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 * * * SKY & TELESCOPE's WEEKLY NEWS BULLETIN - November 26, 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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KISSING IN THE KUIPER BELT

Among the strangest denizens of the solar system are contact binaries. In
these systems, two minor planets orbit each other so closely that they
literally or nearly touch end-to-end -- resulting in a peanut-like overall
shape. Until now, astronomers had found only two possible contact binaries
of relatively large size: the main-belt asteroid 216 Kleopatra and the
Trojan asteroid 624 Hektor. Now Scott S. Sheppard (Carnegie Institution of
Washington) and David C. Jewitt (University of Hawaii) may have found a
third example: a Kuiper-Belt object orbiting beyond Pluto.

The object, 2001 QG298, orbits so far from the Sun that even the Hubble
Space Telescope has no chance of resolving a peanut shape. But after
measuring the object's changing brightness in 2002 and 2003 with the
University of Hawaii's 2.2-meter telescope and the 10-meter Keck I
telescope, Sheppard and Jewitt noticed something unusual....

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1394_1.asp

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ASTRO NEWS BRIEFS

Swift Takes Flight at Last

After many months of delays, NASA's Swift high-energy observatory was
launched on November 20th from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The Delta rocket
lifted off at 12:16 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, boosting the satellite
into a 600-kilometer-high orbit. Once operational, Swift will rapidly
pinpoint enigmatic gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and then scrutinize their
afterglows using X-ray and ultraviolet/visible-light detectors. The
satellite is expected to observe several bursts per week. Swift will also
perform a sensitive all-sky survey in hard (high-energy) X-rays.

> http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/article_1392_1.asp

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HIGHLIGHTS OF THIS WEEK'S SKY

* Full Moon on Friday, November 26th (3:07 p.m. EST).
* The Moon shines amid Saturn, Pollux, and Castor as they rise in the
evening on the 30th.
* Jupiter, Venus, and Mars are visible in the east at dawn.

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

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

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MARCH 2006 TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE CRUISE: MEDITERRANEAN VOYAGE
(Advertisement)

SKY & TELESCOPE and TravelQuest International invite you to cruise the
Mediterranean and enjoy 4 minutes of totality from Libyan desert. The
journey begins and ends in Genoa, Italy. Ports of call include Naples; the
island of Capri; Tobruk and Tripoli in Libya; and Alexandria, Egypt (with
excursions to Cairo, the Great Pyramids of Giza, and the famous Egyptian
Museum of Antiquities). On eclipse day we'll travel in our private
motorcoaches to our centerline eclipse-viewing site in the Libyan desert.
For more information call TravelQuest at 800-830-1998 or visit:

> http://www.tq-international.com/Mediterranean06/medhome.htm

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Copyright 2004 Sky Publishing Corp. S&T's Weekly News Bulletin is provided
as a free service to the astronomical community by the editors of SKY &
TELESCOPE magazine. Widespread electronic distribution is encouraged as
long as our copyright notice is included, along with the words "used by
permission." But this bulletin may not be published in any other form
without written permission from Sky Publishing; send e-mail to
permissions@SkyandTelescope.com or call +1 617-864-7360. More astronomy
news is available on our Web site at http://SkyandTelescope.com/news/.

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