Sky & Telescope's News Bulletin - Jul 18

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* * * SKY & TELESCOPE's WEEKLY NEWS BULLETIN - July 18, 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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MARS MEETS THE MOON

Skywatchers got an early dose of "Mars Mania" on the morning of July 17th when
the red planet made a dramatic pairing with the waning gibbous Moon in the
predawn sky. Thanks to generally clear skies across much of the Eastern
Seaboard, early risers found Mars perched just off the Moon's northern limb.
The planet shone so brightly (-1.9 magnitude) that it was easy to spot despite
its proximity to the nearly full Moon. Viewed through a telescope, Mars
mimicked the Moon's gibbous phase and displayed a brilliant white cap at its
south pole.

Observers in southern Florida were poised for an even bigger celestial treat,
as the planet briefly slipped behind the lunar disk for several minutes around
4:30 a.m. local time....

http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1006_1.asp

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SMALL ASTEROIDS = SMALL THREAT?

Every time a rocky body whizzes past Earth, asteroid specialists brace
themselves for a frenzied burst of "what-if" doomsday questions from the news
media. But while the risk of the interloper striking our planet is usually
vanishingly small, the longer-term prospects for all such near-Earth asteroids
are poorly known. Current thinking holds that objects 50 to 75 meters across,
comparable to the one whose airburst devastated the Tunguska region of Siberia
in 1908, probably come crashing down every 1,000 years on average. Most
researchers think that objects twice that size, even though they arrive less
often, probably strike the ground intact -- wreaking havoc locally if one
should hit land and triggering an ocean-spanning tsunami if it makes a splash.

But Philip A. Bland (Imperial College London) and Natalya A. Artemieva
(Institute for Dynamics of Geospheres, Moscow) argue that the threat from small
asteroids has been greatly exaggerated....

http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1005_1.asp

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COMET AWARD WINNERS FOR 2003

Five eagle-eyed individuals who were looking in the right place at the right
time will share the fifth annual Edgar Wilson Award for amateur comet
discovery. According to an announcement issued by the Smithsonian Astrophysical
Observatory, the winners are Sebastian Hönig (Dossenheim, Germany) for
discovering C/2002 O4; Tetuo Kudo (Kikuchi, Kumamoto, Japan) and Shigehisa
Fujikawa (Mitoyo, Kagawa, Japan) for C/2002 X5; and Charles Juels (Fountain
Hills, Arizona) and Paulo Holvorcem (Campinas, Brazil) for C/2002 Y1. All these
discoveries were made during the calendar year ending June 11, 2003.
Established in 1998 in memory of American businessman Edgar Wilson, the award
is given only to amateur astronomers who, in a given year, find one or more new
comets using amateur, privately owned equipment....

http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1003_1.asp

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HIGHLIGHTS OF THIS WEEK'S SKY

* Last quarter Moon is on July 20/21.
* Mars rises in the east-southeast shortly after the end of twilight.

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

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

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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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