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  * * * SKY & TELESCOPE's WEEKLY NEWS BULLETIN - July 8, 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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AMATEUR DETECTS PLANET 260 LIGHT-YEARS AWAY

One day before an international team announced that a planet periodically
crosses the face of an 8th-magnitude star in Hercules, California amateur
astronomer Ron Bissinger recorded a partial transit of the planet at his
home observatory. He also detected partial transits during the next two
opportunities, allowing him to produce a composite light curve of a
complete event. The new find is now the third transiting exoplanet to be
detected by amateurs....

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1543_1.asp

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THE COMET AFTER DEEP IMPACT

In the Jet Propulsion Laboratory mission-control room, cheers and shouts
erupted as Deep Impact's brilliant crash site suddenly burst forth on the
gray, lumpy nucleus of Comet Tempel 1. But for most telescopic observers,
83 million miles removed from the action, it was a different story. The
sudden flare-up that appeared so brilliant on the 5-mile-diameter comet
nucleus was mostly hidden in the unresolved glow of the comet's
thousands-of-miles-wide coma. And that was if you could see the faint
comet at all.

To observers with large telescopes and good skies, however, a change in
the comet became apparent within minutes....

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/observing/article_1540_1.asp

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HIGHLIGHTS OF THIS WEEK'S SKY

* Bright Venus and faint Mercury remain paired low in the west in bright
twilight.
* The Moon shines left of Jupiter on Wednesday the 13th and left of Spica
on Thursday the 14th.
* First-quarter Moon on the 14th.

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

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SKYWATCH 2006 (Advertisement)

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SKYWATCH brings you all-sky constellation charts for 16 months -- from
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2006 and descriptions of dozens of telescopes on today's market. Reserve
your copy of SKYWATCH 2006 today, and we'll send it to you as soon as it's
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> http://SkyandTelescope.com/SkyWatch

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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
from Sky Publishing; send e-mail to permissions{at}SkyandTelescope.com or
call +1 617-864-7360. More astronomy news is available on our Web site at
http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/.

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To change your address, unsubscribe from S&T's Weekly News Bulletin, or to
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