Small But Wise
On December 14,NASA1 blasted a small but mighty telescope into space. The telescope is called WISE and is about as wide around as a trashcan. Dont let its small size fool you:WISE has a powerful digital camera, and it will be taking pictures of some the wildest objects2 in the known universe,including asteroids,faint stars,blazing galaxies3 and giant clouds of dust where planets and stars are born.
Since arriving in space,the WISE telescope has been circling the Earth,held by gravity in a polar orbit4.Its camera is pointed outward,away from the Earth,and WISE will snap a picture of a different part of the sky every 11 minutes. After six months it will have taken pictures across the entire sky.
Radiation is energy that travels as a wave. Visible light, including the familiar spectrum of light7 that becomes visible in a rainbow,is an example of radiation. When an ordinary digital camera takes a picture of a tree,for example,it receives the waves of visible light that are reflected off the tree. When these waves enter the camera through the lens,theyre processed by the camera,which then puts the image together.
Thats a key idea to why WISE will be able to see things other telescopes cant. Not everything in the universe shows up in visible light. Asteroids,for example,are giant rocks that float through space 一but they absorb most of the light that reaches them. They dont reflect light,so theyre difficult to see. But they do give off infrared radiation, so an infrared telescope like WISE will be able to produce images of them. During its mission WISE will take pictures of hundreds of thousands of asteroids.
词汇：
infrared adj.红外线
dwarf n. 矮星
NASA 是缩写词，全称是National Aeronautics and Space
the wildest objects ：任何你能想象得到的天体。wild 有未被人驯养的荒唐的离奇的意思。
polar orbit：极地轨道。指轨道平面与赤道面夹角为90。的人造地球卫星轨道。人造卫星运行时能到达南北极区上空，即卫星能飞经全球范围的上空。需要在全球范围内进行观测和应用的气象卫星、导航卫星、地球资源卫星等都采用这种轨道。
infrared radiation：红外线辐射
Brown dwarfs：褐矮星。褐矮星非常暗淡，很难发现它们，要确定它们的大小就更加困难。
练习：
A It is small in size but carries a large camera.
C Its digital camera can help astronomers to see the unknown space.
Which is NOT the synonym for the word snap in the third paragraph?
B shoot.
D photograph.
A is no different from an ordinary camera.
C catches the infrared radiation while the ordinary camera does not.
Which of the following is NOT correct aboutasteroids according to paragraph 7?
B Asteroids do not reflect light that reaches them.
D The WISE telescope can take pictures of asteroids
A Brown dwarfs give off visible light.
C Brown dwarfs are power stars like the sun.
答案与题解：
A snap 是个多义词，可以解释为拍照，更为确切的意思是拍快照。这里shoot, take 和photograph 都是snap 的同义词。
A 短文第七段第二句说并非所有的宇宙中的物体都会发出可见光，比如asteroids ，所以A是正确选项。其他选项的内容都可以在该段中找到。