A TEENAGER WHO WATCHES THE SKY
When did you last look up at the night sky? Most people see the stars only for a moment. Some may still remember the first time they saw a shooting star, because it was a family holiday or their first night in the desert. In big cities, bright street lights make the stars hard to see. However, a small number of people spend almost every night watching the sky. Nadia Ferris, a 17-year-old from a village in New Mexico, USA, is one of them.(lines 1–5)
Nadia has watched the sky on every clear night since she was 12. She knows the names of hundreds of stars, and she takes photos of them from the roof of her house. However, her hobby is not always easy. First of all, she goes to bed very late, so she is often tired at school. In addition, she has very little time to see her friends. Last winter, one of her photos showed a small green light that she had never noticed before. She wanted to find out what it was, so she sent the photo to Dr. Martin Hale, an expert on comets at a university in Arizona.(lines 6–12)
Dr. Hale invited Nadia to his university and asked her many questions about the photo. He also showed her a computer program that can find almost every object in the night sky. Then he gave her a map of the sky and asked her to point to some stars on it. To his surprise, Nadia did not need the computer program at all. She found every star on the map in a few seconds. Later, Dr. Hale studied her photo carefully and discovered something exciting. The green light was a comet that nobody had ever seen before! Dr. Hale could hardly believe that a teenager had found it from her roof. He asked Nadia to join his team for the summer.(lines 13–19)
Nadia has now spent two summers with Dr. Hale's team. He has learned that she has no special equipment. In fact, she still uses her grandfather's old camera for all her photos. He would like to understand why she notices so many small changes in the dark sky. In his opinion, many young people could make discoveries in space if they had time to look. Nadia has already decided about her future. "I want to study the stars at university," she says. "Nothing else makes me so happy."(lines 20–25)