Sky & Telescope's News Bulletin - Feb 20

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* * * SKY & TELESCOPE's WEEKLY NEWS BULLETIN - February 20, 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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A COSMIC GAME OF PEEKABOO

Amateur astronomer Jay McNeil's January 23rd discovery of a newborn nebula near
Messier 78 is proving to be even more intriguing than first thought. John Welch
of Phoenix, Arizona, noticed that McNeil's Nebula actually appeared once before
-- in an old Sky Publishing title, THE MESSIER ALBUM by John H. Mallas and
Evered Kreimer (1978). That book contained a 15-minute white-light image taken
by Kreimer on October 22, 1966, which was first published in SKY & TELESCOPE in
January 1970 (page 27).

From images obtained from the S&T archives, it now seems that this nebula has
been playing peekaboo for quite some time....

http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1183_1.asp

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BLACK HOLE RIPS STAR APART

Yes, black holes can be just as mean and nasty as they're made out to be in
cheesy science fiction. A supermassive black hole in a galaxy 700 million
light-years away has torn to shreds an unfortunate star that ventured too close
to it, astronomers declared today. The violence of the event created a
decade-long X-ray flare that first caught astronomers' attention in 1992. Last
year they were able to study its fading remains using the XMM-Newton and
Chandra X-ray satellites, and on Wednesday, at a NASA press conference, they
described what they think must have
happened....

http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1181_1.asp

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NEW DISTANCE RECORD HOLDER FOUND

In the ever-changing realm of astronomical superlatives, the rank of "most
distant" climbed another notch on February 15th, with the announcement of the
most distant galaxy (for now). Astronomers using the W. M. Keck Telescopes atop
Mauna Kea and the Hubble Space Telescope imaged a galaxy that lies about 13
billion light-years away, directly behind the galaxy cluster Abell 2218 in
Draco....

http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1180_1.asp

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AMATEUR ASTRONOMER DISCOVERS NEWBORN NEBULA

Whoever says backyard observers with small telescopes can't contribute to
professional astronomy hasn't met Jay McNeil. On the night of January 23rd,
armed with his 78-millimeter (3-inch) refractor and a CCD camera, the veteran
deep-sky astrophotographer went outside to observe Messier 78 in Orion from his
rural Kentucky backyard. When he came back inside and compared his shots to
other recent amateur images, he noticed "something funky looking in the field,"
says McNeil. Convinced that something was indeed amiss, he contacted Brian
Skiff at Lowell Observatory in Arizona. "Brian immediately referred me to Bo
Reipurth (University of Hawaii), one of the world's leading researchers of
early stellar evolution."

Announced on February 10th in the International Astronomical Union Circular,
McNeil's new object seems to be a faint optical counterpart to the infrared
source IRAS 05436-0007 that has gone into outburst, producing a large
reflection nebulosity. Now dubbed "McNeil's Nebula," the nebula was discovered
at around magnitude 15. According to Reipurth, this is a rare event indeed....

http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1179_1.asp

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HIGHLIGHTS OF THIS WEEK'S SKY

* Venus and the crescent Moon form a beautiful pair during twilight and early
evening on Tuesday, February 24th.
* First-quarter Moon on Friday, February 27th.

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

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

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SAVE THE DATE (Advertisement)

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Keynote speakers include: Sun Kwok, author of COSMIC BUTTERFLIES and Carolyn
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For more information visit:

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*-----------------------------------------------------*
| Stuart Goldman |
* Associate Editor *
| Sky & Telescope |
* 49 Bay State Rd. Sky & Telescope: The Essential *
| Cambridge, MA 02138 Magazine of Astronomy |
*-----------------------------------------------------*

"Stuart Goldman" wrote in message
...
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NEW DISTANCE RECORD HOLDER FOUND

In the ever-changing realm of astronomical superlatives, the rank of "most
distant" climbed another notch on February 15th, with the announcement of the
most distant galaxy (for now). Astronomers using the W. M. Keck Telescopes atop
Mauna Kea and the Hubble Space Telescope imaged a galaxy that lies about 13
billion light-years away, directly behind the galaxy cluster Abell 2218 in
Draco....


Hold on there. Now maybe I have been spending too much time on Hoaglands
website, but this looks like code to me.

Abell. That has to be Art Bell.

Draco. That is the Draconian race of reptile overlords.

So what you are saying then, is that they found some old (stay with me now)
some old dinosaur bones, (no wait), bodies, some old bipedal dinosaur
bodies in Antarctica, that are remnants of an ancient advanced civilization.

Would it by chance have anything to do with this!
http://www.rense.com/general49/losot.htm

and maybe this?
http://www.sabon.org/reptiloid/index3.html


But I don't see anything about the so called announcement to be made on March 9
by the people at Hubble, that would cause a stir and appear in every paper on the planet.

I think maybe they are suffering from delusions of grandeur if they think people care
about yet one more deep field photograph. Oh don't get me wrong, some
will name children after the event I am sure, but the ordinary normal people will not care.
So the story that the scientists who announced the coming anouncement being cut short
on the air, was probably due to a commercial or something.

On Sun, 07 Mar 2004 17:11:32 +0000, Rick Sobie wrote:


"Stuart Goldman" wrote in message
...
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NEW DISTANCE RECORD HOLDER FOUND

In the ever-changing realm of astronomical superlatives, the rank of "most
distant" climbed another notch on February 15th, with the announcement of the
most distant galaxy (for now). Astronomers using the W. M. Keck Telescopes atop
Mauna Kea and the Hubble Space Telescope imaged a galaxy that lies about 13
billion light-years away, directly behind the galaxy cluster Abell 2218 in
Draco....


Hold on there. Now maybe I have been spending too much time on Hoaglands
website, but this looks like code to me.

[snipped troll]

Oh hush!