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S&T News Bulletin - Jan 6
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SKY & TELESCOPE'S NEWS BULLETIN -- JANUARY 6, 1995
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THE MOST DISTANT GALAXY
Astronomers have announced the discovery of the most distant galaxy yet.
Mark Lacy and his colleagues used radio observations to pinpoint the
position of the active galaxy 8C 1435+635 in Draco, then used the
4.2-meter William Herschel Telescope to take a closer look. This system
has a measured redshift, z, of 4.25. A second team led by Hyron Spinrad
confirmed the galaxy's redshift using the 10-meter Keck Telescope. Large
values of z correspond to fast motion away from Earth and thus great
distances, and this galaxy is an estimated 15 billion light-years away.
The previous record holder had a redshift of 3.8, though some quasars have
redshifts as high as 4.9. The galaxy appears to be both distant and quite
large -- about 150,000 to 200,000 light-years across.
COMET P/BORRELLY
Periodic Comet Borrelly, now about magnitude 8.5, is a fairly easy target
using modest telescopes or even good binoculars. In a larger telescope it
might display faint tails pointing toward and away from the Sun. The
comet is now drifting slowly across western Ursa Major. Later this month
it will pass not far from the galaxies M81 and M82. Here are upcoming
positions for 0 hours Universal Time:
R.A. (2000) Dec.
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Jan 7 9h 52m +62.3 deg
9 9 53 +63.2
11 9 53 +64.0
RECORD MOON SIGHTINGS
According to veteran sky-guide Robert C. Victor, New Year's offered a
great chance to see a pair of opposing crescent Moons -- a very old Moon
just before sunrise on December 31st, and a very young one after sunset on
January 1st. From the volcanic slopes of Hawaii, S&T editor Steve O'Meara
saw the old crescent before dawn on the 31st with the unaided eye until
6:27 a.m. and through binoculars until 6:32. When he lost sight of the
Moon, it was just 18 hours and 24 minutes from new. On the evening of
January 1st, he made a binocular sighting at 6:15 p.m. and a naked-eye
sighting at 6:22. His wife Donna caught sight of the slender crescent
too. The elapsed time was 35.7 hours between Steve's binocular sightings
and 35.9 hours between the naked-eye views. The previous well-documented
record between optically aided views of opposing crescents is 38.4 hours,
attained by John Bortle in New York. The previous record for naked-eye
sightings is 39.3 hours, made by South African observer Drummond Laing.
PERIHELION PASSES
On January 4th at 10 hours Universal Time, Earth passed through perihelion
-- its closest point to the Sun, a mere 147,100,000 km away.
PREDAWN SPECTACULAR
On Friday, the 13th, watch for a terrific pairing of Venus and Jupiter;
they'll be less than 3 deg apart in the southeast before sunrise.
QUIET SUN
Sunspot activity has headed south for the winter, apparently. Casper
Hossfield reports a mean index for the week ending January 4th of just 3.
But be alert for a large sunspot group from a couple weeks ago that should
be just rotating into view on the east limb.
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The News Bulletin is provided as a service to the amateur-astronomer
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| Stuart Goldman Internet: sgoldman@cfa.harvard.edu |
* Associate Editor mrastro@aol.com *
| Sky & Telescope |
* P. O. Box 9111 Sky & Telescope: The Essential *
| Belmont, MA 02178 Magazine of Astronomy |
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