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 * * * SKY & TELESCOPE's WEEKLY NEWS BULLETIN - December 17, 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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YERKES ON THE BLOCK

Yerkes Observatory may soon have a new owner. The University of Chicago
has considered selling the observatory's telescopes, buildings, and about
80 acres of lakefront property in southeastern Wisconsin "for decades,"
says director Kyle M. Cudworth, the only astronomer still working full
time at the former research powerhouse. Now a sale seems imminent, and it
remains unclear what the future holds for the observatory's century-old
refractor (the world's largest), its Romanesque main building, and its two
dozen employees.

Cudworth first learned in July that the university had received -- and was
close to accepting -- an unsolicited offer for Yerkes from a developer
hoping to build houses on the observatory's landscaped grounds....

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1408_1.asp

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MAKING NEW FRIENDS

Scientists are beginning to digest a plethora of new images and data
following Cassini's successful flybys of two Saturnian moons. On Monday,
the NASA craft passed Titan at an altitude of only 1,200 kilometers (750
miles). The next day, it raced by the icy satellite Dione at a range of
72,500 kilometers.

Surprising changes occurred in Titan's weather patterns between this flyby
and the previous encounter on October 26th....

The Dione rendezvous -- the closest ever of this medium-sized moon --
afforded the most detailed images of the so-called "wispy terrain" that
covers some of Dione's surface....

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1410_1.asp

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NASA CHIEF RESIGNS

NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe announced his resignation late Monday in a
letter to President George W. Bush. He cited the financial pressure of
family life as his reason. "The first of three children will begin college
next fall," he wrote. "I owe them the same opportunity my parents provided
for me to pursue higher education without the crushing burden of debt
thereafter." O'Keefe is reportedly in line to become the chancellor of
Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge; the position carries a salary
more than three times the $158,000 he makes as NASA administrator.

O'Keefe became the space agency's 10th chief in December 2001 and has
shepherded NASA through a particularly tumultuous three years....

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1407_1.asp

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HIGHLIGHTS OF THIS WEEK'S SKY

* First-quarter Moon on Saturday, December 18th.
* The December solstice is at 7:42 a.m. Eastern Standard Time on Tuesday,
December 21st, when the Sun is farthest south for the year.
* Saturn (magnitude -0.2, in Gemini) rises in the east around the end of
twilight, 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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