SETI bioastro: Fw: S&T's Weekly News Bulletin for September 23

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From: LARRY KLAES (ljk4_at_msn.com)
Date: Sat Sep 24 2005 - 11:41:31 UTC

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----- Original Message -----
From: bulletins_at_SkyandTelescope.com<mailto:bulletins_at_SkyandTelescope.com>
To: ljk4_at_msn.com<mailto:ljk4_at_msn.com>
Sent: Friday, September 23, 2005 8:29 PM
Subject: S&T's Weekly News Bulletin for September 23

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* * * SKY & TELESCOPE's WEEKLY NEWS BULLETIN - September 23, 2005 * * *

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Welcome to S&T's Weekly News Bulletin. Images, the full stories abridged
here, and other enhancements are on our Web site, SkyandTelescope.com, at
the URLs provided. (If the links don't work, just paste them into your Web
browser.) Clear skies!

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ANDROMEDA'S BLACK HOLE SURROUNDED BY YOUNG STARS

It's no secret that supermassive black holes are thought to dwell in the
centers of most galaxies, but what might be less known is that only two
black holes have been directly proven to exist under there. Now, thanks to
some blue stars in a very unlikely place, make that three.

The Andromeda Galaxy (M31) has long been known as a likely candidate for
harboring a black hole. Its innermost nucleus emits the X-rays expected
from an accretion disk of gas spiraling into one. In addition, for almost
a decade astronomers have noted a mysterious blue light at the core. Using
Hubble's Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS), astronomers have now
identified this blue glow as a flat disk of more than 400 young, hot stars
no more than half a light-year from the nucleus. The stars' unlikely
nesting ground gave astronomers the most solid evidence to date that the
Andromeda Galaxy contains a black hole -- and it's twice as big as they
thought....

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1599_1.asp>

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

AN ANSEL ADAMS ENCORE

Just before sunset on Thursday, September 15th, more than 200
photographers and a half dozen media crews (including one from Japan)
converged on Yosemite National Park's Glacier Point in California. What
drew them there was a prediction in SKY & TELESCOPE's October issue, page
40: At dusk that evening, a nearly full Moon would rise in the southeast
over Gray Peak and Mount Starr King and show almost exactly the same phase
and sky location as in Ansel Adams' famous photograph "Autumn Moon," taken
57 years earlier to the day....

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1595_1.asp>

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HIGHLIGHTS OF THIS WEEK'S SKY

* Mars is shining well up in the east by midnight and is already 17
arcseconds wide, larger than it almost ever appears.
* Last-quarter Moon on September 24-25.
* Venus (magnitude -4.0, in Libra) shines brightly in the west-southwest
in early dusk.

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/observing/ataglance>

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