From: LARRY KLAES (ljk4_at_msn.com)
Date: Sat Jan 17 2004 - 15:45:01 PST
----- Original Message -----
From: bulletins_at_SkyandTelescope.com
Sent: Friday, January 16, 2004 8:09 PM
To: ljk4_at_msn.com
Subject: S&T's Weekly News Bulletin for January 16th
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* * * SKY & TELESCOPE's WEEKLY NEWS BULLETIN - January 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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ONE SMALL STEP FOR SPIRIT, ONE GIANT LEAP FOR HUMANKIND
A Chinese proverb says that a great journey begins with a single step.
Never has this been more apropos than in Gusev Crater at 3:41 a.m. Eastern
Standard Time (EST) on January 15th. Spirit rolled down a ramp then
"stepped" about 10 centimeters down onto the Martian surface. The
successful egress was confirmed in an image beamed back to Earth by Spirit
's rear hazard identification camera.
"Today was a fantastic day. The end point of the day is that Spirit is a
rover. We're ready to roll," said jubilant flight director Chris Lewicki
(Jet Propulsion Laboratory) at a January 15th press conference. "Egress
was the riskiest maneuver in Spirit's mission since landing. Now that it
has been successfully accomplished, we can look forward to several months
of spectacular images and scientific discovery...."
> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1155_1.asp
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FINDING OUR NEAREST STELLAR NEIGHBORS
Some tourists travel all over the world but never visit their hometown
museum. Likewise, many astronomers reach out to the edge of the observable
universe without knowing their immediate neighborhood. But not Todd J.
Henry of Georgia State University. Henry doesn't care about galaxy
clusters, quasars, and the microwave background. Instead, he wants to know
everything about the Sun's immediate galactic surroundings. His REsearch
Consortium On Nearby Stars (RECONS) has a simple and straightforward goal:
to find and characterize each and every object within 10 parsecs (32.6
light-years) of the Sun. "This is the only way of getting an unbiased
census of the stellar makeup of the universe," he says....
> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1154_1.asp
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SPIRIT FINDS CARBONATES, PREPARES TO ROVE
NASA's intrepid Spirit rover remains in excellent health after its ninth
day on the Martian surface. "The rover has to survive an incredibly large
swing in temperature range each day," says project scientist Joy Crisp
(Jet Propulsion Laboratory)....
During a press conference on Monday, January 12th, science team geologist
Michael Malin (Malin Space Science Systems) unveiled a spectacular,
high-resolution 360-degree color panorama that showcases virtually the
entire site within view of the rover. The image was taken by Spirit's
Pancam (Panorama Camera) during sols 3, 4, and 5 (a sol is a Martian day)
and was assembled from 225 individual images. It is approximately
true-color; if you were standing on Mars, you would see the landscape as
darkish orange-brown. "It's a great opening to the next stage of our
mission, which is to get off the lander and start moving out into this
field," says Malin....
> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1153_1.asp
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HUBBLE'S REALLY BIG PICTURE
Remember the Hubble Deep Fields? Well, there's a new and bigger version
out. At the 203rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Atlanta
earlier this month, astronomers released a breathtaking mosaic of 78
Hubble photos covering a square of sky half-degree wide -- about as large
as the full Moon -- in the southern constellation Fornax. While it is not
nearly as deep as the original Hubble Deep Fields (reaching to 24th or
25th magnitude instead of about 30th), its resolution is sharper, slightly
better than 0.1 arcsecond, since the new images come from Hubble's
Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). The project is one of a variety of
deep-field assaults being carried out on the same spot of sky.
The new mosaic has 3 billion pixels. "This will be the largest contiguous
Hubble color image for years to come," says team member Eric F. Bell
(Max-Planck-Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg). And it's not just pretty
pictures....
> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1152_1.asp
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HIGHLIGHTS OF THIS WEEK'S SKY
* New Moon on Wednesday, January 21st.
* Mercury is at greatest western elongation (24 degrees from the Sun) and
is visible low in the southeast about 45 minutes before sunrise.
* Mercury is to the left of the crescent Moon at dawn on the 19th.
For details, see This Week's Sky at a Glance and Planet Roundup:
> http://SkyandTelescope.com/observing/ataglance/
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NIGHT SKY MAGAZINE (Advertisement)
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This new bimonthly magazine has been designed especially for entry-level
observers who want to enjoy and explore the starry sky. NIGHT SKY
premieres with the May/June 2004 issue. To find out more, go to:
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Copyright 2004 Sky Publishing Corp. S&T's Weekly News Bulletin is provided
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