Sky & Telescope's News Bulletin - Mar 12

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* * * SKY & TELESCOPE's WEEKLY NEWS BULLETIN - March 12, 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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GLOVES COME OFF IN FIGHT TO SAVE HUBBLE

Both houses of Congress are now battling NASA and the Bush administration over
the future of the Hubble Space Telescope. During a Senate hearing on the space
agency's proposed 2005 budget Thursday, Christopher "Kit" Bond (R-Missouri) and
Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland) called for two independent reviews of NASA
administrator Sean O'Keefe's January 16th decision to stop servicing the
orbiting observatory....

All this activity follows weeks of anticipation while Admiral Harold Gehman,
former chair of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB), deliberated
on whether O'Keefe's cancellation of future Hubble servicing is justified
purely on the grounds of safety, as the NASA administrator has argued. O'Keefe
agreed to solicit a "second opinion" from Gehman in late January at Mikulski's
urging. In a letter to Mikulski dated March 5th and released to the public
yesterday, Gehman averred that all shuttle flights are dangerous and that a
mission to Hubble "may be slightly more risky" than ones to the International
Space Station, where the crew of a shuttle damaged during launch could seek
safe haven. But whereas O'Keefe has maintained that this is reason enough to
stop servicing Hubble, Gehman wrote, "I suggest only a deep and rich study of
the entire gain/risk equation can answer the question of whether an extension
of the life of the wonderful Hubble telescope is worth the risks involved...."

http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1209_1.asp

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ASTRONOMERS, JOURNALISTS GLIMPSE UNIVERSE'S PAST, HUBBLE'S FUTURE

The deepest image yet taken of outer space shared the stage Tuesday with what
may be the deepest crisis yet for fans of the Hubble Space Telescope.

At the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland,
astronomers and journalists were treated to their first views of the Hubble
Ultra Deep Field (HUDF) -- stunning images from Hubble's ACS and NICMOS cameras
that may portray the most distant galaxies yet captured. The galaxy-studded ACS
image was unveiled not only by STScI director Steven Beckwith, who commissioned
it, but also by US Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland), who vowed to fight
for the orbiting observatory....

http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1207_1.asp

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OPPORTUNITY CATCHES MARTIAN MOON TRANSITS

On Earth, we lucked out. The disks of the Sun and Moon appear almost identical
in size, giving eclipse chasers the glorious spectacle of seeing the Sun's
corona during total solar eclipses. But with average diameters of about 22 and
13 kilometers respectively, Mars's two moons, Phobos and Deimos, are far too
small to block the Sun's entire disk as seen from the red planet's surface.

On March 4th, Opportunity's Panoramic Camera (Pancam) caught Deimos crossing
the face of the Sun; it shows up as the black spot moving from the lower left
to the bottom of the Sun's disk.... Three days later, the same camera caught
Phobos taking a bite out of the Sun as it passed in front....

http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1204_1.asp

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ASTRO NEWS BRIEFS

Rosetta To Visit Two Asteroids

Now that the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft is on its way to
periodic comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, mission planners have selected a pair
of main-belt asteroids that the craft will visit during its 10-year cruise
through interplanetary space. On September 5, 2008, Rosetta is to fly past 2867
Steins, a small body just a few kilometers across, and nearly two years later,
on July 10, 2010, it reaches much larger 21 Lutetia, nearly 100 km in diameter.
Both flybys will be close enough (1,700 and 3,000 km, respectively) to acquire
both exquisitely detailed photography and determinations of each asteroid's
mass and density. ESA managers expect Rosetta to orbit Churyumov-Gerasimenko
for 17 months beginning in August 2014, during which time it will dispatch an
instrumented craft to land on the comet's nucleus.

http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1189_1.asp

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HIGHLIGHTS OF THIS WEEK'S SKY

* Last-quarter Moon on Saturday, March 13.
* Venus (magnitude -4.3, in Aries) is the brilliant white "Evening Star"
blazing in the west during twilight and much of the evening.
* Late in the week, try looking for Mercury (magnitude -1) about 30 minutes
after sunset, far below Venus and perhaps a bit to the right.

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

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

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NIGHT SKY MAGAZINE (Advertisement)
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observers who want to enjoy and explore the starry sky. NIGHT SKY premieres
with the May/June 2004 issue. To find out more, go to:

http://NightSkyMag.com

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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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