3 THE REVEREND EVANS'S UNIVERSE 3.埃文斯牧师的宇宙

When the skies are clear and the Moon is not too bright, the Reverend Robert Evans, a quiet and cheerful man, 当天空晴朗，月亮不太明亮的时候，罗伯特·埃文斯牧师是个说话不多、性格开朗的人，

lugs¹ a bulky telescope onto the back deck of his home in the Blue Mountains of Australia, about fifty miles west of Sydney, 家住澳大利亚的蓝山山脉，在悉尼以西大约80公里的地方。他带着一台又笨又大的望远镜来到自家的后阳台，

and does an extraordinary thing. 干一件非同寻常的事。

He looks deep into the past and finds dying stars. 他观察遥远的过去，寻找临终的恒星。

Looking into the past is of course the easy part. 观察过去当然是其中容易的部分。

Glance at the night sky and what you see is history and lots of it 朝夜空瞥上一眼，你就看到了历史，大量历史

the stars not as they are now but as they were when their light left them. 你看到的恒星不是它们现在的状态，而是它们的光射出时的状态。

For all we know, the North Star, our faithful companion, might actually have burned out last January or in 1854 据我们所知，我们忠实的伙伴北极星，实际上也许在去年1月，或1854年，

or at any time since the early fourteenth century and news of it just hasn't reached us yet. 或14世纪初以后的任何时候就已经熄灭，因为这信息到现在还无法传到这里。

The best we can say—can ever say—is that it was still burning on this date 680 years ago. 我们至多只能说--永远只能说--它在680年以前的今天还在发光。

Stars die all the time. 恒星在不断死亡。

What Bob Evans does better than anyone else who has ever tried is spot these moments of celestial² farewell. 罗伯特·埃文斯干得比别人更出色的地方是，他发现了天体举行告别仪式的时刻。

By day, Evans is a kindly³ and now semiretired minister in the Uniting Church in Australia, 白天，埃文斯是澳大利亚统一教会一位和蔼可亲、快要退休的牧师，

who does a bit of freelance work and researches the history of nineteenth-century religious movements. 干点临时工作，研究19世纪的宗教运动史。

But by night he is, in his unassuming way, a titan of the skies. He hunts supernovae. 到了夜间，他悄悄地成为一位天空之神，寻找超新星。