From: LARRY KLAES (ljk4_at_msn.com)
Date: Sun Oct 19 2003 - 16:51:51 PDT
Oct. 19, 2003. 01:00 AM
NASA signs Hubble death warrant, for now ...
TERENCE DICKINSON
THE UNIVERSE
As astounding as it sounds, it's now official. NASA plans to crash the Hubble Space Telescope into the Pacific Ocean in 2010 — even if it's still working perfectly.
Have the space agency managers gone crazy?
No, they say. In order to afford to launch and operate the next-generation space telescope, the old one has to come down first.
Trouble is, the design of the new scope does not allow it to take the full-colour pictures as well as the Hubble does.
Astronomers are pleading with NASA to overlap the missions. We haven't heard the last of this ....
Mars fading: The wonderfully prolonged close approach of Mars that began in early summer is drawing to a close. At its nearest in late August, Mars was three light-minutes from Earth, closer than it will be until 2287.
Distance now is 4.4 light-minutes — still respectable, but we've been spoiled by the brilliance the planet attained in late August and early September.
Experts are hailing this close approach as the best of the last half-century.
Fears of a repeat of the global dust storm that cloaked Mars at its close approach in 2001 proved to be unfounded.
Instead, the atmosphere of our neighbour world remained largely clear so Earthlings using telescopes could peer up at the Martian plains and south polar cap.
Solar System: A hot seller on the newsstands this month is Solar System, a single-issue magazine compiled by the staff of Scientific American.
Packed with photos and colour illustrations of the planets and their moons, this beautifully produced 100-page publication is up to date, well researched and would make fine supplementary reading in high school science classrooms.
A bargain at $8.
Astronomical sleuth: At an exhibition of Tom Thomson paintings a year ago, Discovery Channel staff astronomer Ivan Semeniuk noticed what appeared to be the five main stars of the constellation Cassiopeia in the middle of Thomson's 1917 Northern Lights.
Using the position of the stars and the horizon as Thomson showed them in the painting, Semeniuk was able (after several false starts) to pinpoint when and within a few dozen metres of where on Canoe Lake in Algonquin Park Thomson was located when he made the painting.
The full detective story is told on the Discovery Channel's Daily Planet program tomorrow at 7 p.m. (repeated at 11 p.m.).
Cosmos on DVD: Carl Sagan fans have long wondered when a DVD version of the Emmy- and Peabody Award-winning Cosmos television series would arrive in Canada. Actually, DVDs of these 13 hours of outstanding documentaries have been available for more than two years, but potential buyers have resisted the astronomical price of the imported discs.
Now, my local outlet reports that any DVD store should be able to order the seven-disc set for you for about $100. The DVD version has been digitally remastered and looks great.
Terence Dickinson is editor of Skynews magazine and author of books for backyard astronomers.
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