From: bcollins@utdallas.edu (ARLIN B COLLINS)
Subject: Sky&Tel Weekly News Bulletin
Organization: Univ. of Texas at Dallas
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1992 17:12:17 GMT

if you are in the US, have a happy and safe Thanksgiving,
if you are not, then, have a happy and save Nov 26-29.  B-{)

 SKY & TELESCOPE NEWS BULLETIN
 NOVEMBER 21, 1992

 GLIMPSING SWIFT-TUTTLE 
 If for some reason you've put off trying to find Comet Swift-Tuttle,
 you'd best get outside this week. For starters, while the comet doesn't
 reach perihelion until December 12th, it has already started moving
 away from Earth. In fact, Swift-Tuttle is predicted to be its brightest
 right now, perhaps just at 5th magnitude. Second, the Moon is
 completely out of the way now but will return as a thin crescent by
 Thanksgiving weekend. Third, the comet is making a beeline for southern
 skies and will be virtually unobservable this time next month. And,
 fourth, it's sporting a short tail. With binoculars, Californian
 Charles Morris saw one 2 degrees long on the 13th, and Dan Costanzo of
 the National Capitol Astronomers in Washington saw a one-degree tail on
 November 17th through an 8-inch telescope. But both observers had very
 dark sites, and the tail may not be obvious if light pollution is bad
 in your area. 

 So, what are you waiting for? Comet Swift-Tuttle, the source of the
 Perseid meteors, only visits the inner solar system once every 130
 years. It's now or never. This celestial interloper is currently
 visible in the evening sky for a few hours after sunset. If you have
 exceptionally dark skies the comet is technically a naked-eye object,
 but binoculars will make finding it much easier. I'll give coordinates
 in a second, but imagine the famed Summer Triangle of stars for a
 moment as a kite, with Vega and Altair forming the side tips and Deneb
 the bottom. Right now Swift-Tuttle is just about where you'd expect to
 find the top corner of the kite. Here are equinox 2000 coordinates for
 0 hour Universal time, which corresponds to the previous evening at 7
 p.m. on the East Coast and 4 p.m. in the West. 

           R.A. (2000) Dec.
           ================
 Nov. 21   18h 27m  +16.2 deg.
 Nov. 23   18h 34m  +13.6 deg.
 Nov. 25   18h 42m  +11.1 deg.
 Nov. 27   18h 48m  +08.7 deg.

 THE MOST DISTANT STAR 
 A new and very distant supernova made the news late last week. An
 international team of astronomers discovered the 22nd-magnitude star
 last April and May in an anonymous galaxy in Hercules. The discovery,
 designated 1992bi, was made with the 2.5-meter Isaac Newton telescope
 in the Canary Islands. Its host galaxy has a redshift of 0.457, which
 means the supernova's light reached us after traveling for some 5
 billion years. The importance of this supernova is that the rise and
 fall in the light from the blast can be correlated very closely with
 its true, or absolute, brightness. This in turn will give astronomers a
 very accurate yardstick to a very distant object. 
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-- 
Arlin B Collins     CompuServe:  INTERNET:bcollins@utdallas.edu   :-)