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 * * * SKY & TELESCOPE's WEEKLY NEWS BULLETIN - December 23, 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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EDITOR'S NOTE

Due to the holiday schedule, this week's Weekly News Bulletin is arriving
on Thursday instead of Friday. In addition, there will be no bulletin for
the week of December 27th. Instead, all news posted to SkyandTelescope.com
during that week will appear on the Weekly News Bulletin dated January 7,
2005. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Happy holidays, and clear skies,

The Editors of SKY & TELESCOPE

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COMET MACHHOLZ SHINES!

If you haven't gone out yet to look for Comet Machholz west of Orion,
you're missing the big sky event of this holiday season. The comet is a
fine sight in binoculars, glowing at 4th magnitude pale greenish gray -- a
large fuzzcloud with a brighter core set against a background of pinpoint
stars. This week it's about 13 degrees west of Orion's Shield, high up in
good view in the southeast after about 8 p.m....

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1414_1.asp

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OPPORTUNE PICTURES

Opportunity, one of NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers, continues to amaze its
audience back here on Earth. New pictures show a southeastern section of
the inner wall of Endurance Crater -- a region nicknamed "Burns Cliff...."
The rover found equally dramatic sights when its cameras were pointed
skyward. On November 16th, the thin clouds hovered above Endurance Crater.
The clouds are actually analogous to cirrus clouds on Earth in both
appearence and structure. Researchers think they consist entirely of
water-ice crystals that are several microns wide....

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1412_1.asp

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HIGHLIGHTS OF THIS WEEK'S SKY

* Full Moon on Sunday, December 26th.
* Mercury is only 1.5 degrees or less from Venus each morning starting on
Monday, January 3th. They're low in the southeast during dawn, shining at
magnitude 0 and -4, respectively.
* On Wednesday, January 5th, at twilight, Comet Machholz is finally out of
the moonlight back into a dark sky.

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

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

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subscriptions to SKY & TELESCOPE or NIGHT SKY magazine.

Gift Certificate to Shop at Sky:
> http://SkyandTelescope.com/campaigns.asp?id=331

Gift Subscriptions to SKY & TELESCOPE:
> http://SkyandTelescope.com/campaigns.asp?id=332

Gift Subscription to NIGHT SKY:
> https://NightSkymag.com/orderform.asp

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Copyright 2004 Sky Publishing Corp. S&T's Weekly News Bulletin is provided
as a free service to the astronomical community by the editors of SKY &
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