From: LARRY KLAES (ljk4@msn.com)
Date: Fri May 10 2002 - 16:33:28 PDT
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From: bulletins@SkyandTelescope.com
Sent: Friday, May 10, 2002 7:27 PM
To: ljk4@msn.com
Subject: S&T's Weekly News Bulletin for May 10th
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* * * * SKY & TELESCOPE's WEEKLY NEWS BULLETIN - May 10, 2002 * * * *
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Welcome to S&T's Weekly News Bulletin. Images, the full text of stories
abridged here, and other enhancements are available on our Web site,
SkyandTelescope.com, at the URLs provided below. Clear skies!
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MARS ODYSSEY SUPPORT FOR VISUAL ICE FLASHES?
Initial data from Mars Odyssey's neutron spectrometer -- designed, among
other things, to detect signs of water on or near the surface of Mars --
adds support to the idea that enigmatic flashes on Mars seen through
Earth-based telescopes are reflections from low-lying clouds of ice
crystals or even patches of surface ice.
The flashes, as reported in Sky & Telescope by Thomas Dobbins and William
Sheehan (S&T: May 2001, page 115), were first seen in 1900 at Lowell
Observatory. They were observed again in 1951 and '54 by Japanese amateur
Tsuneo Saheki, and by other observers in '54 and '58. Dobbins and Sheehan
showed that all these sightings corresponded to times when the affected
regions of Mars - Edom Promontorium and Tithonius Lacus - were in exactly
the right geometry to produce specular reflections, like those produced by
a sheet of ice or a dense cloud of plate-like ice crystals. At these
spots, one could expect to see a glint of sunlight, like the Sun being
reflected from a distant building's windows as sunset approaches....
The first results from Mars Odyssey's neutron spectrometer were released
in March, showing areas rich in hydrogen and thus likely to contain water
ice (or possibly hydrated minerals). As expected, most was concentrated in
the region of the south pole. But there was also a small patch right at
the equator - in just the area where the flashes were seen....
> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/current/article_600_1.asp
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2002 NATIONAL YOUNG ASTRONOMER AWARD WINNERS ANNOUNCED
Last week, the Astronomical League announced the winners of the 2002
National Young Astronomer Award. Established in 1993, the award recognizes
outstanding astronomical achievement by U.S. high school students.
This year's winner is Albert King Lin, a senior at St. Francis Preparatory
School in Fresh Meadows, New York. Lin's prize-winning research project is
entitled, "A Survey of the Public Chandra Data Archive in Search of
Serendipitous X-ray Pulsars: A Systematic Approach." His advisor for the
study was Eric Gotthelf (Columbia University)....
> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/current/article_595_1.asp
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ASTRO NEWS BRIEFS
Interstellar Antifreeze
Astronomers using the National Science Foundation's 12-Meter Radio
Telescope at Kitt Peak, Arizona, have discovered ethylene glycol in
molecular clouds in Sagittarius. The molecule, according to team members
Jan M. Hollis (NASA/Goddard), Frank J. Lovas (University of Illinois),
Phillip R. Jewell (National Radio Astronomy Observatory), and Laurent H.
Coudert (University of Paris), is one of the five largest molecules ever
discovered in space (it has 10 atoms) and is a reduced form of
glycolaldehyde, a simple sugar. In a prepared statement, Hollis said,
"These detections suggest that the production of more complex sugars, like
ribose [the backbone of RNA], may be occurring in interstellar clouds."
Win the SOHO-500
The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) has been a valuable tool for
solar astronomers and comet discoverers alike. As of May 2nd, SOHO's
observations of the Sun and its surroundings had serendipitously uncovered
some 435 new comets. Many of these were identified by amateurs who pored
over the daily solar images to locate any moving objects. Now the SOHO
team wants more people to get involved, and to sweeten the pot, they have
begun the SOHO-500. The SOHO team is looking to the public to guess the
discovery date and time of the SOHO's 500th comet. The closest guess will
win a DVD or VHS copy of Solar Max. Entries are due by May 31, 2002, and
must include the date and time of the discovery in Universal Time. E-mail
entries to Doug Biesecker: doug@sungrazer.nascom.nasa.gov. Only one entry
per person will be accepted.
New Mexico Astronomers Narrowly Escape Firestorm
Mindful of the potential for forest fires in southeastern New Mexico, Mike
and Lynn Rice chose the summit of Mount Joy near the small town of Mayhill
for their inn and guest observatory (S&T: August 1999, page 86) because
they thought it offered good protection from these devastating events. But
their worst fears were realized on May 2nd when a wind-whipped firestorm
exploded from 800 to 9,500 acres in one day and raced toward their New
Mexico Skies observatory compound. "It was terrifying," says Lynn.
Fortunately, an eight-member team of "hotshots" and a truck full of
fire-retardant foam arrived just in time, fighting the advancing flames
all night and saving all the summit's buildings from incineration. When
the Rices returned the next day, they found that the flames had come
within inches of one structure and had left a layer of ash on everything -
including their seven large telescopes. Nothing was damaged, Lynn reports,
"but we've been vacuuming like mad!"
Prototype Amateur Space Telescope Up and Running
Members of the Astronomical League have moved one step closer to realizing
their dream of having an amateur-controlled telescope in space. The
League's "Telescope Alpha," a 14-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain equipped with
dual CCD detectors, has begun regular observations from its site in the
Arizona desert. "We are now processing observing requests as weather
allows," reports project manager Orville Brettman. "We are reaching
magnitude 17.5 in 30 seconds." Since the telescope's "first light" tests
in mid-March, Brettman's team has stabilized the telescope's power source
and fine-tuned its pointing. Operation of the testbed facility is
controlled from Dyer Observatory in Nashville, Tennessee - a
proof-of-concept arrangement that, the League hopes, will pave the way for
having a telescope on the International Space Station by the end of this
decade.
Neptune's Ring Arcs Explained
When Voyager 2 flew by Neptune in 1989, it found that the planet's
outermost ring, called Adams, contains five distinct concentrations of
matter, each 1° to 10° long, confined within 40° of longitude. But it
wasn't clear how these ring "arcs" could endure, since jostling among
their particles should cause them to disperse quickly. Initially
dynamicists thought that the arcs were confined by the cyclic up-and-down
motion of the nearby moon Galatea, whose orbit is inclined slightly with
respect to the ring plane. But later observations proved that theory
false. Now a new analysis, published in last week's Nature by Fathi
Namouni and Carolyn Porco (Southwest Research Institute, Boulder) argues
that it's Galatea's tiny orbital eccentricity (about one part in a
million), not inclination, that confines the ring arcs. Furthermore, the
gravitational linkage works both ways. The particles in the Adams ring are
also perturbing Galatea's orbit, so measurements of how Galatea's
eccentricity changes with time should yield a mass for the matter confined
in the arcs.
> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/current/article_594_1.asp
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HIGHLIGHTS OF THIS WEEK'S SKY
* The grand planet gathering starts to break up this week with Mercury
dipping low to the horizon. Look to the western sky at twilight.
* A spectacular Moon-Venus conjunction happens on May 14th
* Uranus and Neptune (magnitudes 6 and 8, respectively, in or near
Capricornus) are in the southeast before dawn.
For details, see This Week's Sky at a Glance and Planet Roundup:
> http://SkyandTelescope.com/observing/ataglance/
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Copyright 2002 Sky Publishing Corp. S&T's Weekly News Bulletin is provided
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