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 * * * SKY & TELESCOPE's WEEKLY NEWS BULLETIN - January 28, 2005 * * *

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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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AAVSO NAMES NEW DIRECTOR

On Friday the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
announced Arne A. Henden as its new director. He'll step into the position
left vacant by the passing of Janet Mattei on March 22, 2004. Henden is no
stranger to the AAVSO. He has served as an AAVSO council member for six
years and has submitted thousands of observations to its International
Database....

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1451_1.asp

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NEWFOUND STAR SPARKS BROWN-DWARF DEBATE

In principle, weighing an astronomical object is easy: just track its
orbit around another similar body and apply basic physics to derive its
mass. In practice, however, astronomers can use this approach only rarely,
and only a handful of brown dwarfs -- substellar gas balls that can't
sustain nuclear fusion in their cores -- have been weighed this way even
coarsely. Consequently, to decide whether a pinprick of light like 2M
1207b comes from a "planet" (with less than 1.3 percent of the Sun's mass,
or 13 Jupiters), a brown dwarf (13 to 75 Jupiters), or a star (more than
75 Jupiters), one usually must rely on evolutionary models that relate an
object's luminosity to its age and mass.

Now, though, an international research team has determined an orbit -- and
a precise mass -- for the youngest brown dwarf yet. There's just one
problem: that object, AB Doradus C, isn't a brown dwarf after all. It has
an ostensibly stellar mass of 90 Jupiters -- up to twice what evolutionary
models predict for the 50-million-year-old object given its distance and
near-infrared magnitude....

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1449_1.asp

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SENATOR VOWS TO FIGHT FOR HUBBLE

Amid new rumors that NASA plans to abandon the Hubble Space Telescope
(HST), a powerful US senator has vowed to continue fighting to keep the
observatory operating. Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland), one of
Hubble's staunchest supporters in Congress, wasted no time before
responding to reports that NASA's budget for fiscal year 2006, to be made
public on February 7th, contains no money to repair and upgrade the
telescope.

"It is essential that we have a safe and reliable servicing mission to
Hubble," Mikulski said in a statement distributed to reporters on Friday
afternoon, January 21st, just hours after Space.com published comments
from unnamed sources suggesting that NASA cannot afford to service Hubble
again....

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1448_1.asp

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HIGHLIGHTS OF THIS WEEK'S SKY

* This week, the early evening sky is once again dark and moonless for
observing Comet Machholz. The comet is fading a little as it moves across
dim Camelopardalis, north of Perseus and east of Cassiopeia. But it's
still very visible in binoculars, glowing at about 4th magnitude.
* For five consecutive mornings starting Saturday, telescope users can
catch Mare Orientale, the Moon's most spectacular "hidden" landform.
* Last-quarter Moon on February 2nd.

For more details, see This Week's Sky at a Glance and Planet Roundup:

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

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LAST CHANCE TO GET ECLIPSED IN APRIL! (Advertisement)

Are you kicking yourself for not making plans to see the April 8th total
eclipse of the Sun in the South Pacific? Well, it's not too late to put
yourself in the path of the Moon's shadow. A handful of cabins remain
aboard the newly refurbished MV Discovery, which departs Tahiti on April
3rd en route to totality. Ports of call include Pitcairn Island, Easter
Island, and Lima, Peru, where the cruise ends on April 19th. SKY &
(Continued to next message)

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