Outer space and stars

OUTER SPACE AND STARS


Vocabulary

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  Nebula (noun) - a cloud of gas or dust in space, appearing either bright or dark.
  
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  Nebulae (plural noun) - plural of nebula.
  
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  Input (noun) - help, ideas, or knowledge that someone gives to a project, organization, etc. ( antonym. Output)
  
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  Celestial (adj.) - of or from the sky or outside this world. (syn.astronomical)
  
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  Heavenly body (noun) - any object existing in space, especially a planet, star, or the moon.
  
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  Coronal mass ejection (noun) - are large expulsions of plasma and magnetic field from the sun's atmosphere.
  
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  To pursue (verb) - to try to discover information about a subject.
  
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  Hard and soft science fiction - hard sci-fi deals with sciences such as math, physics, computer science, engineering, and chemistry. Soft sci-fi deals more with sociology, history, politics, psychology, and economics. Both hard and soft science fiction include futuristic technology or elements, but hard sci-fi is more concerned with having realistic science based on currently proven facts about the world.
  
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  Extraterrestrial (noun) - a creature from outside the planet Earth.
  
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  Up/down your avenue/alley/street (idiom) - to be the type of thing that you are interested in or that you enjoy doing.
  
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  Constellation (noun) -any of the groups of stars in the sky that seem from earth to form a pattern and have been given names.
  
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  To twinkle (verb) - (of light or a shiny surface) to shine repeatedly strongly then weakly, as if flashing on and off very quickly.
  
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  Orbit (noun) - the curved path through which objects in space move around a planet or star.
  
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  Spacewalk (noun) - an act of moving around in space outside a spacecraft but connected to it.
  

Questions and answers
M: Do you enjoy looking at the stars?

R: When I get the chance I do. And it's not just the stars either. It's the planets and the nebulae. I used to love, and I still do, sitting on the decking at three o'clock in the morning on a Saturday just watching them for ages.

M: Have you ever learned about outer space and stars?

R: Well, we had a few inputs in school, but most of what I know about, well, celestial events and heavenly bodies I've read or watched for myself. I don't think primary or even secondary school children probably need to learn that much about coronal mass ejection or star formation. So it's really something that you have to pursue for yourself outside of the basics, like, you know, what the order of the planets is in the solar system, for example.

M: Are you interested in films about outer space and stars?

R: Oh, absolutely. I love hard and soft science fiction. So anything about extraterrestrials, and space travel is right up my avenue. I really like the plots of films like "Arrival" and "Contact". But I also like the mindless fun of "Starship Troopers" as well.

M: Can you see many stars at night where you live?

R: Well, the light pollution here is quite low. So you don't just see stars and constellations, you can see planets like Mars. And if you move further out to the village where there's almost no people, then you can even see things like the Orion Nebula, for example. I can't think of anything else that you could see, but they're all up there twinkling away. So that's great.

M: Would you ever like to go into space?

R: Well, with the current level of technology, probably not. I mean, if we had a space elevator or a skyhook, for example, to make it safer, then I would absolutely be down for that. But I'm not strapping myself to the top of a rocket filled with fuel and setting it on fire to get there. That's just, it just seems really dangerous.

M: What would you do if you had the chance to go into space?

R: Well, it would be cool to see the Earth from orbit and just see what everything looks like. I'd also really like to do a spacewalk. Just for the novelty in the risk that's involved, to be honest. I doubt I'd make the astronaut fitness requirements though.