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A hypernova (superluminous supernova) in Messier 74? The spectrum of SN 2002ap has similarities to SN 1998bw which was a GRB candidate and with hypernova SN 1997ef, but 2002ap has barely reached 12 mag. so far: pages by Rochester, SEDS and VSNet. Strange nova in Monoceros - V838 Mon suddenly jumped to 7 mag. but is now fading: Gavin and VSNet. Delta Sco is brighter than ever, at 1.7 or 1.6 mag.: S&T.

Update # 234 of Monday, February 25, 2002

Strange career of an astronomer / LINEAR's weird light curve / Artemis rescue continues / NASA budget request with nuclear propulsion / HESSI finally in orbit!

Astronomer-general on his darkest mission It's rare enough that an accomplished astrophysicist ends up as a U.S. Air Force general. But now Brig. Gen. S. P. Worden has gone even further: He is heading the new U.S. government "Office of Strategic Influence" - and has promptly caused widespread outrage when his early ideas for aggressive "black campaigns" were revealed on Feb. 19. They are not (yet) official policy, but the sheer concept of the U.S. military systematically feeding fake news stories to foreign media thru covert channels has already been rejected widely (and may well be illegal). Even some top Bush aides think it's an "Orwellian" idea going way too far. A major data bank lists 140 astronomical papers (co-)authored by Worden since 1971: He worked on speckle interferometric imaging, the Sun and stars and eventually asteroids and meteoroids. At the same time he was heavily involved in the early Strategic Defense Initiative, however. Worden also led a multi-million dollar USAF campaign to monitor the Leonids in 1998 and 1999 (and was encountered by yours truly during an expedition to Mongolia), before the Air Force dropped the topic (see the conference report in Update # 186 story 2) - that was the last time he made some headlines. Until now ...	New York Times coverage of Feb. 19, Feb. 20 and Feb. 21, an AP story, a commentary and letters. Worden's scientific papers as listed by the ADS. Worden's official bio. The latest: The Office may be dropped! The Pentagon may just eliminate the controversial new office, the Defense Secretary said on Feb. 25 after proposals from the new agency had caused an uproar in Congress and elsewhere in the government: NYT.
How a comet "works": The recurrent outbursts and nuclear fragmentation of C/2001 A2 (LINEAR) were closely linked, a new study shows: The light curve of this comet (that reached naked-eye visibility last June) showed four major flares, and in three cases clear link to fragments breaking off the nucleus (see Update # 224) could be made. The first outburst on the way in at 1.3 AU distance from the Sun was the most dramatic one as the comet's brightness shot up by about 6 magnitudes or a factor 250 over a few days in late March. Then it dropped back by only 1.5 magnitudes, and the comet stayed at the new brightness level for the following months. Long after perihelion it was still mor than 5 magnitudes brighter than at the same distance from the Sun on the way in. There were three more strong outbursts on top of the elevated brightness, one before and two after perihelion, but in how far they contributed to the overall rise in LINEAR's brightness ist still a matter of debate (between the lead author of the study and yours truly, that is). In any case the first three outbursts could be linked clearly to the ejection times of fragments of the comet's nucleus that were later found in the coma, drifting away. Fragment A ('B' being the nucleus itself) departed around March 30, when the big first outburst started, fragment C left on May 10 (the same day of the 2nd burst), and fragments D, E and F broke off between June 7 and 11, while the 3rd outburst started on June 5 (and helped the comet to become so bright that month as seen in these photographs). The fourth and final outburst on July 11, was different, however, in that no new fragments were detected in the coma afterwards - while a fragment G, broken off on April 13, didn't have any effects on the light curve. This "remarkable broad variety of relationships between the two categories of events" nonetheless fits with a unified picture: Flare-ups of visual light curves of comets "are known to be usually dominated by dust, large amounts of which get entrained in the gas flow." A nucleus companion is often thought to be "a brittle, apparently pancake- shaped fragment of the inert dust mantle, with some ice adhering to its base" - but it's breaking from the nucleus does not necessarily lead to an outburst. "Depending on whether or not a significant fraction of the fragment's mass begins rapidly to disintegrate into fine dust upon its separation, the fragmentation event is or is not accompanied by an outburst. And if the fragment disintegrates in its entirety, the outcome is an outburst with no recognizable fragmentation. The variety of observed scenarios can thus be readily understood as a product of the size (or mass) distribution law intrinsic to the population of debris." (Sekanina & al., JPL Cometary Science Team Preprint # 188 of Jan. 2002) The role of the first outburst remains unclear, though: While the amount of dust released into the coma was similar to the other three, the creation of fragment A seems to have somehow 'turned on' the nucleus, while the other three were just the icing on the cake.	Pictures of comet Ikeya-Zhang by AstroStudio and APOD. A new orbit: MPEC. The comet has reached about 6.5 mag.: recent estimates. And Astronomy and SC stories. LINEAR fades again and is now also near 6 mag.: the light curve, recent estimates, pictures of Feb. 18 (by F. McAuliffe on La Silla), Feb. 16 and Feb. 13, an APOD and more comet pics. The Leonids of 2001 A complete analysis by the IMO is here: The 'American' peak was two peaks in fact, while the bigger Asian one reached ZHR=3500! Amateur time-lapse movies of Jupiter and other observations by Gaehrken [mirror]. A Feb. 15 picture by Grafton and more Jupiter storm news. Another Saturn occultation by the Moon was seen on Feb. 20: gallery, APOD, CNN, SC. Winners of an eclipse photo contest about the last annular one (see Update # 231 header) have been announced in Costa Rica: La Nacion. How to catch an eclipse with an airplane: G. Schneider explains. Aurorae photographed from an airplane by S. Korth! SOHO emerges from brief anomaly after the completion of a momentum management and station keeping maneuver: Status (earlier). A remarkable SOHO picture of Feb. 18: a huge filament [ other version] and a related CME.
Artemis begins the long climb to its final orbit For the first time a big satellite will be lifted from 31,000 to 36,000 km altitude by solely using its ion engine that was initially just meant for station keeping: After long preparations ESA finally started the tedious maneuver with the Artemis satellite on Feb. 20. A malfunctioning Ariane upper stage (there had been water left in some tubing, according to the investigation!) had stranded the satellite and another one (that was soon declared a total loss) in a transfer orbit too low (see Update # 226 story 4), and the chemical engine could only lift Artemis to a circular orbit 5000 km shy of the geostationary altitude. About 95% of the fuel was expended during this first step of the rescue, which took less than 10 days. The next phase will last more than 200 days, however, as the thrust provided by ion engines is much lower (15 mN): It will be summer before Artemis has reached the geostationary orbit. Enough fuel will be left then, though, to keep it in position for 5 to 7 years, and ESA is now looking forward to a nominal mission during that period! The telecommunications payload of Artemis has already been tested while the current maneuvers were in preparation, and all payloads are fine, ready to demonstrate various new technologies. That would conclude yet another remarkable rescue of an almost failed ESA mission, just as with the astrometry satellite Hipparcos (that was also stranded in a wrong orbit) and with the SOHO spacecraft which was almost lost in 1998: Both spacecraft eventually delivered all that was wanted from them.	ESA Press Release [SD]. Envisat ready for liftoff During the night of 28 February/1 March, Envisat, ESA's most powerful and sophisticated Earth observation satellite, will be launched by an Ariane 5: ESA Press Release (earlier). A launch preparations diary from BBC Online: Feb. 22-23, 15-21, 8-14, 1-7 and Q&A. Plus BBC, New Sci. and ZEIT previews. Astrium to build CryoSat - the satellite, planned for an April 2004 launch, will measure changes in the thickness of ice sheets and polar ocean sea-ice cover: ESA Press Release. GRACE launch confirmed for March 15: SD.
NASA Budget Request for FY 2003 drops Pluto, Europa, calls for nuclear propulsion, long-lived Mars rover The current projects for a Pluto flyby (»New Horizons«) and a Europa orbiter will be cancelled for good, and a big Mars rover once planned for 2007 will move (as widely expected) to the 2009 launch window - but at the same time NASA intends to restart its nuclear propulsion program and to build new radioisotope batteries (RTGs) for wider use in planetary exploration. These are the key planet-related points in the FY 2003 budget request unveiled on Feb. 4, which calls for ... ... a Nuclear Systems Initiative that includes both the RTG production and the (ill-defined) nuclear propulsion research, perhaps involving fission reactors that drive ion engines. While the former is especially meant to enable long-lived landers on Mars (see also below), the latter will cut down the travel time in the solar system and allow for flights from one planet's orbit to another. While safety will be a priority, angry protests against any launch with a nuclear payload (such as 1997 with Cassini) can be expected. ... a New Frontiers Program modelled along the successful Discovery Program of interplanetary craft but with a much higher cost-cap of $ 650 (instead of 299) million. The cancelled Pluto and Europa missions might eventually find a new home here, and the use of nuclear propulsion will be typical but not essential. The first missions will be selected in 2003, and every three years one could be launched. At the same time the Discovery and Mars programs continue. ... reforms in the Mars program which will continue until 2005 as decided in 2000 (see Update # 208 story 2), but the big Mobile Laboratory rover will move from 2007 to 2009 (as was widely expected). Thanks to the new RTGs, however, its lifetime on Mars can be stretched from months to years. While France and Italy plan to launch their own orbiters in 2007, NASA will only send a small Scout mission which will be selected later. The nuclear initiative is to be funded with almost a billion dollars in the next 5 years (FY 2003: $ 125m), while the New Frontiers Program can eventually hope for an annual allocation of $ 240m - and the Mars program gets $ 454m in FY 2003 alone. In total NASA's budget will remain almost constant, but with $ 700m less for manned spaceflight (as most of the ISS hardware is ready) and $ 800m more for space science and other research. While the final budget always looks different from the initial proposal, dramatic shifts (such as a resurrection of the current Pluto mission) are seen as unlikely.	The Budget request in short and in detail, the space science details and Plan. Soc. and DPS Press Release and Message. Coverage by SR, SN, S&T, FT (other story), AW&ST, ST, CNN, New Sci., AP, AFP (other story and another one), T-Online, NZ. What it all means for Pluto - the new options: SD, New Horizons could be there in 2015: JHU Press Release, SC, NZ. Congress' reactions: SN. Another assessment: CCNet. The nuclear plans, certain to raise controversy: NYT, FT, LAT, SD. What Americans really want from space - the results of a major (though non-representative) survey by the Planetary Society. And what U.S. planetary scientists prefer: another survey, for the First Decadal Study. And the NSF Budget proposal which includes funding for some of the U.S.' groundbased astronomy: AIP FYI. Shannon Lucid becomes NASA chief scientist NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe has selected space veteran and NASA astronaut Dr. Shannon W. Lucid as the agency's next Chief Scientist: NASA Press Release. The JSC finally gets a new director, a retired U.S. Marine Corps Lieutenant General: NASA Press Release.
Solar flare observer HESSI finally in orbit, declared operational! Better late then never: NASA's High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager that was once almost shaken to death during a flawed test and that lost its carrier rocket last June has finally made it to orbit on Feb. 5 at 19:29 UTC. Tucked inside a Pegasus XL rocket, attached to the under belly of the Orbital Stargazer L-1011 aircraft, the spacecraft was carried east-southeast of Cape Canaveral . The Pegasus drop occurred at 20:56 UTC, and after a short powered sequence, delivered the HESSI spacecraft into a circular orbit of 587 x 600 km, inclined at 38 degrees. HESSI will help unlock some of the secrets of these gigantic explosions in the Sun's atmosphere, providing scientists with the first high-fidelity color movies of solar flares in X-rays and gamma rays, which is their highest energy emissions. Scientists hope to capture hundreds of X-ray and gamma ray flares during the spacecraft's planned two-year mission. The primary scientific objective is to understand particle acceleration and explosive energy release in the magnetized plasmas at the Sun, processes which also occur at many other sites in the Universe. HESSI will provide the first hard X-ray imaging spectroscopy, the first high-resolution spectroscopy of solar gamma-ray lines, the first imaging above 100 keV, and the first imaging of solar gamma-ray lines. It combines an imaging system consisting of 9 rotating modulation collimators, each with a high-spectral resolution germanium detector covering energies from soft X-rays (3 keV) to high-energy gamma-rays (20 MeV). On Feb. 13 HESSI was declared operational: "It detected its first flare, a C2 flare early on Tuesday morning, February 12, starting at 0214 UT. All nine detectors are cooled to about 75 K, the high voltages are on at their full level, and all detectors are operating nominally."	HESSI's Homepages at GSFC, Berkeley and the Paul Scherer Inst. The Press Kit, an online Brochure and very detailled Science Summary from the SMEX proposal. HESSI is operational: Feb. 13 announcement. Science@NASA, Launch Visuals, GSFC, Orbital and AIP Press Releases and the Status. Launch coverage by SN, SFGate, FT, CNN, BBC, Reuters, ST, SC, NZ, SPIEGEL. Also SN on HESSI's ordeals and previews by FT, Astronomy, OS, SPIEGEL, NZ. Sun produces series of very similar flares A series of rare, nearly identical solar flares with associated coronal mass ejections blasted from the Sun in November 2000 - as flares get their energy from the destruction of magnetic fields, finding a series of such similar flares is highly surprising: GSFC Release.

ISS Update A crash of Zvezda's main computer set the ISS drifting for several hours on Feb. 4, temporarily disrupting voice communications with the ground, while more and more candidates are lining up for ISS tourism flights. An Energia report on the anomaly, an ESA Press Release on the Italian visitor in April, MirCorp [SR] and Nsync Press Releases on a particularly strange tourist candidate (this may be just a publicity stunt, though) and coverage of Feb. 25: AW&ST, Independent, HC, ST. Feb. 22: ST. Feb. 21: AFP, AP ( other story), ST, SC (other story). Feb. 20: AFP (other story), ST (other story), SC (other story), HC, New Sci., SPIEGEL.

Feb. 19: SR, FT, AFP, SC. Feb. 18: SPIEGEL. Feb. 17: On-Orbit Status. Feb. 13: On-Orbit Status. Feb. 11: Astronomy, Feb. 8: Interfax. Feb. 6: On-Orbit Status. Feb. 5: S&T, On-Orbit Status, HC, New Sci., AFP (other story), RP, NZ, SPIEGEL. Feb. 4: Status # 7, ST, SC. HST SM-3B Update: The countdown clock started ticking Feb. 25 for Columbia's next visit to the HST - the Status, mission details from GSFC, NASA, JHU and STScI Press Releases, ESA Science News, Ball [SR] and STScI Press Releases on the ACS and a report on impacts on the HST. Coverage of Feb. 25: SN, AW&ST, Astronomy, HC, FT, SC, WP. Feb. 24: Knight Ridder. Feb. 22: CNN. Feb. 18: NYT. Feb. 17: Reuters. Feb. 16: AFP. Feb. 15: ST. Feb. 13: SC.

The Solar System has a dust ring The first direct evidence has been found that a bright disc of dust surrounds our Solar System, starting beyond the orbit of Saturn - this discovery gives astronomers a way to determine which other stars in the Galaxy are most likely to harbour planets and allows mission planners to draw up a 'short-list' of stars to be observed by future planet-search missions: ESA Science News, Astronomy, New Sci., CNN, NZ. Yet another radio map of the dust disk around Vega (see also last Update story 3 sidebar 3) shows several distinct blobs - most of the dust seems confined to a few clumps located at a distance of 95 Astronomical Units from the star: OVRO Press Release. Disk, Brown Dwarf discoveries raise hope for more exoplanets and that telescopes will soon be able to directly observe Jupiter-sized planets orbiting other stars: SN, CNN. What is a planet? The current IAU Definition. Planet light effects: JPL. New website on exoplanet discoveries: PlanetQuest. Binary star system supports colliding winds theory of dust formation High-resolution near-infrared images of an evolved binary star system have confirmed that it is periodically forming and ejecting large arcs of dust - these images support the theory that dust can form in otherwise hostile hot binary systems within regions where stellar winds collide: CfA Press Release. VY CMa surrounded by dust and iron whiskers - in its outflow fine dust particles condense to form a dense cloud billowing out like smoke from a giant stack, and ISO data show that this smoke consists of tiny particles of two dominant kinds, one made up of grains of iron in a highly elongated form called "whiskers" and the other made up of amorphous silicates: Cornell Press Release. Structure in Galactic Center explained? Low-energy cosmic rays bombarding and heating cold clouds of gas could be responsible for producing the X-ray emission of the galactic ridge: NWU Press Release. More GC mysteries: Science@NASA. Many planets near the GC? SC. Inside views of the Eagle nebula have been obtained in the near infrared with Hubble's NICMOS and the Very Large Telescope - yes, there are newborn stars in some of the "EGGs", but Messier 16 is not a great star forming region: papers by Thompson & al. and McCaughrean & Andersen, ESO and UA Press Releases, the famous 1995 HST WFPC2 images and a SC story. Orion nebula imaged with VLA and GBT: NRAO Press Release. WIMPs in the Sun detected? Extremely vague indications of Dark Matter particles collected in the core of the Sun have been seen in neutrino data from SNO: New Sci. The future of the Sun: SD. Is Jupiter a little Sun with nuclear fusion? A paper by Coraddu & al. Weird speculations about an iron-dominated Sun: U Miss. Press Rel., background. A case of quantum gravity in the lab that won't do much to bring about the Great Unification: NSU, APOD, DESY, RP. Auger may test gravity effects: NSU. Grave thoughts about gravity: ZEIT. Mars Global Surveyor shows off images from Extended Mission Some newly released images show a 3-D view of layers on the martian surface that may be ancient sedimentary rocks, while others show an unusual spiral-shaped cloud over the giant Arsia Mons volcano: JPL, MSSS Releases, BBC, SPIEGEL. Mars weather maps from MGS: MSSS Site. Floods at Mars' equator could be recent, MGS images indicate: UA News, S&T, NZ. Mars Odysssey starts science operations NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft has begun its science mapping mission - the spacecraft turned its science instruments toward Mars on February 18: JPL Release, Astronomy, HC. Earlier: Status, UA News, AP. Early results regarding hydrogen: FT. A NASA Mars budget crisis? SC, ST. Mars hotel fantasies: Purdue Press Release. Deep Impact passes critical design review Three independent review boards have concluded that there are no significant flaws in the design and that the project can proceed with building and testing the two spacecraft: UMD Press Release. Critical thermal tests begin for Rosetta - during its 10-year mission, the Rosetta spacecraft will be subjected to extreme temperature changes as it flies from the benign environment of near-Earth space to the dark depths of the Solar System: ESA Science News. Galileo's mission is winding down After February, with funding for mission activities exhausted, the spacecraft will cease its data playback and simply continue to coast around Jupiter: S&T. More Europan speculations on conditions for life: UA Press Release. Cassini's status 29 months before arrival: Status. Saturn ring mysteries: Science@NASA. Progress in cataloging NEAs reported We have now found 587 of the larger (1 km) Near Earth Asteroids, and the total number of known NEAs of all sizes is 1743: Impact News. "Comets, Asteroids and Other Invaders From Outer Space": NYT. After the Monahans meteorite fall - "youngsters earned little from meteor that fell in 1998, but their lives are richer because of it": HC. The Moon has a mushy heart, newly calculated Love numbers show: JPL Press Release, New Sci., CNN, NZ, SPIEGEL. 2nd H2-A launch only a partial success; wiring problem destroys DASH While the Japanese rocket flew well on Jan. 4, one of the payloads, the reentry demonstrator DASH was not deployed - faulty wiring prevented the spacecraft from separating: ST story and the status. Earlier: NASDA Status of Feb. 5, coverage by AN, ST (earlier), AFP (earlier), New Sci., CNN, BBC, AP [ FT], NZ. Atlas 3B maiden flight a success The Atlas 3B is similar to the 3A but uses a stretched Centaur upper stage with two engines for improved performance: ST. Five new Iridium satellites launched on a Delta 2 on Feb. 11: Iridium Press Release, ST. Globalstar files for bankruptcy protection: ST. More setbacks for EU Galileo project of navigation satellites: ST. NASA considers foreign launch options for Triana, a mission that would observe the fully-illuminated disk of the Earth from the Earth-Sun L1 point: ST.

The first afterglow of a short GRB has been detected - previously, scientists had only seen the afterglow of longer bursts, and the short ones may form a different class and be perhaps even a different phenomenon than the long ones: RAS Press Release. GRBs may be the energetic offspring of a cosmic dance between black holes and their dance-partner stars: MIT Press Release, SciAm, SPIEGEL. The GRB engines - an enduring mystery: a paper by Piran & Nakar. "Orphan GRB afterglow" (see Update # 230 small items) apparently just a galaxy: paper by Gal-Yam & al. Astronomers try to catch runaway star - SGR1900+14 may be about the fastest moving object of its kind: Berkeley Press Release. A newly-born millisecond pulsar? It's partnered with a red giant that may have just spun it up to 274 rps: ESA Science News, CSIRO Press Release, SPIEGEL, NZ. "Big-glitcher" pulsar reveals its interior - PSR J0537-6910 appears to have the highest rate of glitches of any known pulsar; they occur seven times more frequently than in the Vela pulsar, the former "glitcher king," and are also among the strongest ever observed: GSFC Press Release. AO yields sharp images of distant galaxies For the first time, we're able to get very detailed images in a survey of distant galaxies in the infrared: UCLA Press Release. Distant quasar jet imaged by Chandra, also galaxy in line of sight X-rayed: MSFC, Chandra and UA Press Releases, SPIEGEL. Bow-shaped shock in a galaxy cluster imaged by Chandra. "Gravatars" instead of Black Holes? A new kind of static, spherically symmetric solution to Einstein's equations is described, thermodynamically stable and without an information paradox: paper by Mazur & Mottola, New Sci., CNN. More BH releases by LLNL, OSU, U Mich. And the NYT on Hawking radiation from BHs and a NSU and SPIEGEL on event horizons in the lab. Mapping Messier 12 for an ongoing program to look for stellar debris streaming from globular clusters: IPAC Photo Release. ESA to contribute to LWS satellite ESA and NASA are collaborating on the 'International Living with a Star' (ILWS) program, and European involvement is now solicited for NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory: ESA Science News. TIMED starts science ops with its post-launch engineering checkouts complete: GSFC Press Release. QuikSCAT is operational: JPL Release. Space picture mosaics of the whole Earth incorporating thousands of images: BBC. A spectrum of the whole Earth can be obtained by observing the earthshine on the unilluminated part of the Moon - the presence of vegetation is clearly seen: UA News, Astronomy, NSU, New Sci., SPIEGEL. Global warming lengthens the day as a result of angular momentum changes associated with global warming, including variations in surface pressure over land masses, average surface pressure over the ocean, and zonal winds and currents: AGU Press Release, Astronomy, RP, SPIEGEL. A formula for the number of days between the winter solstice and the latest sunrise has been derived by Reinsch - "this makes it easy to see the functional dependence on the latitude of the observer." Effects from the Lunar Prospector crash after all? Changes of the radio temperature of the south polar regions of the Moon after the 1999 impact of the Lunar Prospector were detected with two 64-m radio telescopes, claim Berezhnoi & al. - until now no effects whatsoever had been reported (as summarized in Update # 152 story 4). Measuring the distance to the Moon with mm-precision by laser ranging, in order to test gravitational theories: U Wash. Press Release [SN], FT, NZ. The moon and the origin of life - here is another review by Benn on various effects by which the existence of the big Earth Moon may have helped life progress. Limited control restored with FUSE A creative fix has restored limited control to the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer and has allowed it to resume some observations - engineers invented a way to use a set of electromagnets on the craft to restore some of the spacecraft's motion: Astronomy. What aerogel is good for in aerospace A transparent, smoky blue substance that's been especially manufactured to bring home a piece of a comet, among other things: JPL Tech Feature. Thrusters guide EO-1 satellite in space first - a new generation of thrusters has been used to precisely guide and point a satellite in space: GSFC Press Release [SR]. ProSEDS experiment rescheduled for this summer, will test drawing power from the space environment: MSFC Release. How to colonize space The right stuff for spaceship travel to faraway solar systems is more likely to be a family affair, and other wild ideas regarding long-distance space travel: Univ. of FL Press Release, NSU, BBC ( opinions), CNN, New Sci., Astronomy, The Star. 40 years after Glenn's flight - all four surviving Mercury astronauts returned to their launch site on Feb. 24 to celebrate 40 years of orbital flight: FT, NYT, SPIEGEL. Pulsar planet discoverer on Polish stamp - Alexander Wolszczan, Professor of Astronomy at Penn State and discoverer of the first planets found outside our solar system, has been honored by the country of Poland in having his likeness featured on a special set of 16 postage stamps celebrating the past millennium: PSU Press Release. Hobby-Eberly Telescope enclosure gets modified by cutting garage-door-sized holes all around it: McDonald Obs. Press Release. DEIMOS spectrograph heads to Keck, will multiply by a factor of seven the power of the current Keck spectroscopy system: UCSC Press Release. Unique "Residencia" opens at the VLT Observatory - this major architectural project has the form of a unique subterranean construction: ESO Press Photos. The Sub-mm Array is here and will soon begin observations: CfA Press Release. UK astronomy funding squeeze - British astronomers are facing a cash squeeze with many of them being unable to carry out front-line research: BBC. Spiral galaxy rotating backwards - reported in the last Update (story 2 substory 2) - now also noted by STScI, BBC, CNN, SPIEGEL.

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