Sky & Telescope's News Bulletin - Oct 7

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* * * SKY & TELESCOPE's WEEKLY NEWS BULLETIN - October 7, 2005 * * *

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Welcome to S&T's Weekly News Bulletin. Images, the full stories
abridged here, and other enhancements are on our Web site,
SkyandTelescope.com, at the URLs provided. (If the links don't work,
just paste them into your Web browser.) Clear skies!

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THE BEST TRANSITING EXOPLANET YET

The European planet-hunting team founded by Michel Mayor (Geneva
Observatory, Switzerland) has just announced a new extrasolar planet
that crosses the face of its host star -- the ninth transiting
exoplanet found to date. But this one is special. The planet, which
orbits the 7.7-magnitude type-K star HD 189733 in Vulpecula, offers
professional astronomers their best prospects for studying an
exoplanet's atmosphere and temperature. It also gives amateurs their
easiest opportunity to detect a world orbiting another star. Moreover,
the host star is located just 0.3 degrees from the Dumbbell Nebula
(M27), ideally positioned for Northern Hemisphere observers during
early evening this season....

http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1606_1.asp

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FAST COSMIC BLASTS LINKED TO BINARY MERGERS

Compelling new evidence strongly supports the prevailing theory that
most short gamma-ray bursts (those lasting 2 seconds or less) are
triggered when two compact objects in a binary system spiral and then
smash into each other in a cosmic cataclysm. In some cases, two neutron
stars collide and form a black hole. In others, a black hole swallows a
neutron star. Either way, material is ejected in two oppositely
directed high-speed jets along the black hole's rotational axis,
creating the GRB.

The latest evidence for the merger theory comes from five short GRBs
observed since May 2005....

http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1605_1.asp

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A RING TO REMEMBER: THE OCTOBER 3rd ANNULAR ECLIPSE

It wasn't a total eclipse, but it was spectacular nonetheless. Earlier
today an annular eclipse of the Sun crossed parts of Portugal and
Spain, the Mediterranean, and North and East Africa, wowing countless
sky spectators. Millions more watched the partial aspects of the
eclipse crossing the rest of Europe and most of Africa and South Asia.

"We were just south of Siguenza about 100 kilometers north of Madrid,"
reports SKY & TELESCOPE executive editor J. Kelly Beatty. His group was
positioned on the northern edge of annularity in order to record
Baily's beads -- sunlight shining through lunar valleys -- where the
limbs of the Moon and Sun barely met. "The day dawned clear, but after
sunrise we started seeing lots of fair-weather cumulus clouds," said
Beatty. "Some encroached on the Sun with about 10 minutes to go before
second contact. At one point the clouds were so thick that we could
view the eclipsed Sun through them without needing filters...."

http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1604_1.asp

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A MOON FOR THE "10TH PLANET"

The solar system's largest known Kuiper Belt object (KBO), the recently
discovered body known as 2003 UB313, isn't wandering through space
alone.

Michael E. Brown (Caltech) and his colleagues have discovered that it
has a small companion, by using the newly commissioned Laser Guide Star
Adaptive Optics system on the Keck II telescope atop Mauna Kea, Hawaii,
on September 10th. The team doesn't yet know the moon's orbit, since
they have only a single night of images. But observations with the
Hubble Space Telescope planned for November and December should help
determine the moon's orbital period and distance from 2003 UB313, and
thus that object's mass. Due to scheduling constraints the team can't
observe the system with Keck again for several months. Still, Brown
says, "by January we should know the orbit...."

http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1603_1.asp

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ASTRO NEWS BRIEFS

Second Yerkes Bidder Goes Public

Last week, Illinois-based Aurora University announced that it had
offered the University of Chicago $4.5 million for the 79-acre campus
of Yerkes Observatory, home to the world's largest refractor. The other
shoe dropped Wednesday with a publicist disclosing that New York resort
owners Gary and Linda Dower have offered $10 million for the historic
Williams Bay, Wisconsin, facility -- an offer that, in an earlier form,
spurred intense interest among astronomers and area residents when
rumors of it first circulated late last year....

http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1608_1.asp

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HIGHLIGHTS OF THIS WEEK'S SKY

* There's a chance of a brief but strong outburst of the Draconid
meteor shower for an hour or two around 17h Universal Time on October
8th. A similar geometry in 1985 produced a brief outburst of up to 500
Draconids visible per hour.
* First-quarter Moon on October 10th.
* Mars (shining at a brilliant magnitude -1.9 at the Aries-Taurus
border) is now in the midst of a grand apparition! It rises fiery
orange-yellow in the east around the end of twilight. Each week Mars is
rising earlier and getting larger and brighter as it swings closer to
Earth. In a telescope it's now 19 arcseconds wide, almost as big as it
will be when it's closest to Earth on October 29th.

http://SkyandTelescope.com/observing/ataglance

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On 7 Oct 2005 18:30:48 -0700, "SJG" wrote:

A MOON FOR THE "10TH PLANET"

The solar system's largest known Kuiper Belt object (KBO), the recently
discovered body known as 2003 UB313, isn't wandering through space
alone.

The idea of calling this a Kuiper Belt object and not Pluto too is
ridiculous.
-Rich

Rich ha escrito:

On 7 Oct 2005 18:30:48 -0700, "SJG" wrote:

A MOON FOR THE "10TH PLANET"

The solar system's largest known Kuiper Belt object (KBO), the recently
discovered body known as 2003 UB313, isn't wandering through space
alone.

The idea of calling this a Kuiper Belt object and not Pluto too is
ridiculous.
-Rich

You are of course right, Rich.
The only problem for me is that I am starting to go bonkers if I just
hear or read this pee word. After all, this word designates neither the
biggest KBO, nor the smallest, nor does it have an unusual orbit for a
Pl..ino(sic!), nor are it and 2003 UB313 the only KBOs that have
sattelites. And the fact that it is up to now the only KBO on which we
have been able to detect an atmosphere has nothing to with this
insignificant little thing, but with the limits inherent in our present
measurement techniques.

I don=B4t know how many people here share my ailment, but since this is
likely to be a new pathology, perhaps we should name it "pl..osis"
(allergy against that pee word). Perhaps it could be explained as a
reaction against too much compulsive pl...philia in one=B4s environment.
But I=B4m an astronomer and not a psychotherapist, so I should leave
such speculations to people who are more competent in these issues than
I am.

The most I can hope for is that there are more people like me and that
we can thus widen the scope of appropriate subjects in sci.astro to
making it also into a therapy group for people like me.

Thanks for your patience in listening to me whining....

Peter