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| What's Up This Week - Feb 7 - 13, 2005 |
Feb 7, 2005 - Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! This will be a wonderful week as we begin by viewing the spectacular "Kemble's Cascade". Looking for some challenging studies? Then while New Moon is on our side, let's go for some serious hunting in the constellations of Pisces, Lepus, Canis Major, Cetus and Puppis. You can do them in one night if you try! Comet Machholz rounds off the week as the Moon returns. So start with binoculars and break out the "heavy artillery" for the faint stuff. Enjoy a leisurely comet hunt or lunar viewing week end...
Because here's what's up! (Full Story) |
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| Image credit: NASA |
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| NASA 2006 Budget Released |
| Feb 7, 2005 - The US White House released its 2006 budget today, which included $16.45 billion US for NASA. This is a 2.5% increase over the previous year, but it doesn't include any funds to save the Hubble Space Telescope. Only $75 million have been set aside for Hubble, which would only be enough to have a robot steer the aging observatory into a safe trajectory when it needs to be destroyed. The budget sets aside $9.6 billion for science, aeronautics and exploration, and $6.7 billion for the space shuttle and International Space Station. (Full Story) |
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| Image credit: Palomar |
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| Galaxies Might Exist Without Stars |
| Feb 7, 2005 - Engineers have outfitted the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Arecibo Observatory telescope with a new instrument that could help it discover galaxies that have no stars - so called "dark galaxies". The instrument is called ALFA (for Arecibo L-Band Feed Array), which is essentially a seven-pixel digital camera, which allows the radio telescope to receive data seven times as fast. Researchers will explore groups of galaxies, and determine how fast they're converting gas into stars. It should be able to discover if there are gas-rich regions, invisible to optical telescopes, which can be detected by their hydrogen signature. (Full Story) |
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