Sky & Telescope's News Bulletin - Dec 23

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* * * SKY & TELESCOPE's WEEKLY NEWS BULLETIN - December 23, 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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EDITOR'S NOTE

Due to the holiday schedule, this week's Weekly News Bulletin is arriving on
Thursday instead of Friday. In addition, there will be no bulletin for the week
of December 27th. Instead, all news posted to SkyandTelescope.com during that
week will appear on the Weekly News Bulletin dated January 7, 2005. Sorry for
the inconvenience.

Happy holidays, and clear skies,

The Editors of SKY & TELESCOPE

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COMET MACHHOLZ SHINES!

If you haven't gone out yet to look for Comet Machholz west of Orion, you're
missing the big sky event of this holiday season. The comet is a fine sight in
binoculars, glowing at 4th magnitude pale greenish gray -- a large fuzzcloud
with a brighter core set against a background of pinpoint stars. This week it's
about 13 degrees west of Orion's Shield, high up in good view in the southeast
after about 8 p.m....

http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1414_1.asp

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OPPORTUNE PICTURES

Opportunity, one of NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers, continues to amaze its
audience back here on Earth. New pictures show a southeastern section of the
inner wall of Endurance Crater -- a region nicknamed "Burns Cliff...." The
rover found equally dramatic sights when its cameras were pointed skyward. On
November 16th, the thin clouds hovered above Endurance Crater. The clouds are
actually analogous to cirrus clouds on Earth in both appearence and structure.
Researchers think they consist entirely of water-ice crystals that are several
microns wide....

http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1412_1.asp

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HIGHLIGHTS OF THIS WEEK'S SKY

* Full Moon on Sunday, December 26th.
* Mercury is only 1.5 degrees or less from Venus each morning starting on
Monday, January 3th. They're low in the southeast during dawn, shining at
magnitude 0 and -4, respectively.
* On Wednesday, January 5th, at twilight, Comet Machholz is finally out of the
moonlight back into a dark sky.

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

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 |
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