Reading. New Minor Planet “Samarkand” Focus on the highlighted words in the passage and match them with their antonyms 1-6

Reading.


New Minor Planet “Samarkand”
Focus on the highlighted words in the passage and match them with their antonyms 1-6

1. inexact, indefinite

2. permanent
3. simple
4. earthly
5. neglect
6. extra, additional


New Minor Planet “Samarkand”
Two Uzbek astronomers were working on a clear night in October 2007 at Maidanak Observatory when they suddenly pored over celestial images. After observing the images, they noticed a star-like object moving along the orbital path. They tracked the object and decided to send the preliminary (1)____________
Minor Planet Center (MPC), which was run by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and Harvard College Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
They received the confirmation about the object not being previously documented in MPC catalogue. The Center assigned the object a provisional designation,
and the real work began. It took Bahodir Hafizov, the Uzbek astronomer at Maidanak, almost two years to plot the daily trajectory and define the precise
coordinates of the object until the Center was satisfied that it was indeed a new minor planet, or small solar system body. The planet was enrolled in MPC catalogue and named Samarkand, after the city that was (2)______________ in astronomy. Maidanak Observatory works in (3)______________ and other international institutions. The new small solar system body was discovered with the help of the most modern and highly-sensitive equipment that is the best in the region and given to Ulugbek Astronomical Institute by the association of Korean Universities. During the Soviet period Maidanak was a military satellite ranging station and it was impossible to carry out this kind of International Cooperation in the field of astronomy.
Nowadays Ulugbek Astronomical Institute (UBAI) is taking an active part in an International projects like (4)______________ , monitoring of the brightness of quasars, observing young stars outside our solar system and many others. That’s because the Maidanak observatory has (5)______________ and experienced scientists as well. Obviously, UBAI is doing more than just discovering new minor planets. Thanks to the hard work of a group of scholars and (6)_____________ of astronomers, Maidanak has turned into a world-class observatory that helps to solve some of the universe’s most complex puzzles.