Word: faintly
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They look like faint, random smudges on a photographic plate. But for scientists these markings hold a world of meaning. Last week University of California Astronomer Hyron Spinrad and his colleagues announced that the blurs represent four galaxies, great elliptical collections of stars, perhaps even larger than our own Milky Way. More astonishing, they are some 2 billion light-years farther off in space than any other galaxy ever discerned by telescope...
...observations came from the 120-in. reflector at the University of California's Lick Observatory, enhanced by computer technology. To study such extremely faint objects, astronomers had to focus their light onto a photo-imaging tube akin to the night-vision devices used by the military in Viet Nam. This electronic gadgetry strengthens the signals and then stores them as electronic data in a computer, while it subtracts any disturbing background glare. Eventually the astronomers accumulated enough light to produce spectra, or light signatures, for all four galaxies, but that took considerable doing. The image of just...
...Faint hearts need not apply. That goes for fatties too: a brochure declares proudly that there are "no two-ton Teutons in our company." Still, it takes more than just a strong voice and a presentable shape to join up with the Texas Opera Theater...
...earth's atmosphere. More than half a century ago, a German spaceflight visionary named Hermann Oberth suggested that solution. He foresaw the time when there would be rockets powerful enough to carry telescopes far out into the perfect stillness and clarity of space. In 1923 that seemed a faint dream. Now NASA is pressing ahead with just such an astronomical plan. Last month the $600 million project took a big step forward. After an intense competition, NASA chose Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore as home of the new Space Telescope Science Institute. From there a staff of 150 people...
...befuddling, for A Change of Seasons is as abominable a film as anyone has made in recent years. possibly a critic might be tender-hearted enough to single out one or two cast members less injured than the rest by the explosion of this bomb; perhaps a few faint words of praise for the ending, which actually has a slightly engaging twist. But surely no one would say, "Wonderful, hilarious, often touching and always entertaining." Or "It's the best entertainment of the season." That Rex Reed, Syndicated Columnist, and Vernon Scott, UPI, did is proof enough that our society...