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* * * SKY & TELESCOPE's WEEKLY NEWS BULLETIN - September 24, 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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HUBBLE PRESSES TOWARD COSMIC DAWN

In March, NASA unveiled the Hubble Space Telescope's Ultra Deep Field (UDF), an
11.3-day exposure that represents humanity's deepest optical look into the
universe. Althought it's smattered with beautiful spiral and elliptical
galaxies lying a few billion light-years from Earth, several teams of
astronomers have focused on the faintest, farthest objects in the UDF -- tiny
red smudges that are barely discernible....

On September 23rd, five teams reported UDF results at a workshop held at the
Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. All the teams agreed
that the red smudges represent small galaxies in the very distant universe
bursting with the light of young stars....

http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1356_1.asp

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STARGAZERS DOUBLE UP IN ILLINOIS

Chicago's distant suburbs may not offer the kind of pitch-black sky that
deep-sky observers crave. But earlier this month the view overhead was still
good enough to draw nearly a thousand stargazers from across the Midwest for a
pair of star parties on successive weekends. The inaugural Prairie Skies Star
Party (PSSP) took place September 9-12 at Camp Shaw-waw-nas-see, a wooded site
about 40 miles south of Chicago and just a few miles from Kankakee. The
following weekend, September 16-19, the 25th annual Astrofest was held on the
grounds of a sprawling farm some 8 miles west of Kankakee.

The two gatherings have a common history....

http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1354_1.asp

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ASTRO NEWS BRIEFS

More Money for Mars

After a 12-day radio blackout as Mars passed on the far side of the Sun from
Earth, the Mars Exploration Rover team has reestablished contact with both
Spirit and Opportunity. The pair have now survived the worst part of the
southern-hemisphere winter and almost as a reward, NASA has granted the rover
team an additional six months of funding to continue surface operations.
Currently Spirit is heading to a high point in the Columbia Hills, while
Opportunity will soon leave Endurance Crater to visit its heat shield.

Kodak Technical Pan, 1977-2004

Confirming several months of rumors, Eastman Kodak has officially announced
that it is discontinuing production of its Technical Pan film, which is
arguably the finest commercial black-and-white film ever made for
astrophotography. Citing steadily declining demand for the fine-grain,
red-sensitive, high-contrast emulsion, the company acknowledged that its last
production run of Technical Pan film was "several years ago," and that the film
will remain available only until the existing inventory is depleted. Kodak also
noted that the manufacturing equipment and several key materials used in the
production of Technical Pan emulsion were no longer available, thus ruling out
any likelihood of the film being returned to active manufacture anytime in the
foreseeable future.

Kodak introduced Technical Pan Film SO-115 film in 1977 as a green-sensitive
modification of its Solar Flare Patrol Film SO-392 available since the late
1960s (and also marketed as Photomicrography Monochrome Film SO-410 during the
'70s). Soon after, University of Denver astronomer Edgar Everhart showed that
Technical Pan's sensitivity for long-exposure astrophotography could be
dramatically increased by gas-hypersensitization (S&T: February 1981, page
100). Thus began a nearly 20-year love affair between amateur
astrophotographers and gas-hypered Technical Pan film. The rise of digital
imaging in the late 1990s, fueled by red-sensitive CCDs, led to rapidly
declining sales of the film. Technical Pan film will still be missed, however,
especially since there has never been a competing emulsion that can be used as
an astronomical substitute. Nor has digital imaging yet advanced to the point
where it can fully replace wide-field, film-based astrophotography.

http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1353_1.asp

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HIGHLIGHTS OF THIS WEEK'S SKY

* Full Harvest Moon on Tuesday, September 28th.
* Venus (magnitude -4.1, in Leo) is the bright "Morning Star" shining high in
the east before and during dawn.
* Saturn (magnitude +0.2, in Gemini) is very high in the southeast before and
during dawn, far to Venus's upper right.

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

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

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Copyright 2004 Sky Publishing Corp. S&T's Weekly News Bulletin is provided as a
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*-----------------------------------------------------*
| Stuart Goldman |
* Associate Editor *
| Sky & Telescope |
* 49 Bay State Rd. Sky & Telescope: The Essential *
| Cambridge, MA 02138 Magazine of Astronomy |
*-----------------------------------------------------*