From: LARRY KLAES (ljk4_at_msn.com)
Date: Sun Feb 02 2003 - 11:15:58 PST
----- Original Message -----
From: bulletins_at_SkyandTelescope.com
Sent: Friday, January 31, 2003 7:44 PM
To: ljk4_at_msn.com
Subject: S&T's Weekly News Bulletin for January 31
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* * * SKY & TELESCOPE's WEEKLY NEWS BULLETIN - January 31, 2003 * * *
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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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DO GLOBULAR CLUSTERS SPIT OUT X-RAY STARS?
The dense stellar beehives known as globular clusters are fertile breeding
grounds for all kinds of astronomical exotica: millisecond pulsars; blue
stragglers; maybe even midsize black holes. Now astronomers can add
microquasars -- binary-star systems with relativistic jets -- to the list.
Living in an environment orders of magnitude denser than the solar
neighborhood, each star in a globular cluster is likely to experience a
close encounter with at least one other during a cluster's
multibillion-year lifetime. Binary-star collisions are particularly
dramatic: the gravitational energy within a binary star can be converted
into kinetic energy during run-ins with other stars or binaries.
Occasionally a binary can even be flung out of its parent cluster.
That's what may have happened to Scorpius X-1, according to a new study...
> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/current/article_860_1.asp
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EUROPEAN VIRTUAL OBSERVATORY ONE STEP NEARER
During a press conference held at Jodrell Bank Observatory in the United
Kingdom on January 20th, journalists, astronomers, and potential European
Union financial backers got a real-time demonstration of the prototype
Astrophysical Virtual Observatory (AVO) software. The groundbreaking event
marked the conclusion of the first year of the project; the goal is a
fully functioning European VO by the end of 2007.
But what is the Virtual Observatory, and why do astronomers want it?...
> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/current/article_850_1.asp
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ASTRO NEWS BRIEFS
Solar Sentinel Heads to Orbit
An aircraft-launched Pegasus rocket lofted NASA's Solar Radiation and
Climate Experiment (SORCE) into orbit on January 25th. This 290-kilogram
satellite carries four instruments to study minuscule variations in the
Sun's energy output and will be operated by the Laboratory for Atmospheric
and Space Physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Two
instruments are descendants of payloads that have flown before: the
Spectral Irradiance Monitor measures the Sun's energy output at visual and
near- to mid-infrared wavelengths, while the Total Irradiance Monitor
evaluates the ultraviolet-to-infrared range to an accuracy of 0.01
percent. The third instrument has a pair of spectrometers to study
variations in the Sun's ultraviolet spectrum from 115 to 320 nanometers,
while a fourth will monitor variations in the extreme ultraviolet, at
wavelengths between 1 and 34 nanometers (10 and 340 angstroms). Solar
physicists believe SORCE's observations will be critical in assessing
variations in Earth's long-term climate and the interaction of solar
ultraviolet radiation with our atmosphere's protective ozone layer.
New Satellite To Study Interstellar Bubble
Astronomers now have an important new tool for studying the bubble of hot,
ionized gas surrounding our solar system. The Cosmic Hot Interstellar
Plasma Spectrometer spacecraft, or CHIPSat, rocketed into orbit on January
12th from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, sharing its Delta II
launcher with ICESat, a NASA spacecraft for studying Earth's climate.
CHIPS is a small, 60-kilogram "University Explorer," a mission class
costing less than $13 million, and it carries a single instrument: an
extreme-ultraviolet spectrograph developed by the University of
California, Berkeley. CHIPS will record spectral lines in the 90- to
260-angstrom range, where million-degree gas in the local interstellar
bubble emits most of its radiation. More-distant gas at this temperature
can't be studied because the galaxy is opaque in the extreme ultraviolet,
so it's not clear which atomic transitions are responsible for cooling
interstellar gas in various astrophysical settings. Therefore, the CHIPS
data will allow astronomers to refine the models used for simulating
conditions in both local and extragalactic hot gas.
> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/current/article_856_1.asp
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HIGHLIGHTS OF THIS WEEK'S SKY
* New Moon on February 1st.
* Mercury is at greatest elongation on Tuesday morning; visible low in the
east at dawn.
* Jupiter shines brightly in the east after sunset all this week.
For details, see This Week's Sky at a Glance and Planet Roundup:
> http://SkyandTelescope.com/observing/ataglance/
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NORTH TO ALASKA (Advertisement)
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March 3-9, 2003
View and photograph the northern lights at the fabulous Chena Hot Springs
Resort. Witness spectacular mountains and glaciers, and get a
behind-the-scenes tour of the Poker Flat Research Range, where scientists
launch rockets into the aurora borealis. Joining us is award-winning
aurora photographer Dennis Mammana. Bring your camera and your questions
and learn from a pro!
Space is limited. Call 1-800-830-1998 or make your reservation online at:
> http://www.tq-international.com/Alaska/alaskahome.htm
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Copyright 2003 Sky Publishing Corp. S&T's Weekly News Bulletin is provided
as a free service to the astronomical community by the editors of SKY &
TELESCOPE magazine. Widespread electronic distribution is encouraged as
long as our copyright notice is included, along with the words "used by
permission." But this bulletin may not be published in any other form
without written permission from Sky Publishing; send e-mail to
permissions_at_SkyandTelescope.com or call +1 617-864-7360. More astronomy
news is available on our Web site at http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/.
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> http://SkyandTelescope.com/shopatsky/emailsubscribe.asp
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