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  * * * SKY & TELESCOPE's WEEKLY NEWS BULLETIN - June 10, 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 manually type the URLs
into your Web browser.) Clear skies!

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PUZZLING OUT PLUTO'S PAST

After Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto in 1930, the planet drew
considerable scrutiny. Unfortunately, modern analysis shows that many
Pluto observations from the 1930s and 40s were unreliable. Measurements of
Pluto's brightness made from photographic plates were off by as much as 1
magnitude because of errors in the brightnesses of comparison stars. But
astronomers would like to know Pluto's true brightness during those
earlier times. Now Luke T. Smith and Bradley E. Schaefer have remeasured
photographic plates from 1933-34 using modern equipment and have produced
an accurate light curve for the planet in the years shortly after its
discovery....

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1527_1.asp

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DEEP IMPACT'S BLURRED VISION CALLED FIXABLE

Last March NASA discovered that its Deep Impact mission, which is on track
to smash a projectile into Comet Tempel 1 on the night of July 3rd, has a
flaw in the optics of its sharpest camera, worsening the camera's
resolution by about a factor of four. NASA engineers expressed hope at the
time that they could remove most of the flaw's effects by sophisticated
image processing, and at a press conference yesterday, project managers
said that this can indeed be done. The source of the problem turns out to
be an eerie echo of how a flaw was built into the Hubble Space Telescope's
optics....

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1529_1.asp

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BOGUS MARS CHAIN LETTER

Another e-mail chain letter touting bogus astronomy is spreading across
the Internet. The letter claims that on August 27th Mars will dazzle the
world, appearing brighter than ever in history. The problem is that
"August 27th" is actually August 27, 2003....

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1529_1.asp

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HIGHLIGHTS OF THIS WEEK'S SKY

* First-quarter Moon on June 14th.
* Two big spots are on the Sun.
* Jupiter and Venus shine in evening twilight.
* The year's earliest sunrises (for midnorthern latitudes).

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

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SPOTLIGHT PRINT SALE! (Advertisement)

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Lagoon Nebula Close Up     SALE: $14.95 (orig. $29.95)
> http://SkyandTelescope.com/campaigns.asp?id=409

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> http://SkyandTelescope.com/campaigns.asp?id=410

Globular Cluster M80     SALE: $14.95 (orig. $29.95)
> http://SkyandTelescope.com/campaigns.asp?id=411

Solar Eclipse 1999    SALE: $14.95 (orig. $29.95)
> http://SkyandTelescope.com/campaigns.asp?id=412

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Copyright 2005 Sky Publishing Corp. S&T's Weekly News Bulletin is provided
as a free service to the astronomical community by the editors of SKY &
TELESCOPE magazine. Widespread distribution is encouraged as long as our
copyright notice is included, with the words "used by permission." This
bulletin may not be published in any other form without written permission
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