阅读理解

　　How many of us have looked up at the stars and wondered about other worlds?Of course，we know a great deal about the universe now but for people living thousands of years ago，the stars were a mystery(神秘的事物)．Astrology(占星术) is one of the world's most ancient (古代的) ideas．It started 3,000 years ago and was used to predict (预言) what would happen to countries and to people in the future．

　　Horoscopes and astrology were developed by the ancient Greeks．They believed that the position(位置) of the sun and the planets could affect a person's life and what would happen to them in the future．Astrology is actually a Greek word that means“science of the stars”．Even famous Greek thinkers like Plato thought astrology was important and he studied it carefully．Later Europeans thought that Plato was a genius so they continued to follow his ideas about the stars．

　　Some people think that farmers started the horoscope to help them decide when to plant and harvest their crops．They needed to know what time of the year it was．For example，Scorpio can only be seen in the evening sky in the summer．Some historians (历史学家) think that many of the myths (神话) associated with star signs were invented to help farmers remember cultures．People who spent their lives moving from one place to another，like the Mongols，used the stars to tell them when and where to go．

　　The Catholic Church(教堂)，which was very powerful a long time ago，told people not to take notice of horoscopes．It was not until the seventeenth century that people were able to freely use the horoscope again．Today many people think the horoscope is just fun but some people take it very seriously．

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阅读理解

　　Do you know how many stars there are in the universe?The answer is MANY! Our sun is one of about 100 billion stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way．But the Milky Way is just one of billions of galaxies that we know about! Some other scientists say there are 2,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars!

　　The largest star that we know about is called the Pistol Star (手枪星)．The Pistol Star is closer to the center of the Milky Way than we are．Because of space dust we can’t see it with the naked eye (肉眼)．It’s about 100 times the size of our Sun, and 10,000,000 times as bright as the Sun!

　　The closest star to the Earth is the Sun! The Sun is about 93 million miles away．We measure bigger distances in space in light years, and one light year is about 6,000,000,000,000 miles．Besides the Sun, Proxima Centauri (半人马比邻座星) is the closest star at 4.2 light years away．Some of the brightest stars are more distant-Rigel (参宿七)，in the constellation Orion (猎户星座)，is the seventh brightest star in the sky but is 900 light years away．To see the faraway stars, scientists use the Hubble Space Telescope (啥勃空间望远镜)．Hubble has been stars that are 12 billion light years away!

　　A star’s color has a lot to do with its temperature．A blue-white star is very dense (密集的) and hot．When a star becomes red, its energy．Has begun to fade (消失)．Therefore, a star that is nearing the end of its life is called a red giant (红巨星)．While humans grow smaller in old age, stars grow bigger until they die．In the far future, maybe our sun will become a red giant and destroy the Earth! Luckily, it’ll be a long time before we have to think about that problem．

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