HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: baalke@kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov (Ron Baalke)
Subject: HST Briefing Set For Dec 16
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 16:39:21 GMT

Paula Cleggett-Haleim
Headquarters, Washington, D.C.                December 14, 1992
(Phone: 202/358-1547)

Jim Elliott
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
(Phone: 301/286-6256)


NOTE TO EDITORS: N92-108

HUBBLE DISCOVERY BRIEFING

	Pre-planetary systems discovered using the Hubble Space
Telescope will be the subject of a media briefing Wednesday,
December 16, 1992, at 1:00 p.m. EST, in the NASA auditorium, 400
Maryland Ave. S.W., Washington, D.C.

	Dr. C. Robert O'Dell, Rice University, Houston, will present
his discovery of extended disks of dust-- a prerequisite for the
formation of solar systems like our own-- around stars in the
Orion Nebula.

	Dr. Ed Weiler, HST program scientist, and Dr. Steve Strom,
University of Massachusetts, Amhearst, will comment on the
significance of the discovery.

	A color and a black and white photograph will be distributed
at the briefing.  Also, a 30-second video will be available to
broadcast media.

	The briefing will be carried live on NASA Select television,
Satcom F2R, 72 degrees west longitude, Transponder 13.  Questions
will be taken from participating NASA Centers.

                          - end -
     ___    _____     ___
    /_ /|  /____/ \  /_ /|     Ron Baalke         | baalke@kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov
    | | | |  __ \ /| | | |     Jet Propulsion Lab |
 ___| | | | |__) |/  | | |__   M/S 525-3684 Telos | The 3 things that children 
/___| | | |  ___/    | |/__ /| Pasadena, CA 91109 | find the most fascinating:
|_____|/  |_|/       |_____|/                     | space, dinosaurs and ghosts.

Newsgroups: sci.astro.hubble
From: murtagh@stsci.edu (Fionn D. Murtagh)
Subject: Conf. proc. available: "Astron. Large Databases II"
Organization: Space Telescope Science Institute
Date: Sun, 20 Dec 1992 16:14:20 GMT

Astronomy From Large Databases II:

The proceedings of this Workshop, held at Haguenau, France, from September
14-16, are now available.  The 534-page volume, edited by A. Heck
and F. Murtagh, is available at a price of DM 70 (prepayment requested).
Payments to be made to European Southern Observatory bank account 2102002
with Commerzbank, Munich, or by check, addressed to the attention of ESO,
Financial Services, Karl-Schwarzschild-Str. 2, D-8046 Garching/Muenchen, 

Newsgroups: sci.astro.hubble
From: parej@jsp.umontreal.ca (Pare Jerome)
Subject: FTP site for pictures from Hubble Space Telescope?
Organization: Universite de Montreal
Distribution: na
Date: Sun, 20 Dec 1992 16:13:25 GMT

[Moderator's Note:
	I have included this post because I've been seeing numerous similar
	requests in other newsgroups.  There is a small selection of gifs in
	the anonymous ftp account on wfpc3.la.asu.edu, which were kindly
	released by Ed Groth.  Is there any way for STScI to release gif
	forms of the press release images, ERO's, etc.? For community
	consumption?]

Hi to all of you!

I have a question, but I'm not sure if it's the right place to post it, but
I'll try anyway.  So here it goes:

Is there a ftp site for pictures (preferably GIF) taken from the Hubble Space
Telescope?

If so, could you tell me where to get them?

I realize that this is probably not the right place to ask this question,
but I'm quite new to the News and I don't know where to ask...

Thank you anyway.
--
-- 
Ciao!
Jerome Pare	parej@jsp.umontreal.ca
From: skaamjm@uk.ac.ucl (M.Moore)
Newsgroups: sci.astro
Subject: Re: Lunar Eclipse not visible in Holland
Date: 11 Dec 92 17:59:24 GMT
Organization: Institute_of_Neurology

In article <1992Dec11.121711.29755@syma.sussex.ac.uk> andy@syma.sussex.ac.uk (Andy Clews) writes:
>From: andy@syma.sussex.ac.uk (Andy Clews)
>Subject: Re: Lunar Eclipse not visible in Holland
>Date: 11 Dec 92 12:17:11 GMT

>Phil Isherwood (pisherwo@wm.estec.esa.nl) wrote:
>: The lunar eclipse was (sadly) shrouded in clouds in the Netherlands.

>Sadly, the same was true in south-east England, although during totality
>the cloudy sky became much darker instead of the silvery glow that it had
>before. Intensely annoying that the moon was visible in patchy cloud about
>half an hour before the eclipse began.

Did you mean to refer to the whole of SE England?

Here in sunny (moony) London, the moon was visible for some time, from
the first shadowing, until shortly before totality, when some clouds came 
over, at about 23:00 GMT. I didnt look again until after 'The Prisoner'
but the clouds had gone again shortly after the end of totality.

This was the first eclipse I have looked at. I was surprised by how dark
the non lit portion of the moon was. It was much darker in appearance than
the unlit portions of the crescent moon.

The shadow line was quite distinct, and crater shadows or peaks not seen.

Observations with 8 X 50 bins.
From: jeremy@atlantis.CS.ORST.EDU ((-| Jeremy |-) Smith)
Newsgroups: sci.astro
Subject: I want the moon.
Date: 13 Dec 92 04:30:29 GMT
Article-I.D.: leela.1992Dec13.043029.14439
Organization: Computer Science Outreach Services - Oregon State University

Dear Fellow astro-netters.

	I'm looking for a clear, bright graphic of a full moon - no 
shadows, eclipses, umbras penumbras, phases.  I've archied moon and 
fullmoon and there are many neat pictures but most of the full moon 
shots show <75%.

	Whilst I'm here, is there an available list of the main events 
for the coming year: time and dates of the moon phases and eclipses and such?
From: lip@s1.gov (Loren I. Petrich)
Newsgroups: sci.astro
Subject: Re: Detecting Second-Order GR Effects in Binary Pulsars
Date: 16 Dec 92 23:40:37 GMT
Organization: LLNL

In article <BzAABp.66L@well.sf.ca.us> metares@well.sf.ca.us (Tom Van Flandern) writes:
>
>bweiner@ruhets.rutgers.edu (Benjamin Weiner) writes:
>
:  Tom, would you repost your list of citations - it is totally impossible
:  to tell what you are talking about without it.  Have you ever tried to
:  look up a paper in a literature searcher knowing only that an author is
:  named Yu?

>     I'm happy to oblige, Ben.  Your dilemma would be especially difficult in
>the case of Yu, since the full citation is:  Yu Xin (A. Yu), "Does Einstein's
>G.R. theory predict gravitational radiation of PSR 1913+16?",  Astrophys. &
>SpaceSci. 194, 159-163 (1992).  I don't know how you could look that one up
>in a literature searcher.

>     The author's conclusion is: "the Einstein approximation scheme gives no
>gravitational radiation.  ...  The claim that observed data from PSR 1913+16
>has verified Einstein's gravitational radiation theory is, therefore,
>groundless."

	So Yu claims _zero_ G-wave flux?

	That is contrary to all the GR literature I have ever read.
Any GR textbook will contain derivations in gory detail. Here's some
books:

	Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler's _Gravitation_ (early 1970's) [A
classic text on GR]

	Clifford Will, _Theory and Experiment in Gravitational
Physics_ (1981) [Comparison of GR and several alternate theories of
gravity]

	Books by Steven Weinberg (_Gravitation and Cosmology_), Press,
Teukolsky, et al. (_Problem Book in Relativity and Gravitation_),
Ohanian, etc.

	Does Yu even _try_ to explain why they all went wrong? If not,
then Yu's work cannot be taken seriously.

	There is also the additional problem that GR works very well
in the post-Newtonian limit in the Solar System, and it is
post-Newtonian effects that allow the masses of the two Hulse-Taylor
objects to be determined, as well as the orbit size. Plugging all
these, with the eccentricity, into the GR G-wave orbit-decay rate
formula gives essentially the right value. Alternate theories that
differ from GR have to suffer some very fine tuning to get the right
G-wave emission rate.

-- 
/Loren Petrich, the Master Blaster
/lip@s1.gov
Newsgroups: sci.astro
From: sheppamj@sun.soe.clarkson.edu (Matthew Sheppard)
Subject: P/Swift-Tuttle Binocular Viewing
Organization: Clarkson University
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 14:52:46 GMT

Well, this amateur is baffeled.  I looked in the right spot I'm pretty
sure and all I saw is what looked like a very dim star (on the order of
5 or 6)

What magnititude is this comet supposed to be and should I be able to
see the tail with binocs?



--
| Matthew Sheppard  CLARKSON UNIVERSITY  sheppamj@sun.soe.clarkson.edu |
| I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.ANoN |
| I don't want a pickle. DoD#477 TEP#477 RIDE FREE (8^]..etcetera..    |
Newsgroups: sci.astro
From: howdii@patty.gud.siemens.co.at ()
Subject: Planet viewing
Date: Thu, 10 Dec 1992 15:26:16 GMT
Organization: SIEMENS Austria Corp., A-1100 Wien, Gudrunstr. 11
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL5

I remeber one day, I was lucky to see VENUS from dawn til 11:00 a.m.!
Observing Venus during daylight is not often possible. Therefore the sky
has to be special clear. Of course you must try not to loose the planet 
after sunrise. 

howdii.
From: j.jahn@abbs.hanse.de (Jost Jahn)
Newsgroups: sci.astro
Subject: Sunspots at 20.12.1992.
Date: 20 Dec 92 14:34:00 GMT
Reply-To: j.jahn@abbs.hanse.de
Distribution: sci
Organization: ABBS AstroMail, D-W 2121 Dahlenburg / Germany
X-Version: ZerUU V6.45c

Sunspots at 20.12.1992., 0 h UT.

No.    Pos.  Cl.  Ar.  Mag. SF  F  M  X
---------------------------------------
7363 09S 76W Hsx   20   a
7364 08N 78W Hsx   40   a
7366 10S 47W Axx   10   a
7368 33S 27W Cro   40   b
7370 08S 14E Hsx   60   a
7371 09S 63W Eao  140   b
7372 12S 44E Hsx   70   a
7373 06N 20W Axx    0   a
7374 08S 61E Dao  310   b
7375 14N 41W Dao   50   b
7376 18N 71E Axx    0   a


No optical or x-ray flares yesterday observed.


 
--
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------------------------- for amateur astronomers ----------------------------
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From: j.jahn@abbs.hanse.de (Jost Jahn)
Newsgroups: sci.astro
Subject: Sunspots at 11.12.1992.
Reply-To: j.jahn@abbs.hanse.de
Date: 11 Dec 92 21:50:00 MET
Distribution: sci
Organization: ABBS AstroMail, D-W 2121 Dahlenburg / Germany
X-Version: ZerUU V6.45c

Sunspots at 11.12.1992., 0 h UT.

No.    Pos.  Cl.  Ar.  Mag. SF  F  M  X
---------------------------------------
7355 17S 26W Cao   80   b
7360 17S 18E Dao  110   b    1
7362 04S 04E Dai  270   bg   8
7363 07S 45E Dao  200   b
7364 11N 42E Cso   60   b
7365 20S 15W Cso   50   b

Explanations of spot columns:
No.  Running number of sunspot group.
Pos. Position in Latitude and Longitude.
     N - North, S- South, E - East, W- West.
Cl.  MacIntosh classification.
Ar.  Area in 10-6 of visible hemisphere.
Mag. Magnetic Classification.
     a - alpha, b - beta, bg - beta/gamma,
     g - gamma, bd - beta/delta, bg - gamma/delta
     bgd - beta/gamma/delta.
SF   Number of subflares.
F    Number of optical flares. (importance > 1).
M    Number of medium x-ray eruptions.
X    Number of strong x-ray eruptions.


No optical or x-ray flares yesterday observed.


 
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------------------------- for amateur astronomers ----------------------------
    + 49 5851 7896 / V.21, V.22, V.22bis, V.32, V.42, V.42bis and MNP5
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From: j.jahn@abbs.hanse.de (Jost Jahn)
Newsgroups: sci.astro
Subject: Sunspots at 19.12.1992.
Reply-To: j.jahn@abbs.hanse.de
Date: 19 Dec 92 14:07:00 MET
Distribution: sci
Organization: ABBS AstroMail, D-W 2121 Dahlenburg / Germany
X-Version: ZerUU V6.45c

Sunspots at 19.12.1992., 0 h UT.

No.    Pos.  Cl.  Ar.  Mag. SF  F  M  X
---------------------------------------
7360 17S 90W Cao   60   b
7363 08S 60W Cso   40   b    1
7364 08N 63W Hsx   40   a
7368 32S 15W Cso   40   b
7369 07S 18E Axx    0   a
7370 08S 27E Hsx   50   a
7371 10S 50W Dao  140   b    1
7372 11S 59E Hsx  100   a
7373 05N 06W Bxo   10   b
7374 08S 73E Cao  150   b


No optical or x-ray flares yesterday observed.


 
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------------------------- for amateur astronomers ----------------------------
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Newsgroups: sci.astro
From: roelle@uars_mag.jhuapl.edu (Curtis Roelle)
Subject: Re: Planet viewing
Organization: Johns Hopkins University
Date: 15 Dec 92 15:27:15 GMT

howdii@patty.gud.siemens.co.at () writes:

>I can not easily believe, that JUPITER can also be seen during bright daylight
>like VENUS, because Venus can get much more brighter then Jupiter. 

In September 1991 Jupiter and Mercury had a "near miss" of only 7 or
so arminutes in morning twilight.  The star Regulus was also in the
same low power (e.g. 60x) eyepiece field.  During the relatively dark
nautical twilight Jupiter appeared considerably brighter than Mercury.
As twilight continued to increase however, Jupiter started to fade.
By the time of bright civil twilight Mercury had become prominent and
easier to view than Jupiter.

Although Mercury was fanter, its angular diameter was significantly
smaller than Jupiter.  Thus Mercury had a greater surface brightness
(magnitude per unit area) which gave it better contrast than large
Jupiter, making it easier to see against a bright sky.

I packed up at sunrise, and don't specifically recall observing the
planets after the sun above the horizon.  However, both Jupiter and
Mercury could be seen in very strong twilight.

BTW, the telescope I used had a small aperture -- a 4-inch SCT.  It
needed to be portable because obtaining a view of the eastern horizon
required going into an adjoining fallow cornfield next to the house.
Managed to take a few slides at the telescope's prime focus.

Curt Roelle
roelle@sigi.jhuapl.edu

Newsgroups: sci.astro
From: chris@chrism.demon.co.uk (Chris Marriott)
Subject: Re: Earth's Orbit if no other planets 
Distribution: world
Organization: None
Reply-To: chris@chrism.demon.co.uk
X-Mailer: Simple NEWS 1.90 (ka9q DIS 1.19)
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 19:22:25 +0000

In article <7460061@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM> duanej@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM writes:

>>If all the other planets were to suddenly disappear, the Earth's orbit
>>WOULD be very slightly different in the future.  The gravitational
>>attraction of the planets "perturbs" the orbit of the centre of mass
>>of the Earth/Moon system from the keplerian ellipse it would otherwise
>>follow around the sun.  Unless you're interested in predicting precise
>
>In fact, this is how the existence of Pluto was discovered.  Neptune's
>orbit was perturbed in a way that could most easily be explained by the
>existence of a small planet in a nearby orbit.  So they looked for it and
>found it.
>

Except for the slightly irksome fact that the mass of Pluto is FAR too
small to account for the perturbations in Neptune's orbit!

Chris
-- 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Chris Marriott                           | chris@chrism.demon.co.uk    |
| Warrington, UK                           | BIX: cmarriott              |
| (Still awaiting inspiration              | CIX: cmarriott              |
|  for a witty .sig .... )                 | CompuServe: 100113,1140     |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Newsgroups: sci.astro
From: max@west.darkside.com (Erik Max Francis)
Newsgroups: sci.astro
Subject: Re: The Hole Story
Date: 16 Dec 92 00:00:08 GMT
Organization: The Dark Side of the Moon +1 408 245 SPAM

metares@well.sf.ca.us (Tom Van Flandern) writes:

>      Gravity waves are small ripples through space-time set off by the
> acceleration of masses.  They are not to be confused with the changes of
> curvature of space-time as masses move that happen without detectable delay.
> If these motions set off waves also, those propagate through the medium at
> the speed of light.

I'm confused.  I thought that general relativity made a very clear 
distinction that no information can travel faster than light -- not even 
gravitational information.  So if you move a mass very quickly out of the 
way, somebody far away feeling the effects of that mass won't notice it 
until that information (carried by virtual gravitons) reaches them.

Or am I completely missing something?  Are gravitons dictated at all by
general relativity?

----------
Erik Max Francis   Omnia quia sunt, lumina sunt.  Coming soon:  UNIVERSE _ | _
USmail:  1070 Oakmont Dr. #1 San Jose CA 95117  ICBM:  37 20 N  121 53 W _>|<_
UUCP:  ..!apple!uuwest!max   Usenet:  max@west.darkside.com   464E4F5244   |
From: scip1061@nuscc.nus.sg (Marc Paul Jozef)
Subject: Re: Detecting Second-Order GR Effects in Binary Pulsars
Organization: National University of Singapore
X-Newsreader: Tin 1.1 PL4
Date: Tue, 15 Dec 1992 12:03:56 GMT


matt@physics2.berkeley.edu (Matt Austern) writes:
: [ ... cites another poster]
:
: The claim, then, is that gravitational radiation is *not* a solution
: to the vacuum form of the Einstein field equations?
: 
: Frankly, I find that claim very difficult to accept. 

 
    That claim certainly wasn't made.
    The point of (widespread) misunderstanding here is that
    not all solutions of Einstein's equations need to be
    physical; all GR tells you is that THE spacetime metric 
    must satisfy Einstein's equations. 
Newsgroups: sci.astro
From: jrbd@craycos.com (James Davies)
Newsgroups: sci.astro
Subject: Re: the Lunar eclipse was very dark
Keywords: moon, eclipse
Date: 15 Dec 92 21:04:47 GMT
Organization: Cray Computer Corporation

In article <1992Dec11.110723.25819@st-andrews.ac.uk> gr@st-andrews.ac.uk (Gavin Ramsay) writes:
>
>FRom the south of England, I saw the eclipse quite well. Although it was a
>dark eclispse, you could certainaly still see the moon when in total eclipse.
>At 1/4 of total you could see what looked like a straight terminator over some
>of it as mentioned in S&T. It was probably due to an optical illuision from the
>terminator going over the maria.

I noticed the straightness of the terminator also; my thought at the time
was that it was because the Earth's shadow was a larger circle than the
Moon's disk, so that the segment projected on the Moon looked relatively
straight.
From: duquet@astro.phy.ulaval.ca (Jean-Remi Duquet)
Newsgroups: sci.astro
Subject: Re: Info wanted on Halton Arp
Date: 18 Dec 92 17:08:08 GMT
Organization: Universite Laval, Ste-Foy, Qc, Canada

In article <724619106.AA00811@contrast.wlink.nl> qsi@contrast.wlink.nl (Peter Kocourek) writes:
>In a recent discussion, someone mentioned to me a certain guy named Halton
>Arp, who supposedly has "disproven the Big Bang" theory, by showing that
>there are flows of matter between quasars and galaxies, with the
>implication that the quasars aren't as far away as thought. He even is
>supposed to have "photographs" proving this. It would seem to me, without
>knowing anything further about this, that this is just a misinterpretation
>of optically close objects. Does anyone know more about (the refutation
>of) Halton Arp's theories?
>

First, Halton Arp is a well known astronomer who published, among other
things, an atlas of peculiar galaxies. This has nothing to do with his
theory, but it makes a decent introduction.

The "theory" you talk about is not really one, by most scientific standards.
He just presented a number of observations (mostly photographs) which, he
claims, are incompatible with the standard interpretation of spectral
shift as a recession velocity.

In his book "Quasars, redshift and controversies", Arp shows quite a few
close associations between quasars and galaxies, with very different
redshifts. These alignments or associations all have a fairly low
probability of occurrence, and the overall probability is of course much 
lower since he shows many such objects. The usual counterarguments are
the low-number statistics involved and also the facts that "a posteriori"
statistics are involved. The definitive proof would be a physical link
between two objects vith unmatched redshifts; Arp shows a couple of
interesting examples, but none is good enough to represent an
undisputable association. But who knows...

His book is well worth reading. Not very expensive, short and fully
illustrated. He won't convince you he's right, but he certainly shows
that some of these objects would need some more observations...

-----
Jean-Remi Duquet
Physics dept.
Universite Laval
Quebec
Newsgroups: sci.astro
From: reynolds@panix.com (Brian Reynolds)
Subject: ATM: Dew cap length
Summary: How long should a dew cap be?
Date: Sun, 20 Dec 1992 22:09:20 GMT
Organization: PANIX Public Access Unix, NYC
Keywords: dew cap stray light tube length

I'm building a small telescope based on a photocopier lens.  My
previous lens fit into one side of a pipe fitting that I used as a
lens cell and dew cap, so the size of the dew cap was based on a
fitting I could get off the shelf.  My current copier lens (75mm, f/4)
fits directly into the tube I use for the telescope so I can tailor
the length of the dew cap when I cut a new tube.  I plan on setting
the front of the lens cell one aperture back from the front of the
tube.  Does anyone have any advice on how far back I should set the
lens?

-- 
Brian Reynolds
reynolds@panix.com -or- reynolds@pilot.dmg.ml.com
NAR# 54438
IPMS# 30162
Newsgroups: sci.astro
From: banana@panix.com (Walter Polkosnik)
Subject: Moon Map (Astrophotography)
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 19:24:59 GMT
Organization: PANIX Public Access Unix, NYC

I and a friend have just gotten into doing some astrophotography and one of our
favorite subjects is the moon (It's so easy!). We get some nice shots
sometimes, but it would be more satisfying if we had some idea of what we're
taking pictures of. I've looked through all of my astronomy books, and looked
around for books to purchase, but there don't seem to be many books with maps
for the moon. If anyone could recommend one, we would be very grateful. What
would really be wonderful is if there were some GIF or set of GIFs with crater
names, mare names etc. 

There was one book I did see, but it had hand drawn maps there were very ugly
looking and hard to follow. We are looking for something photographic so we can
readily identify features.

Thanks




-- 
Walter Polkosnik                 
Physics Department         banana@panix.com        
Queens College, CUNY       {cmcl2,apple}!panix!banana
Newsgroups: sci.astro
From: dbriggs@zia.aoc.nrao.edu (Daniel Briggs)
Subject: Re: Summer Internships at Natl. Radio Astronomy Obsy.
Organization: National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Socorro NM
Distribution: sci.astro
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 92 23:25:55 GMT

In article <AWOOTTEN.92Dec11101401@polaris.cv.nrao.edu>
  awootten@polaris.cv.nrao.edu (Al Wootten) writes:

>NRAO summer internships

At the risk of seeming a rampant flag waver, these are really *good* summer
internships.  Decent facilities, interesting work, good people to work
with, and pretty good pay.  What more do you want?  If you dig astronomy,
even as a hobby while you're pursuing some other technical specialty, it's
well worth your time to apply.

-- 
| Daniel Briggs  (dbriggs@nrao.edu)                      |  USPA B-14993
| New Mexico Tech / National Radio Astronomy Observatory |      DoD #387
| P.O. Box O / Socorro, NM 87801   (505) 835-7391        | 
Support the League for Programming Freedom   (info from lpf@uunet.uu.net)
Newsgroups: sci.astro