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 * * * SKY & TELESCOPE's WEEKLY NEWS BULLETIN - October 29, 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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TITAN: "A WORLD APART"

Of the dozens of outer-planet satellites seen during the historic Voyager
missions two decades ago, none left scientists more perplexed than
Saturn's Titan. Bigger than Mercury and endowed with a dense, haze-choked
atmosphere, this giant moon kept its surface completely hidden from the
Voyagers' probing cameras. Although clever infrared imaging using the
Hubble Space Telescope and other observatories later revealed a crude
patchwork of light and dark surface features, researchers could only
speculate about what really lies beneath all that murk.

On October 26th the answers started coming, when NASA's Cassini spacecraft
passed 1,174 kilometers (730 miles) from the moon's frigid surface. After
the onboard camera had snapped hundreds of images, the spacecraft pivoted
so its imaging radar system could cut through the haze and map a
2,000-by-120-km swath of Titanscape. Other instruments recorded surface
temperatures, studied the atmosphere, and monitored the electromagnetic
environment in Titan's vicinity....

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1376_1.asp

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EARTH'S TWISTED SPACEWARP

Yet another prediction by Einstein's general theory of relativity seems to
be holding true: a rotating body, such as Earth, should slightly twist the
space in which it is embedded. Two physicists who have been tracking
satellites orbiting Earth claim to have made the first reliable
measurement of this effect. Others remain unconvinced -- but a different
experiment should soon settle the question once and for all.

The effect in question is called "frame dragging," a very slight twisting
of space-time induced by any rotating mass. (Think of a ball bearing
spinning in syrup.) The phenomenon is more formally known as the
Lense-Thirring effect, after the Austrian physicists Joseph Lense and Hans
Thirring, who predicted it in 1918 two years after Einstein published
general relativity....

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1374_1.asp

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MEADE STEPS INTO THE SUNSHINE

In mid-October, California-based telescope giant Meade Instruments
announced its pending purchase of Coronado Technology Group in Arizona,
the world's leading manufacturer of specialized hydrogen-alpha filters and
telescopes for viewing the Sun. When the deal is completed later this
year, backyard astronomers will be able to enjoy round-the-clock observing
with Meade equipment for the first time in the company's three-decade
history. Prior to this, Meade did not sanction solar observing with any of
its wide-range of telescopes and accessories.

Coronado's name has become increasing familiar to Sky & Telescope readers
since the company began marketing its hydrogen-alpha filters to amateur
astronomers in the late 1990s....

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1375_1.asp

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THE WORLD-SERIES ECLIPSE

Fate smiled on Boston on Wednesday, October 27, 2004, (October 28th
Universal Time). The low clouds that had covered the area all day began to
break up at sunset, giving wonderful though slightly intermittent views of
the last total lunar eclipse until 2007. And moments before the end of
totality, the Boston Red Sox won baseball's World Series for the first
time since 1918.

Scattered clouds seemed to be the norm across most of the visibility zone,
which included the eastern parts of Europe and Africa and almost all of
the Americas....

http://SkyandTelescope.com/observing/objects/eclipses/article_1381_1.asp

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HIGHLIGHTS OF THIS WEEK'S SKY

(Continued to next message)

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