From: bcollins@utdallas.edu (ARLIN B COLLINS)
Subject: Sky&Telescope News Bulletin
Organization: Univ. of Texas at Dallas
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 00:56:10 GMT

***
  Happy Holidays to all, and clear skies...  abc
***
 SKY & TELESCOPE NEWS BULLETIN -- DECEMBER 19, 1992

 THE ASTEROID "TWO"-TATIS 
 With all the news concerning the lunar eclipse and Galileo's flyby of
 the Earth these last two weeks, there hasn't been time to say much
 about a visit from a little asteroid called Toutatis. Only about 2
 kilometers across, 4179 Toutatis came within 2.2 million miles of us on
 December 8th, the closest flyby ever that was known about in advance.
 Professional observatories around the world have been homing in on the
 asteroid this past week. Perhaps the most interesting observations were
 made with radar, using the giant antennas in California and Puerto
 Rico.  We haven't gotten a peek at the radar images yet, but
 investigator  Steven Ostro has reportedly resolved many details.
 Remarkably, Toutatis is actually a contact binary, that is, two objects
 just barely joined together. This phenomenon was actually observed
 three years ago, when Ostro pinged another close-approaching asteroid
 designated 1989 PB. And he's also discovered that Toutatis rotates
 very, very slowly, with a synodic period of roughly nine days. 

 COMET S-T SINKS IN THE WEST 
 Comet Swift-Tuttle continues its plunge southward and this week crosses
 from Aquila into Sagittarius. To see it, you'll have to get out right
 after sunset and look low in the west -- the comet is only 30 degrees
 from the Sun. Here are positions for 0 hour Universal Time and equinox
 2000 coordiantes: 

          R.A. (2000) Dec.
          ================
 Dec 19   19h 45m -12.1 deg.
 Dec 21   19h 49m -13.5 deg.
 Dec 23   19h 53m -14.9 deg.

 ORION'S PROTOPLANETARY SWARM 
 NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered the best evidence yet that
 planetary systems are common in the galaxy. Astronomers led by Robert
 O'Dell used the orbiting observatory to record the stellar nursery in
 the Orion nebula, where they found disks of gas and dust encircling 15
 young stars like the Sun. The mass of material in the disks is
 comparable to that in our own planetary system, and O'Dell thinks these
 disks will indeed give rise to planets over the next few million years.
 If he's right, it increases the odds that the Milky Way is already
 teeming with planets. 

 ----- THIS WEEK'S "SKY AT A GLANCE"

 DEC 20 -- SUN
 *

 DEC 21 -- MON
 Venus and much fainter Saturn are in conjunction in the dusk. Saturn is
 1 degree to Venus' upper right. 

 The solstice is at 9:43 a.m. EST, marking the beginning of winter in
 the Northern Hemisphere, summer in the Southern. 

 DEC 22 -- TUE
 Mars is 3 degrees south of Pollux. 

 DEC 23 -- WED
 New Moon (exact at 7:43 p.m. Eastern standard time). Partial solar
 eclipse for the North Pacific and some surrounding lands. The Sun's
 disk will appear dented during or soon after sunrise in Japan, Korea,
 and parts of coastal China and Siberia on the 24th (local date); the
 Sun is partially eclipsed as it sets on the evening of the 23rd for
 southwestern Alaska, including Anchorage. 

 DEC 24 -- THU
 Saturn's brightest moon Titan can be seen in a small telescope four
 ring lengths west of the planet. 

 DEC 25 -- FRI
 Merry  Sol Invictus. This Roman festival, the "Birthday of the
 Unconquered Sun," marked when the Sun, just past the solstice, began
 returning northward with the promise of bringing another spring and
 summer. The holiday eventually merged into Christianity as the date for
 Christmas. 

 DEC 26 -- SAT
 *

 ----- THIS WEEK'S PLANET ROUNDUP

 MERCURY is barely above the east-southeastern horizon during dawn.
 Fainter Antares is to its right. 

 VENUS blazes in the southwest as the bright "evening star" during and
 after evening twilight. 

 MARS is in Gemini near the fainter stars Pollux and Castor, below them.
 It rises during twilight and shines high overhead by midnight. Mars is
 big and bright as it nears its January 7th opposition -- already it's
 about as big as it will get, 15 arc seconds across. 

 JUPITER, in Virgo, rises around 1 a.m. and is the brightest "star" in
 the south at dawn. 

 SATURN is the much fainter "star" close to Venus in the early evening.
 They're only a degree or two apart early in the week; conjunction 1
 degree apart comes on Monday the 21st. Later in the week Saturn moves
 to Venus' lower right. 

 URANUS, NEPTUNE, and PLUTO are hidden behind the glare of the Sun. 

 --
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 provided with permission from Sky & Telescope Magazine.
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-- 
Arlin B Collins     bcollins@utdallas.edu