Letters.Grandmother's dirty laundry "Dirty money harbors bacterial dangers" (SN: 6/2/01, p. 344) brought back memories of my beloved grandmother in the 1920s. She always washed and ironed her dollar bills because she considered them to be unsanitary un·san·i·tar·y adj. Not sanitary. . F. Eleanor Warner Northport, Maine Lofty ambitions The interesting article "Survey probes cosmos from near to far" (SN: 6/9/01, p. 356) set me to tilting at windmills. Even before it's completed, the professional astronomers managing the Sloan Digital Sky Survey The Sloan Digital Sky Survey or SDSS is a major multi-filter imaging and spectroscopic redshift survey using a dedicated 2.5-m wide-angle optical telescope at Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico. The project was named after the Alfred P. should enlist amateur astronomers as asteroid hunters in a way similar to how they're mobilized by the SETI@home project to search for intelligent signals from space. Let's call the effort Project Dark Skies. Those who have the necessary equipment would remap To map something for a second or subsequent time. Quite often, the words "remap" and "map" are used synonymously, even though they refer to an operation that is taking place for the first time. See map. tiny portions of the sky and, using supplied software, compare current images with old images to detect asteroids This is a list of numbered minor planets, nearly all of them asteroids, in sequential order. As of late September 2007 there are 164,612 numbered minor planets, and many more not yet numbered. Most asteroids are ordinary and not particularly noteworthy. and comets. Once alerted, NASA NASA: see National Aeronautics and Space Administration. NASA in full National Aeronautics and Space Administration Independent U.S. might have sufficient warning to detect potential Earth-crossing objects, if any threaten our planet. Confirmation of an asteroid hunter's find would entitle the discoverer to a share of the credit and the opportunity to name the object. That should be sufficient inducement for both amateur and professional astronomers to participate in Project Dark Skies. And asteroid hunters might see themselves as Defenders of Life on Our Planet. George Parrish Muskegon, Mich. Eight might not be enough Pluto is distinguished by properties other than its size, and its representation in "Nine planets, or eight?" (SN: 6/9/01, p. 360) as just another gray ball was misleading. It has the most contrasting surface known in the solar system (bright nitrogen ice caps and dark carbonaceous car·bo·na·ceous adj. Consisting of, containing, relating to, or yielding carbon. carbonaceous Adjective of, resembling, or containing carbon Adj. 1. equatorial areas). To understand the processes ongoing on Pluto's surface and within its atmosphere and interior, we look primarily (though not exclusively) to planetary analogs--not asteroids or comets or other Kuiper Belt objects, for that matter. Whether Pluto retains its planetary status in the future will require consideration of all of its known properties and their comparison with the extrinsic EVIDENCE, EXTRINSIC. External evidence, or that which is not contained in the body of an agreement, contract, and the like. 2. It is a general rule that extrinsic evidence cannot be admitted to contradict, explain, vary or change the terms of a contract or of a properties of other objects: asteroids, comets, and planets. Mark V. Sykes University of Arizona Tucson, Ariz. |
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