quite a long job to get around them all as we have about 200 on display. Yang Li: Are they all made in England or are they from different parts of the world? David: We’ve got clocks from around the world. Many of them were made in this country but we’ve got clocks made from as far away as Russia; we have got American clocks, European clocks and some Chinese clocks. At the moment we are welcoming 850,000 visitors a year. Later on this year we’ll be opening some new facilities: an astronomy centre and a big planetarium⁴, and we expect that our visitor figures will be over one million a year. It’s very important that everybody who visits stands on the Prime Meridian of the world; you have one foot in the eastern hemisphere and one foot in the western hemisphere, and you stand on the line from which all time is measured.

1 observatory   

n.天文台，气象台，瞭望台，观测台

参考例句：

• Guy's house was close to the observatory.盖伊的房子离天文台很近。
• Officials from Greenwich Observatory have the clock checked twice a day.格林威治天文台的职员们每天对大钟检查两次。

2 meridian   

adj.子午线的；全盛期的

参考例句：

• All places on the same meridian have the same longitude.在同一子午线上的地方都有相同的经度。
• He is now at the meridian of his intellectual power.他现在正值智力全盛期。

3 standing   

n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的

参考例句：

• After the earthquake only a few houses were left standing.地震过后只有几幢房屋还立着。
• They're standing out against any change in the law.他们坚决反对对法律做任何修改。

4 planetarium   

n.天文馆；天象仪

参考例句：

• The planetarium staff also prepared talks for radio broadcast.天文馆的工作人员还要准备讲稿给电台广播。
• It landed in a shallow basin fifty yards from the planetarium.它降落在离天文馆五十码处的一个浅盆地中。