Stargazing in East Africa - Test 2

C1 Advanced · Gapped Text · Cambridge English Advanced 1, Cambridge University Press

You are going to read a newspaper article about a new trend in the travel and tourism industry. Six paragraphs have been removed from the article. Choose from the paragraphs A-G the one which fits each gap (1–6). There is one extra paragraph which you do not need to use.

Stargazing in East Africa

Jonathan Ford went to Tanzania on an 'astro-safari', which combines animal-watching with looking at the stars.

Stars, unlike elephants and giraffes, can surely be seen any winter evening from anyone's back garden. And it was doubtful that anything could be learnt from peering through a telescope that some professor couldn't get across on a TV programme.

We mobbed our guide with fretful questions. He shrugged and laughed. It could be a menace. 'You have to get used to not knowing. That's the hardest part of the job,' he said. It was then I became aware of the point of being here.

What was less clear was how our night-time viewing would go. Our group featured no one who could confidently say what they were looking at in the sky, so much depended on the astronomer accompanying us.

Indeed, we learnt that Nik Seymank, one of the world's finest astrophotographers, is a London Tube driver by day; Tom Boles, who has discovered more supernovae than anyone living, turns out to be a retired telecom engineer.

But here the banter is not of giraffe and rhino but of astronomical terms like quarks and parsecs. A particular constellation of stars known as Leo will be turning up, cloud permitting, later that night. 'Who will be awake?' 'We won't be able to as it is still about 3.30 in the morning,' says our guide, cheerfully underlining the idea of staying up till dawn.

My nonchalance didn't stand a chance against this passion and knowledge. I soon realised that the sky over my London home is a northern-tinted faded curtain compared with the lavishly studded dome that dominates the wilds of Africa. This is due, of course, to the total absence of light pollution.

I wasn't sure whether it had been the right decision, even though seeing the animals at close range was thrilling. But then I saw the Carina Nebula, nothing but the faintest of glows to the naked eye but a furnace of throbbing scientific possibility when seen through the telescope.

Amateur astronomy is enjoying a surge of popularity and remote bands around the world are installing telescopes and hiring expert star guides. Nevertheless, when I first heard about the idea of an 'astro-safari', I was sceptical. Wasn't the whole point of going to Africa to look at hyenas and gazelles, say, rather than up at constellations that have scarcely changed since our ancestors first struggled to stand upright?

So it was with certain qualms that I found myself in Tanzania, on one of the first such safaris in Africa. The plan was simple. We would spend four days travelling through the spectacular Ngorongoro crater and the highlands, before dropping down on to the plains, animal watching by day and stargazing by night. We would hit the Serengeti plains just as 1.5 million wildebeest were making their way across, accompanied by zebras and gazelles, one of East Africa's most thrilling sights.

We were in luck: Nick Howes, a science writer for the European Space Agency learnt to love astronomy at an early age. A natural communicator, Howes promptly reassured us that degrees in astrophysics are all very well, but cutting-edge astronomy relies on the work of thousands of amateurs. They are just like us, but with better lenses and more patience.

The vocabulary, however, was alluringly alien: not just nebulae and supernovae, but globular clusters and Magellanic Clouds. Howes continued the astral tour even to daylight hours. To do so, he had brought with him a solar scope that you screw into a telescope. This allows you to look directly into the sun, and, if you are lucky, see the huge 'coronal mass injections' that spurt from the surface of our very own star.

In fact, 'seeing' here in the Serengeti – astronomerspeak for clarity – is among the best in the world. But it was the unexpected spectacles that caused the greatest delight; one evening, a great fireball streaked across the sky, seeming to plunge to earth some way to the south.

Appropriate perhaps, considering that this is the part of the world where mankind first lived and looked at the night sky. Within 24 hours of arriving, the raw tourist finds himself asking all the big questions – the origins of the universe, why life started here of all places ... and the relative scariness of hyenas and asteroids. It was completely different to sitting in front of a TV screen where everything seemed more certain.

We are gathered around a campfire on the dusty edge of the Serengeti National Park. After a long day scanning the savannah for creatures with jaws, claws, tusks, the flames are comforting. Normally on one of these trips, this is the moment at which the day starts to wind down, when tourists compare the animals they've had the chance of seeing and capturing on film. ___ Amateur astronomy is enjoying a surge of popularity and remote bands around the world are installing telescopes and hiring expert star guides. Nevertheless, when I first heard about the idea of an 'astro-safari', I was sceptical. Wasn't the whole point of going to Africa to look at hyenas and gazelles, say, rather than up at constellations that have scarcely changed since our ancestors first struggled to stand upright? ___ So it was with certain qualms that I found myself in Tanzania, on one of the first such safaris in Africa. The plan was simple. We would spend four days travelling through the spectacular Ngorongoro crater and the highlands, before dropping down on to the plains, animal watching by day and stargazing by night. We would hit the Serengeti plains just as 1.5 million wildebeest were making their way across, accompanied by zebras and gazelles, one of East Africa's most thrilling sights. ___ We were in luck: Nick Howes, a science writer for the European Space Agency learnt to love astronomy at an early age. A natural communicator, Howes promptly reassured us that degrees in astrophysics are all very well, but cutting-edge astronomy relies on the work of thousands of amateurs. They are just like us, but with better lenses and more patience. ___ The vocabulary, however, was alluringly alien: not just nebulae and supernovae, but globular clusters and Magellanic Clouds. Howes continued the astral tour even to daylight hours. To do so, he had brought with him a solar scope that you screw into a telescope. This allows you to look directly into the sun, and, if you are lucky, see the huge 'coronal mass injections' that spurt from the surface of our very own star. ___ In fact, 'seeing' here in the Serengeti – astronomerspeak for clarity – is among the best in the world. But it was the unexpected spectacles that caused the greatest delight; one evening, a great fireball streaked across the sky, seeming to plunge to earth some way to the south. ___ Appropriate perhaps, considering that this is the part of the world where mankind first lived and looked at the night sky. Within 24 hours of arriving, the raw tourist finds himself asking all the big questions – the origins of the universe, why life started here of all places ... and the relative scariness of hyenas and asteroids. It was completely different to sitting in front of a TV screen where everything seemed more certain.

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