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(单词翻译)
This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Karen Hopkin. This will just take a minute.
In 1930 astronomer1 Clyde Tombaugh discovered the dwarf2 planet Pluto3 while looking at photographs of the night sky. Pluto was the first object to be found in what's now known as the Kuiper Belt, a region that's also full of asteroids4. NASA's New Horizons spacecraft intends to visit one or two of them after it flies past Pluto in 2015. But which ones?
That's where you come in. Because astronomers5 are calling on citizen scientists to eyeball images that will help them find the outermost6 icy bodies in Pluto's neighborhood. The project is described at the Web site icehunters.org
Some of the largest telescopes on Earth have helped produce millions of images of the relevant region of space. By comparing photos taken at different times, scientists can subtract out objects that appear stationary7, like far-off galaxies8, and focus on things that appear to be moving in orbits, like asteroids.
Now, these pictures can be a bit messy. So scientists say they could use plenty of eyes to help scan the pics for things that move—the same way Tombaugh first found Pluto. The winning object could become the most distant ever visited by a spacecraft from Earth. But you don't even have to get off the couch.
Thanks for the minute. For Scientific American's 60-Second Science, I'm Karen Hopkin.
1 astronomer | |
n.天文学家 | |
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2 dwarf | |
n.矮子,侏儒,矮小的动植物;vt.使…矮小 | |
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3 Pluto | |
n.冥王星 | |
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4 asteroids | |
n.小行星( asteroid的名词复数 );海盘车,海星 | |
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5 astronomers | |
n.天文学者,天文学家( astronomer的名词复数 ) | |
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6 outermost | |
adj.最外面的,远离中心的 | |
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7 stationary | |
adj.固定的,静止不动的 | |
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8 galaxies | |
星系( galaxy的名词复数 ); 银河系; 一群(杰出或著名的人物) | |
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