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 * * * SKY & TELESCOPE's WEEKLY NEWS BULLETIN - December 10, 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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HUBBLE GETS A SHOT IN THE ARM

The smoldering controversy over the future of the Hubble Space Telescope
(HST) has flared up again. On December 8th, after a six-month study, a
blue-ribbon panel of experts recommended that NASA should do exactly what
agency administrator Sean O'Keefe has said he won't do: return Space
Shuttle astronauts to the orbiting observatory to make repairs and
upgrades. The committee concluded that NASA's proposed alternative, an
unprecedented robotic servicing mission, is unlikely to get off the ground
by 2007 or 2008, when Hubble's remaining batteries and gyroscopes are
expected to give out.

Hubble's latest troubles began in mid-January 2004, when O'Keefe canceled
future servicing missions out of concerns for astronaut safety in the wake
of the COLUMBIA disaster. When astronomers, the public, and the US
Congress reacted with outrage, NASA began looking at the robotic option as
a less risky alternative, and the National Academy of Sciences was called
in to provide an independent assessment....

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1405_1.asp

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A NEW CHAPTER IN THE LIFE STORY OF PLANETS?

Scientists using the Spitzer Space Telescope have described what may be a
missing link in the life story of solar systems like our own.

How do solar systems grow? Theorists think that a star's rocky planets
(and the cores of gas giants) are built up when solid particles interact
with each other and stick together. This takes place within a
circumstellar disk -- the swirling leftovers of the dusty gas cloud that
has given birth to the star....

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1404_1.asp

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COMET MACHHOLZ OBSERVED

Comet Machholz, C/2004 Q2, continues to brighten on schedule as it moves
toward the northern sky. On the evening of Sunday, December 5, 2004,
several SKY & TELESCOPE editors observed it independently from locations
around Boston, Massachusetts. It was an easy find in hand-held binoculars
despite the fact that it lay deep within the skyglow of Boston. In a
4-inch refractor it appeared like a major globular cluster, at least 15
arcminutes in diameter, but with an intensely bright, nearly stellar core.

Several people at dark sites have reported the comet as faintly visible to
the naked eye, making it a record-breaking fifth such comet in 2004....

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/observing/objects/comets/article_1402_1.asp

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JUPITER PLAYS PEEKABOO

While clouds covered most of the United States, a few lucky observers did
witness the occultation of Jupiter by the Moon on the morning of December
7th. Don Parker of Coral Gables, Florida, captured it with his 10-inch
Cassegrain telescope and a webcam. "The skies cleared up here shortly
before the event, so I was lucky," Parker says. "The event was so
fast-moving that any exposure lengths longer than two seconds blurred the
Moon...!"

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1403_1.asp

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HIGHLIGHTS OF THIS WEEK'S SKY

* The Geminid meteor should peak on the night of December 13-14.
* New Moon on Saturday, December 11th.
* Saturn (magnitude -0.1, in Gemini) rises in the east around 7 p.m.,
glowing to the lower right of Pollux and Castor.

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

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

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