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 * * * SKY & TELESCOPE's WEEKLY NEWS BULLETIN - June 18, 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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ASTRONOMERS LAUNCH PRO-AM "REGISTRY"

The past decade has seen an explosion in the number of backyard observers
using high-end equipment and sophisticated software to record faint
asteroids, discover supernovae, and even detect extrasolar planets. So
it's not surprising that many accomplished amateurs yearn to contribute
directly to scientific research. Over the years many of them have sent
observations to organizations like the American Association for Variable
Star Observers and the International Occultation Timing Association. But
for those who wanted to work one-on-one with a professional astronomer,
the opportunities were few and far between.

Now there's a new avenue for pairing eager backyard observers with willing
researchers. At June's meeting of the American Astronomical Society in
Denver, Colorado, members of the AAS's Working Group for
Professional-Amateur Collaboration announced the inauguration of an online
"registry" service. First conceived in 1998, the registry is a searchable
database that allows amateur astronomers to detail their abilities and
professionals to make known their observational needs....

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1278_1.asp

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CASSINI CALLS ON PHOEBE

In the opening act of its four-year mission around Saturn, NASA's Cassini
spacecraft slipped past the outer satellite Phoebe on June 11th at a
distance of just 2,068 kilometers, and its camera gave the mysterious moon
its undivided attention for 1 hour 10 minutes. During that time, the flyby
revealed that this enigmatic body is heavily cratered and that its very
dark surface may be masking a mostly icy interior. In total, the craft
observed the moon for approximately 30 hours....

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1282_1.asp

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VENUS TRANSIT IN A NEW LIGHT

Observed with high-powered optics, digital detectors, and hydrogen-alpha
filters, this Venus transit truly was like no other. H-alpha observers
worldwide reported seeing Venus against the disk of the Sun for minutes
longer than people observing in white light, as they were watching the
disk pass beyond the Sun's chromosphere (which extends beyond the visible
limb of the Sun) rather than the photosphere....

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1283_1.asp

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ASTRO NEWS BRIEF

And the Distance Is...

It's official: the famous Veil Nebula in Cygnus is less than 1,900
light-years away. The wispy nebula is part of the extended Cygnus Loop --
the remnant of a supernova that exploded between 5,000 and 8,000 years
ago. In the past, astronomers assumed the Veil was at least 2,500
light-years away. But observations of NASA's Far-Ultraviolet Explorer
(FUSE) now convincingly confirm earlier indications of a smaller distance
obtained by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Five years ago, William P. Blair (Johns Hopkins University) combined
existing line-of-sight velocity measurements of gaseous filaments in the
Veil Nebula with Hubble estimates of the nebula's sideways expansion. By
assuming the two speeds were equal, he derived a distance substantially
smaller than 2,500 light-years. However, there was "considerable
uncertainty" in the result, according to Blair.

Now, in a poster presentation at the American Astronomical Society meeting
in Denver, Blair and his colleagues confirm the small distance. FUSE
observations of a star known as KPD2055+311 revealed absorption lines in
its spectrum indicating that it lies behind the Veil. From its observed
properties, the team derives a distance of 1,860 light years for the star,
so the Veil must be closer than that. According to team member Sharon I.
Torres, this probably indicates a younger age for the supernova explosion
than had been assumed before.

> http://skyandtelescope.com/news/article_1281_1.asp

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