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 * * * SKY & TELESCOPE's WEEKLY NEWS BULLETIN - June 25, 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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MOON STUDY TRACKS CHANGES IN EARTH'S CLOUD COVER

Perhaps you've noticed at times that the "dark" part of a crescent Moon
isn't completely dark. Sunlight reflected by Earth casts an eerie glow on
the shaded lunar disk, in a phenomenon known as earthshine. The cloudier
it gets, the more light Earth reflects onto the Moon, so measuring
earthshine is a good way to track cloud cover. And by monitoring
earthshine over a period of several years, astronomers have discovered
what might be an important factor for predicting climate change....

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1287_1.asp

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ASTRO NEWS BRIEFS

Animation of "Sunspots" on Another Star

Astronomers have created an animation showing newly discovered starspots
being carried around on the surface of another star, Kappa Ceti. Jaymie
Matthews (University of British Columbia) and his collaborators created
the animation after tracking tiny changes in the star's brightness using
the Earth-orbiting Microvariability and Oscillations of Stars (MOST)
telescope. The animation covers a 29-day period and shows an enormous spot
gradually gaining on a smaller one as a result of the different rotation
rates at different latitudes on the star.

Two New Planets Discovered by Transits

Hot on the heels of the first planet discovered via transits come two
more, both Jupiter-size and with some of the tightest orbits ever seen.
Fran‡ois Bouchy (Marseille Astrophysical Laboratory) and his team of
astronomers discovered the two planets by performing follow-up
observations on two stars that had been seen dimming by the Optical
Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE) survey. Their observations with
the 8.2-meter VLT Kueyen telescope revealed Doppler shifts caused by the
tug of each planet on its parent star. The shape of the light curve
combined with the radial-velocity measurements allowed Bouchy's team to
pin down a mass for each planet. OGLE-TR-113 orbits an F-type star 6,000
light-years away in the constellation Carina and is 35 percent heavier
than Jupiter. It orbits its star 17 times closer than Mercury orbits the
Sun, with an orbital radius of just 3.4 million kilometers and an orbital
period of 1.43 days. OGLE-TR-132 is also in Carina, orbiting a K-dwarf
star 1,200 light-years away. It has about the same mass as Jupiter and
orbits its star in 1.69 days.

Stardust Reveals Comet Surprises

NASA's Stardust spacecraft encountered a few surprises when it flew by
Comet 81P/Wild 2 last January 2nd. As reported on SkyandTelescope.com, in
the June issue of SKY & TELESCOPE magazine, and at last week's NASA news
conference, the comet looks very different than scientists expected.
Craters, cliffs, and 100-meter-high spires cover the surface, indicating
that the material is much more rigid and cohesive than predicted.
Scientists were also surprised at how "clumpy" Wild 2's coma was, with
dense patches of dust interspersed between zones of relative emptiness.
The spacecraft's mass spectrometer detected organic compounds such as
cyanide (CN), but detected many fewer particles than predicted.

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1286_1.asp

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HIGHLIGHTS OF THIS WEEK'S SKY

* Tuesday, June 29th. Look for orange-red Antares twinkling to the lower
left of the Moon this evening.
* Wednesday, June 30th. Jupiter's moon Io reappears from eclipse out of
Jupiter's shadow around 10:28 p.m. EDT.
* Full Moon on Friday, July 2nd (exact at 7:09 a.m. EDT).

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

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

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NEW COOL STUFF FOR SKY WATCHERS (Advertisement)

We've been stocking the shelves with new items for the coming stargazing
season. Check out our latest additions.
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