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 * * * SKY & TELESCOPE's WEEKLY NEWS BULLETIN - October 1, 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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TOUTATIS ENCOUNTERS EARTH -- AND MISSES (THIS TIME)

Moving at more than 11 kilometers per second (25,000 miles per hour), the
irregular, bowling-pin-shaped near-Earth asteroid 4179 Toutatis passed
within 1.5 million kilometers of Earth (about 4 times the distance from
Earth to the Moon) at 13:40 Universal Time on September 29th. Twelve hours
prior to this close encounter, Gianluca Masi (Bellatrix Observatory,
Ceccano, Italy), Franco Mallia, and Roger Wilcox used the 14-inch SoTIE
telescope at Las Campanas, Chile, to capture 32 images of Toutatis during
an 11-minute period. They assembled the images into a time-lapse sequence
that shows Toutatis moving rapidly across a 15-arcminute-wide field of
view. The asteroid is not expected to pass this close to Earth again until
2562.

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1360_1.asp

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ROVER TRACKS FROM SPACE

Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks? The Mars Global Surveyor,
now within weeks of conducting its 25,000th mapping orbit around the Red
Planet, is taking images with higher resolution than ever before. Using a
new technique, MGS operators modify the rotation rate of the spacecraft
such that it matches the ground speed under the camera. The results are
remarkable....

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1359_1.asp

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MARS METHANE BOOSTS CHANCES FOR LIFE

Last week the European Space Agency reported new results from Mars Express
that bolster the hope that small colonies of microbes may be eking out an
existence under the Martian surface today. Atmospheric data from the
orbiter's Planetary Fourier Spectrometer show that water vapor and methane
show up together above three equatorial regions that overlie subsurface
ice -- suggesting a common underground origin. Methane is considered a
possible biomarker. It breaks down rapidly in Mars's atmosphere, so it's
presence is intriguing. Some source -- biological or geological -- must
constantly replenish the gas....

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1358_1.asp

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STAR PARTYING IN THE ALPS

One of the highest annual star parties in Europe drew 250 people on the
weekend of September 17-19 to the grassy mountain slopes above the small
town of Greifenburg in southern Austria. Known as the Internationales
Teleskoptreffen, or ITT (International Telescope Meeting), the event took
place in and around the Emberger Alm Hotel at 1,700 meters (5,600 feet).
It was the ITT's 20th annual meeting, and its 9th at this location.
The site is becoming well known for astronomy....

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1357_1.asp

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HIGHLIGHTS OF THIS WEEK'S SKY

* Last-quarter Moon on October 6th.
* Venus (magnitude -4.1, in Leo) is the bright "Morning Star" shining in
the east before and during dawn.
* Uranus and Neptune (magnitudes 6 and 8, respectively, in Aquarius and
Capricornus) are well placed in the south during evening.

For more details, see This Week's Sky at a Glance and Planet Round up:

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

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SKY & TELESCOPE LOGO WEAR (Advertisement)

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SKY & TELESCOPE's Winter Hat
> http://SkyandTelescope.com/campaigns.asp?id=399
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