太空照片驚現企鵝超級帝國英語美文

　　Scientists have stumbled across a huge group of previously unknown Adélie penguins on the most northerly point of the Antarctic Peninsula.

　　科學家們在南極半島最北端無意中發現了一大群以前不為人知的阿德利企鵝。

　　Numbering more than 1.5 million birds, they were first noticed when great patches of their poo, or guano, showed up in pictures taken from space.

　　這超過150萬隻的企鵝種群首次被注意到，是因為它們的大便出現在從太空拍攝到的照片中。

　　The animals are crammed on to a rocky archipelago called the Danger Islands.

　　這些動物擠在一個叫險惡群島的岩石群島上。

　　The researchers, who detail the discovery in the journal Scientific Reports, say it is a total surprise.

　　研究人員在《科學報道》雜誌上詳細介紹了這一發現，他說這是一個驚喜。

　　"It’s a classic case of finding something where no-one really looked! The Danger Islands are hard to reach, so people didn’t really try that hard," team-member Dr Tom Hart from Oxford University, UK, told BBC News.

　　英國牛津大學的團隊成員Tom Hart博士告訴BBC：“這是一個經典的找到沒有人真正注意過的東西的案例!險惡群島很難到達，所以人們並沒有真正嘗試這麼做。”

　　The scientists used an algorithm to search images from the American Landsat spacecraft for sites of possible penguin activity.

　　科學家們使用一種演算法從美國大地衛星航天器搜尋可能存在企鵝活動的地點的影象。

　　Landsat does not return especially high-resolution pictures and so when the system flagged potential colonies, they had to be followed up with much sharper pictures for confirmation.

　　大地衛星不會返回特別高解析度的圖片，因此當系統標記潛在的群落時，他們必須跟蹤更加清晰的圖片以進行確認。

　　"And the sheer size of what we were looking at took our breath away," said Dr Heather Lynch from Stony Brook University, New York.

　　“而我們所看到的龐大規模讓我們屏息凝神，”紐約石溪大學的Heather Lynch博士說。

　　"We thought, ’Wow! If what we’re seeing is true, these are going to be some of the largest Adélie penguin colonies in the world, and it’s going to be well worth our while sending in an expedition to count them properly."

　　“我們當時想，’哇!如果我們看到的是真的，這將成為世界上最大的阿德利企鵝群，並且非常值得派出遠征隊進行正確計數。 ”

　　But, as the name implies, the Danger Islands are notoriously difficult to reach.

　　但正如名字所暗示的那樣，險惡群島是非常難以到達的。

　　Even in the austral summer, the ocean surrounding the archipelago is filled with the kind of thick sea-ice that ships try to avoid.

　　即使在南半球的'夏季，群島周圍的海洋也充滿了船隻試圖避免的那種厚厚的海冰。

　　However, in December 2015, the team did manage to get on the ground to begin its count. And one of the most effective techniques was to deploy drones, which flew above the birds to make large mosaics of their nesting sites.

　　然而，在2015年12月，一支隊伍確實設法開始計數。而最有效的技術之一是部署無人機，它們飛過鳥類上方，對準它們的巢穴製作大型馬賽克。

　　"The drone lets you fly in a grid over the island, taking pictures once per second. You can then stitch them together into a huge collage that shows the entire landmass in 2D and 3D," explained Prof Hanumant Singh from Northeastern University.

　　東北大學的Hanumant Singh教授解釋說：“無人機可以讓你在島上飛行，每秒拍攝一次照片，然後將它們拼接成一張巨大的拼貼畫，以2D和3D的形式顯示整個地塊。”