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 * * * SKY & TELESCOPE's WEEKLY NEWS BULLETIN - September 3, 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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ECLIPSE CHASERS GATHER NEAR LONDON

From basic eclipse observation tips to complex solar physics, 25
presentations fascinated the more than 100 amateur and professional
attendees from 20 nations at the 2004 Solar Eclipse Conference. The event,
which was organized by Patrick and Joanne Poitevin, was held August 20-22
at the Open University in Milton Keynes, England.

Solar physicist Serge Koutchmy (Institute of Astrophysics, Paris)
explained how amateur and professional astronomers could obtain
high-resolution images of the corona during total eclipses...

Jay Pasachoff (Williams College) described current solar-eclipse science,
including how the solar magnetic field heats the corona....

Many of the presentations and posters focused on eclipses in history....

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1343_1.asp

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AMATEUR DETECTS EXOPLANET TRANSIT

On August 24th, a team of professional astronomers announced the discovery
of TrES-1, an extrasolar planet that transits its host star. Just 8 days
later, an amateur astronomer from Landen, Belgium detected a transit of
the same planet. The discovery highlights the growing capabilities of
amateur astronomers and proves that amateurs can, in principle, discover
an exoplanet by the transit method.

Tonny Vanmunster used a Celestron C-14 telescope and an SBIG ST-7XME CCD
camera (without filters) at his private CBA Belgium Observatory to detect
the TrES-1 transit....

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1344_1.asp

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TWO MORE NEPTUNE-MASS EXOPLANETS

The planet-hunting team led by Geoffrey W. Marcy (University of
California, Berkeley) and R. Paul Butler (Carnegie Institution of
Washington) continues to push the exoplanet envelope. As if discovering or
codiscovering 98 of the 135 or so known planets around other stars weren't
enough, the team has announced two new ones with minimum masses just 15
and 21 times that of Earth. Because we don't know the inclination of these
planets' orbits, the most likely masses are roughly 18 and 25 Earths --
slightly more massive than Neptune, which contains 17.2 Earth masses.
These worlds, along with a third Neptune-mass body announced last week by
the Swiss team led by Michel Mayor, are the lightest planets yet
discovered around normal stars. (The Swiss discovery has not yet been
accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal.)

All three new planets orbit their stars extremely closely, which explains
why such planetary lightweights could be found....

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1341_1.asp

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A NEW COMET MACHHOLZ

Veteran observer Donald E. Machholz of Colfax, California, has discovered
a telescopic comet in the constellation Eridanus. IAU Circular 8394
announced the find on August 27th. When discovered earlier that day, the
comet was drifting slowly southeastward toward Lepus.

From 38 observations over a four-day period, Brian G. Marsden (Minor
Planet Center) has calculated a preliminary orbit for this new interloper,
officially designated C/2004 Q2. The comet is headed toward the Sun, and
over the next two months it will migrate as far south as declination -30
degrees.

But then its motion across the sky will turn sharply northward, making the
comet well positioned for Northern Hemisphere observers by year's end....

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1333_1.asp

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ASTRO NEWS BRIEFS
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