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 * * * SKY & TELESCOPE's WEEKLY NEWS BULLETIN - August 6, 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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STELLAR VIBRATIONS MISSING

Astronomers have been watching stellar pulsations on the bright star
Procyon in Canis Minoris since 1986. So when scientists recently announced
that the most sensitive observations ever made of the star show nothing of
the sort, it created controversy....

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1318_1.asp

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BRINGING THE UNIVERSE INTO THE CLASSROOM

Last July 16-18, about 200 teachers, educators, and scientists from the
US, Canada, Mexico, Japan, and Korea gathered at Tufts University's
Medford/Somerville campus in Massachusetts for a three-day symposium
called Cosmos in the Classroom. Sponsored by the Astronomical Society of
the Pacific, the New England Space Science Initiative in Education, and
the American Astronomical Society, the event gave participants an
opportunity to learn how to present introductory astronomy to nonscience
majors more effectively....

http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1316_1.asp

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MERCURY BOUND!

After a one-day delay because of clouds from Hurricane Alex, NASA's
seventh Discovery planetary mission is now on its way to the innermost
planet. The Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry, and Ranging
mission, known as Messenger, lifted off from Cape Canaveral at 2:15:56
a.m. Eastern Daylight Time on August 3rd, hitting its 12-second-long
launch window. Within an hour of launch, the spacecraft had pushed away
from Earth and entered solar orbit. Flight controllers report that the
spacecraft is operating normally....

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1314_1.asp

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ASTRO NEWS BRIEFS

MARSIS Delayed

Europe's Mars Express orbiter completed its formal scientific
commissioning on June 3rd, but the mission has run into a problem with one
of its main science instruments. The Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface
and Ionosphere Sounding (MARSIS) was set to use long radio waves to
penetrate deep below the Martian surface to search for buried water or
ice. The deployment of its 40-meter-long (130-foot) antenna has been put
on hold, however, because of a possible design flaw. Although prelaunch
studies indicated that the two spring-loaded antennas would lock into
place smoothly, in March engineers raised new concerns that the flexible
rods might whip back with enough force to damage other parts of the
spacecraft. Several months of simulations have failed to resolve the
issue, and for now the deployment is on hold.

Lunar Rock Pinpointed

When Apollo 15 landed on the outskirts of the Mare Imbrium basin,
astronauts gathered buckets full of rocks that later turned out to be
quite strange. The lander, it seemed, touched down in an anomalous region
of the Moon, one with a uniquely large concentration of radioactive
thorium, uranium, and potassium. Now astronomers on the ground have
identified a meteorite on Earth that they can trace directly to Imbrium.
As reported in the July 30th issue of SCIENCE, scientists deduced the
history of the 206-gram rock named Sayh al Uhaymir (SaU) 169 from its
radioactive markers. According to Edwin Gnos (Institute for Geological
Sciences, Bern, Switzerland) and colleagues, the makeup of the rock
suggests that it was involved in four different impact events that explain
the layered nature of the layered basin:

*First was the Imbrium formation event 3.9 billion years ago. This was the
origin of the rock material.
*2.8 billion years ago an impact south of Imbrium sent debris into the
basin, including SaU 169.
*A third impact at least 200 million years ago brought SaU 169 to the
surface (within a half meter).
*An impact less than 340,000 years ago launched SaU 169 on a course to
Earth. Its travel time was about 300,000 years.
(Continued to next message)

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