Received: Sat Feb 4 12:33:54 AST 2006 ======================================================================== * * * SKY & TELESCOPE's WEEKLY NEWS BULLETIN - February 3, 2006 * * * ======================================================================== Welcome to S&T's Weekly News Bulletin. Images, the full stories abridged here, and other enhancements are on our Web site, SkyandTelescope.com, at the URLs provided. (If the links don't work directly, just paste them into your Web browser.) Clear skies! ======================================================================== CHANGES TO THE WEEKLY NEWS BULLETIN Starting on February 10th, the Weekly News Bulletin and Skywatcher's Bulletin will be merged into one and will appear in HTML format. If you wish to continue to receive text-only copies of the bulletin, please follow the instructions contained in next week's bulletin. If you do not receive your bulletin next week, please e-mail wnb@SkyandTelescope.com with your preferred e-mail address and we'll sign you up again. Clear skies, The Editors of SKY & TELESCOPE ------------------------------------------------------------------------ TROJANS: INVADERS FROM THE KUIPER BELT Thousands of Trojan asteroids circle the Sun in Jupiter's orbit roughly 60 degrees ahead of and behind the giant planet itself. These small bodies inhabit two of Jupiter's five Lagrangian points, zones of stability where a small body can maintain its position with respect to the two larger bodies. But where did the Trojans come from? Spectral observations have shown clear similarities between the Trojans (which are named after Greek and Trojan heroes in Homer's Iliad) and the distant worlds of the Kuiper Belt. In this week's issue of Nature, a French and American team provides new evidence that the Trojans did indeed originate in the Kuiper Belt and were later captured into their Jupiter-leading and -trailing orbits.... > http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1673_1.asp ------------------------------------------------------------------------ GOING DEEP IN VIRGO Astronomers have known for years that isolated stars and planetary nebulae roam the vast expanses of "empty" space within galaxy clusters. But what else populates these lonely depths, and why were these objects marooned from their parent galaxies? To find out, an international team of 13 astronomers used the Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) to stare for 25 hours at a relatively barren patch of space near the center of the Virgo Cluster.... > http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1672_1.asp ------------------------------------------------------------------------ SURPRISE! MOST STAR SYSTEMS ARE SINGLE Astronomers have known since the 1700s that a significant fraction of stars belong to binary or multiple systems. But what is that fraction? Given the observed fact that most solar-size and larger stars reside in binaries, many astronomers have concluded that more than half of our galaxy's stars belong to multiple-star systems. But a new study by Charles Lada (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) shows that the conventional wisdom is almost certainly wrong. The problem, says Lada, is that astronomers have neglected to consider our galaxy's most common stellar denizens: red dwarfs (spectral type M).... > http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1669_1.asp ======================================================================= HIGHLIGHTS OF THIS WEEK'S SKY * First-quarter Moon on February 5th. * The Moon, just past first quarter, occults several of the Pleiades stars on Sunday night, February 5-6, for Hawaii and the U.S. West Coast. * Venus (magnitude -4.4, in northern Sagittarius) is rapidly climbing into good view during dawn; look for it low in the east-southeast. A telescope shows that it's a thickening crescent. > http://SkyandTelescope.com/observing/ataglance/article_110_1.asp ======================================================================== BECOME A PREFERRED SUBSCRIBER TODAY AND SAVE! (Advertisement) Introducing... Preferred subscriber services for SKY & TELESCOPE and NIGHT SKY magazines! Never worry about renewing again! 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