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  * * * SKY & TELESCOPE's WEEKLY NEWS BULLETIN - July 1, 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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WATCHING COMET TEMPEL 1 - AND DEEP IMPACT

Periodic comet 9P/Tempel 1, currently glowing at a dim 10th magnitude in
the evening sky near Spica, will be blasted by NASA's Deep Impact probe
(the cover story of the June SKY & TELESCOPE) this weekend.

The latest time prediction (updated June 29th) is that the impact will
occur at 10:52:12 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time Sunday night July 3rd, plus
or minus about 10 seconds, as seen from Earth (that's 5:52:12 Universal
Time July 4th). Most of the American West, Mexico, and Central America
have a view of the comet in darkness at that time. There may be a brief
flash, and the resulting debris cloud may brighten Tempel 1 dramatically
for hours, days, or weeks....

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/observing/highlights/article_1522_1.asp

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ONE BIG BALL OF ROCK

On Thursday a group of astronomers announced finding perhaps the most
bizarre extrasolar planet yet: an object with a core of heavy elements
that may amount to 65 or 70 times the mass of Earth.

The newfound body - not to be confused with another possibly rocky planet
announced two weeks ago with a much lower mass -- is a whole new animal.
It contains as much or more heavy elements (elements heavier than hydrogen
and helium) than all the planets and asteroids in our solar system
combined. Astronomers have assumed that virtually all the exoplanets found
to date are gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn, with heavy elements such
as oxygen, silicon, carbon, and iron constituting at most one-fourth of
their masses. But the new planet appears to be one-half to two-thirds
heavy stuff. "This object is odd, even given the weird zoo of planets
found so far," says Alan Boss (Carnegie Institution of Washington)....

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1538_1.asp

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COMET DRESS REHEARSAL

In images that Hubble officials are calling a dress rehearsal of things to
come, astronomers used the space telescope to catch Comet Tempel 1
shooting out an unexpected jet of dust on June 14th. The same comet will
be in the eyepiece of many telescopes in the American West on the evening
of July 3rd (local time), when NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft sends a probe
slamming into its nucleus....

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1536_1.asp

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ASTRO NEWS BRIEFS

Long-Awaited Mars Radar Ready

Astronomers might soon have the answer to one of the largest lingering
questions about the history of Mars - what happened to all of its water?
Now a European instrument built to find deep subsurface ice is ready to
begin its observations.

On June 22nd, engineers working with the European Space Agency's Mars
Express orbiter completed the three-part deployment of the Mars Advanced
Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding instrument (MARSIS). The
radar consists of two 20-meter-long (66 foot) booms and one 7-meter-long
boom. The instrument will undergo diagnostic testing until July 4th. After
that it will use radar to look for the signature of frozen ice as deep as
5 kilometers below the surface....

Comet Award Winners

Two Americans will share the seventh annual Edgar Wilson Award for amateur
comet discovery. According to IAU CIRCULAR 8554 issued by the Central
Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams (CBAT) last June 30th, the winners are
Roy A. Tucker (Tucson, Arizona) for discovering C/2004 Q1 and Donald E.
Machholz (Colfax, California) for C/2004 Q2. In addition to the honor and
prestige associated with the award, each winner receives a plaque and a
cash prize typically worth several thousand dollars.

Established in 1998 in memory of American businessman Edgar Wilson, the
award is given to amateur astronomers (or professional astronomers acting
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