From: LARRY KLAES (ljk4_at_msn.com)
Date: Sun Apr 18 2004 - 05:09:56 PDT
----- Original Message -----
From: bulletins_at_SkyandTelescope.com<mailto:bulletins_at_SkyandTelescope.com>
To: ljk4_at_msn.com<mailto:ljk4_at_msn.com>
Sent: Friday, April 16, 2004 8:20 PM
Subject: S&T's Weekly News Bulletin for April 16
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* * * SKY & TELESCOPE's WEEKLY NEWS BULLETIN - April 16, 2004 * * *
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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. (If the links don't work,
just manually type the URLs into your Web browser.) Clear skies!
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FIRST PLANET FOUND BY MICROLENSING
After years of intense efforts and questionable results, astronomers
announced on April 15th the first clear-cut detection of an extrasolar
planet by a completely new technique. Two large teams working in the
Southern Hemisphere jointly announced that they have found a Jupiter-mass
planet orbiting a red-dwarf star about 10,000 to 15,000 light-years away.
They did it by detecting the slight gravitational pulls that the star and
its planet exerted on light coming from an even more distant star in the
background.
For almost two decades, astronomers have been intrigued by what they might
learn from such gravitational microlensing -- the distorting and
magnifying of a star's image by the gravity of an object passing nearly in
front if it. For microlensing to happen, however, the intervening object
must pass extremely close to our line of sight to the star, and this
happens very rarely. But computerized monitoring of millions of faint
stars has made it possible to find even these rare events....
> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1242_1.asp
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NO MOON FOR SEDNA
The newly discovered planetoid Sedna (2003 VB12) far beyond Pluto lacks
any sizeable moon, as Hubble Space Telescope images released Wednesday
reveal. The orbiting observatory snapped 35 images of Sedna on March 16th.
Sedna's co-discoverer Michael E. Brown (Caltech) suggested that the minor
planet might have a satellite because of its remarkably slow rotation
period of 40 days. A large moon can slow a body's rotation by tidal
friction -- though Alan W. Harris (Space Science Institute, Colorado)
notes that no satellite could work a body like Sedna into synchronous
rotation if the satellite ended up so far away that it has a 40-day
orbital period. In any case, the cause of Sedna's slow rotation remains a
mystery -- unless it was just a fluke of how the body happened to fall
together when it formed....
> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1240_1.asp
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TRIPLE SHADOW TRANSIT MOVIE
>From 8:00 to 8:19 Universal Time on March 28th, for the first and last
time this decade, three of Jupiter's moons cast shadows on the gas giant
simultaneously. Jason Hatton of Mill Valley, California, obtained a
remarkable series of images showing the moons and their shadows passing
over Jupiter for a 5.5-hour span at 10-minute intervals, which we have
combined into an animation....
> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1241_1.asp
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ASTRO NEWS BRIEFS
Mars Rover Missions Extended
On April 5th the rover Spirit celebrated its 90th day on Martian terrain.
On April 26th Opportunity will do the same. These birthdays are
particularly poignant as they represent the end of the rovers' primary
missions. Due to the missions' tremendous success, in early April NASA
approved 15 million dollars to fund extended rover ground support. The
extra funds should provide up to five months of additional research
lasting through September.
The extension will allow Spirit to head toward the 2-kilometer-distant
Columbia Hills, where scientists hope they will be able to discover clues
about the hydrological history of Gusev Crater. Opportunity will
investigate Endurance Crater, a few hundred meters to the east, in the
hopes of uncovering more information about Meridiani Planum's wet past.
Both rovers will continue atmospheric studies as well.
Large Binocular Telescope Gets First Eye
The first of the twin 8.4-meter primary mirrors of the Large Binocular
Telescope telescope atop Mount Graham in Arizona is now successfully
installed. The 18-ton piece of glass arrived in October 2003. The
telescope is scheduled to be completely finished in 2005. When it's done,
the facility will have the light-gathering capability of an 11.8-meter
telescope.
Combining Millimeter Telescopes
On March 27th officials broke ground on a new millimeter-wave telescope
array known as CARMA (Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-Wave
Astronomy). The facility will consist of a 15-telescope array utilizing
the half dozen 10-meter telescopes from Caltech's Owens Valley Radio
Observatory and the nine 6-meter telescopes of the
Berkeley-Illinois-Maryland Association array. Later this year the 15
telescopes will be moved from their current locations in Owens Valley and
Hat Creek, California to the 2,200 meter (7,300 foot) high Cedar Flat site
near Bishop, California. CARMA should be operational sometime in 2005.
Genesis Heads For Home
"After more than two years of collecting solar wind ions, we're thrilled
that the Genesis spacecraft is about to close up and come home." So said
Donald Sweetnam (NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory) as the spacecraft he
serves as project manager for prepared to finish its retrieval mission and
head for home. On April 1st the spacecraft sealed itself shut to prepare
for its journey back to Earth. The craft and the particles inside it, set
to arrive in the Utah desert on September 8, 2004, represent NASA's first
sample return mission since the Apollo landings.
> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1239_1.asp
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HIGHLIGHTS OF THIS WEEK'S SKY
* Four planets remain shining during evening this week: Brilliant Venus,
faint Mars, yellowish Saturn, as well as bright Jupiter very high in the
southeast to south.
* New Moon on Monday, April 19th.
* The annual Lyrid meteor shower should peak on April 21-22. No moonlight
will interfere.
For details, see This Week's Sky at a Glance and Planet Roundup:
> http://SkyandTelescope.com/observing/ataglance/
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