Sky & Telescope's News Bulletin - Nov 7

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* * * SKY & TELESCOPE's WEEKLY NEWS BULLETIN - November 7, 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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TRUCKING THE WORLD'S LARGEST TELESCOPE MIRROR

When the Hale Telescope's 5-meter (200-inch) mirror was trucked to its final
destination atop Palomar Mountain in November 1947, it inched its way over a
winding, 258-kilometer (160-mile) route at an average speed of 15 km (9.3
miles) per hour. The two-day affair shut down roads and enthralled a nation
eager for news about the construction of the world's largest telescope.

Perhaps we've become jaded. More than a half-century later, astronomers last
week used the same tender loving care when moving the world's largest
monolithic telescope mirror. But no one seemed to notice....

http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1097_1.asp

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MEETING THE SOLAR SYSTEM'S FINAL FRONTIER

NASA's farthest-ranging spacecraft has begun encountering the first physical
boundary between our solar system and the interstellar space beyond.

Voyager 1, which is now about three times farther from the Sun than Neptune and
Pluto are, has sent back evidence that it may have reached the "termination
shock" in the solar wind. This is the first sign of the thin solar wind piling
up against the even thinner interstellar gas beyond. "Voyager is beginning to
explore the final frontier of the solar system," said Edward Stone, project
scientist for Voyager....

http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1095_1.asp

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REFINING THE COSMIC RECIPE

Astronomers have just confirmed -- and refined -- their ever-sharper grand
picture of the universe we live in. Using three-dimensional positions of
205,443 galaxies, an international team led by Max Tegmark (University of
Pennsylvania) has reanalyzed the age, composition, and future of the cosmos. As
a side result, they also discovered the largest structure yet found anywhere.

Tegmark and his colleagues based their analysis on an early look at the second
data release from the ongoing Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS)....

http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1094_1.asp

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HIGHLIGHTS OF THIS WEEK'S SKY

* Total eclipse of the full Moon on November 8th.
* Venus, at magnitude -3.9, glimmers quite low in southwest evening twilight.
* Saturn rises around 8 p.m. By late evening it's well up in the east in
Gemini.

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 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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