Sky & Telescope News Bulletin - September 5, 2003

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* * * SKY & TELESCOPE's WEEKLY NEWS BULLETIN - September 5, 2003 * * *

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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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DOWNPOURS ON ANCIENT MARS

The red planet does not lack for water in its frozen state. Great swaths
of the Martian surface appear to be underlain by ice-impregnated dirt, and
a fresh look at data returned by NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft
concludes that the planet may have stashed even greater amounts of ice
than first thought. According to investigator William V. Boynton
(University of Arizona), subsurface regions surrounding Mars's polar caps
may contain at least 70 percent ice by volume -- the equivalent of buried
glaciers.

But when it comes to the role that water has played throughout its
history, Mars is sending planetary scientists mixed signals....

The most persuasive pieces of evidence that early Mars was warm and wet,
at least briefly, are the elaborate drainage patterns seen scattered
throughout the planet's ancient highlands....

http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1040_1.asp

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RUSTING MARS WITHOUT WATER

Astronomers have long attributed Mars's global orange-brown color to
oxidized iron -- rust -- in the dust that coats its surface. The source of
the rust was always assumed to be water, whether from Percival Lowell's
canals of the 19th century or the torrential outflow channels seen by the
Viking orbiters in 1976.

However, recent observations have put a damper on the notion that Mars was
once awash, at least for long....

http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1039_1.asp

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SIRTF SEES FIRST LIGHT

NASA's Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF), launched on August 25th,
has passed the first crucial test of its onboard science instruments.
After ejecting a dust cover and opening the telescope's aperture door,
mission controllers switched on the Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) to make
sure it had survived liftoff in good working order. With the
85-centimeter-wide (33.5-inch) reflector pointed toward Perseus, IRAC made
a 100-second exposure at a wavelength of 3.6 microns. Covering a
5-arcminute-wide square, the image reveals an assortment of stars and
galaxies and indicates that both SIRTF and IRAC are behaving as
expected....

http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1042_1.asp

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FINDING WATERWORLD

Astronomers continue working full steam toward the day when they can hunt
for Earth-size planets around other stars. The Terrestrial Planet Finder
(set to launch in 2010), the Space Interferometry Mission (planned for
2009), the Kepler mission (2007), and the French National Space Agency's
COROT (late 2005) will each have the technology to detect Earth analogs
around distant suns. But not all Earth-size planets will be terrestrial,
says Marc J. Kuchner (Princeton University). Some may be waterworlds --
bodies composed largely of volatiles such as ammonia, methane, and as the
name implies, water....

http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1041_1.asp

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HIGHLIGHTS OF THIS WEEK'S SKY

* The Moon occults Mars after dark for parts of China and Siberia on the
9th.
* Mars is to the left of the Moon on the 8th and to the right of the Moon
on the 9th.
* Full Moon on September 10th.

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

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

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Copyright 2003 Sky Publishing Corp. S&T's Weekly News Bulletin is provided
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