Sky & Telescope's News Bulletin - Apr. 16

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* * * SKY & TELESCOPE's WEEKLY NEWS BULLETIN - April 16, 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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FIRST PLANET FOUND BY MICROLENSING

After years of intense efforts and questionable results, astronomers announced
on April 15th the first clear-cut detection of an extrasolar planet by a
completely new technique. Two large teams working in the Southern Hemisphere
jointly announced that they have found a Jupiter-mass planet orbiting a
red-dwarf star about 10,000 to 15,000 light-years away. They did it by
detecting the slight gravitational pulls that the star and its planet exerted
on light coming from an even more distant star in the background.

For almost two decades, astronomers have been intrigued by what they might
learn from such gravitational microlensing -- the distorting and magnifying of
a star's image by the gravity of an object passing nearly in front if it. For
microlensing to happen, however, the intervening object must pass extremely
close to our line of sight to the star, and this happens very rarely. But
computerized monitoring of millions of faint stars has made it possible to find
even these rare events....

http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1242_1.asp

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NO MOON FOR SEDNA

The newly discovered planetoid Sedna (2003 VB12) far beyond Pluto lacks any
sizeable moon, as Hubble Space Telescope images released Wednesday reveal. The
orbiting observatory snapped 35 images of Sedna on March 16th.

Sedna's co-discoverer Michael E. Brown (Caltech) suggested that the minor
planet might have a satellite because of its remarkably slow rotation period of
40 days. A large moon can slow a body's rotation by tidal friction -- though
Alan W. Harris (Space Science Institute, Colorado) notes that no satellite
could work a body like Sedna into synchronous rotation if the satellite ended
up so far away that it has a 40-day orbital period. In any case, the cause of
Sedna's slow rotation remains a mystery -- unless it was just a fluke of how
the body happened to fall together when it formed....

http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1240_1.asp

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TRIPLE SHADOW TRANSIT MOVIE

From 8:00 to 8:19 Universal Time on March 28th, for the first and last time
this decade, three of Jupiter's moons cast shadows on the gas giant
simultaneously. Jason Hatton of Mill Valley, California, obtained a remarkable
series of images showing the moons and their shadows passing over Jupiter for a
5.5-hour span at 10-minute intervals, which we have combined into an
animation....

http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1241_1.asp

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ASTRO NEWS BRIEFS

Mars Rover Missions Extended

On April 5th the rover Spirit celebrated its 90th day on Martian terrain. On
April 26th Opportunity will do the same. These birthdays are particularly
poignant as they represent the end of the rovers' primary missions. Due to the
missions' tremendous success, in early April NASA approved 15 million dollars
to fund extended rover ground support. The extra funds should provide up to
five months of additional research lasting through September.

The extension will allow Spirit to head toward the 2-kilometer-distant Columbia
Hills, where scientists hope they will be able to discover clues about the
hydrological history of Gusev Crater. Opportunity will investigate Endurance
Crater, a few hundred meters to the east, in the hopes of uncovering more
information about Meridiani Planum's wet past. Both rovers will continue
atmospheric studies as well.

Large Binocular Telescope Gets First Eye

The first of the twin 8.4-meter primary mirrors of the Large Binocular
Telescope telescope atop Mount Graham in Arizona is now successfully installed.
The 18-ton piece of glass arrived in October 2003. The telescope is scheduled
to be completely finished in 2005. When it's done, the facility will have the
light-gathering capability of an 11.8-meter telescope.

Combining Millimeter Telescopes

On March 27th officials broke ground on a new millimeter-wave telescope array
known as CARMA (Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-Wave Astronomy). The
facility will consist of a 15-telescope array utilizing the half dozen 10-meter
telescopes from Caltech's Owens Valley Radio Observatory and the nine 6-meter
telescopes of the Berkeley-Illinois-Maryland Association array. Later this year
the 15 telescopes will be moved from their current locations in Owens Valley
and Hat Creek, California to the 2,200 meter (7,300 foot) high Cedar Flat site
near Bishop, California. CARMA should be operational sometime in 2005.

Genesis Heads For Home

"After more than two years of collecting solar wind ions, we're thrilled that
the Genesis spacecraft is about to close up and come home." So said Donald
Sweetnam (NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory) as the spacecraft he serves as
project manager for prepared to finish its retrieval mission and head for home.
On April 1st the spacecraft sealed itself shut to prepare for its journey back
to Earth. The craft and the particles inside it, set to arrive in the Utah
desert on September 8, 2004, represent NASA's first sample return mission since
the Apollo landings.

http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1239_1.asp

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HIGHLIGHTS OF THIS WEEK'S SKY

* Four planets remain shining during evening this week: Brilliant Venus, faint
Mars, yellowish Saturn, as well as bright Jupiter very high in the southeast to
south.
* New Moon on Monday, April 19th.
* The annual Lyrid meteor shower should peak on April 21-22. No moonlight will
interfere.

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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