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 * * * SKY & TELESCOPE's WEEKLY NEWS BULLETIN - October 8, 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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THE DIM CORE OF A STRIPPED STAR

Deep in Eridanus is a 17th-magnitude white dwarf that occasionally
brightens to magnitude 14.5, as tracked by amateurs in the American
Association of Variable Star Observers. EF Eridani is a cataclysmic
variable: a close binary star with eruptions triggered by gas falling onto
the white dwarf from a companion object. Researchers say this particular
system seems to be a rare case where the companion has been almost
completely eaten away, leaving just a dim core with a substellar mass -- a
strange, worn-out sort of brown dwarf....

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1367_1.asp

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CLASH OF THE TITANS

Question: What happens when two of the largest gravitationally bound
objects in the universe slam together? Answer: You get a chaotic mess, and
a lot of X-rays. So says an international team of astronomers who studied
the galaxy cluster Abell 754 with the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton
X-ray observatory.

"Here before our eyes we see the making of one of the biggest objects in
the universe," says team leader J. Patrick Henry (University of Hawaii).
"What was once two distinct but smaller galaxy clusters 300 million years
ago is now one massive cluster in turmoil. This is one of the most
energetic known events in the universe since the Big Bang, but the energy
is released over billions of years...."

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1363_1.asp

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ASTRO NEWS BRIEF

Spirit Showing Its Age

The intrepid Mars Exploration Rover Spirit has been past warranty since it
completed its primary mission in April. Six months later, the rover is
continuing to slowly break down. First the rover's right-front wheel began
to fail due to excessive friction this past summer. Now the steering
actuators on the right-front and left-rear wheels seem to be failing. When
the actuators are not in use, the motor acts as a brake. Currently the
rover engineers are trying to troubleshoot the problem. One possible
solution is to disable the brakes on those wheels permanently. Doing so
would make steering more difficult and would likely introduce errors in
drive direction.

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1366_1.asp

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HIGHLIGHTS OF THIS WEEK'S SKY

* New Moon on Wednesday, October 13.
* On October 13th, a partial eclipse of the Sun can be seen near sunset
from Hawaii and parts of Alaska and (on the 14th) from Japan, Manchuria,
and Siberia.
* Uranus and Neptune (magnitudes 6 and 8, respectively, in Aquarius and
Capricornus) are well placed in the south during evening. Spot them with
binoculars!

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

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

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SPECTACULAR SIGHTS (Advertisement)

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Black Eye Galaxy (M64)
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Light Echo in Monoceros
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Orion Wide-Field Mosaic
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