May 2004
The world's best-selling astronomy magazine offers you the most exciting, visually stunning, and timely coverage of the heavens above. Each monthly issue includes expert science reporting, vivid color photography, complete sky coverage, spot-on observing tips, informative telescope reviews, and much more! All this in an easy-to-understand, user-friendly style that's perfect for astronomers at any level.
Features
Great comets
Lots of comets come and go, but only a favored few have all the magic ingredients-the five key properties, to be precise – that make a comet great.
Opportunity at Meridiani
NASA’s second Mars rover, Opportunity, landed at a site in Meridiani Planum that turned out to have been “drenched in water,” as one scientist put it. It was once so wet and warm there as to be habitable.
A new vision for space
U.S. president George W. Bush announced the boldest initiative in space exploration since Apollo: building a Moon base as a stepping-stone to Mars. Can it be done? Take a look at what’s in store.
A tale of two comets
Comets C/2002 T7 (LINEAR) and C/2001 Q4 (NEAT) should be at their brightest in May, providing wonderful views to observers around the globe.
All-sky fireball network
An interconnected group of all-sky cameras watches the sky 24 hours a day. The reason? The operators of this system are tracking brilliant meteors in the hope of actually recovering meteorites.
Robotic observing
Scour the sky while fast asleep. Too good to be true? Tenagra Observatories’ computer-controlled telescopes let you catch supernovae while catching some shut-eye.
Orion’s Atlas 8
A classic telescope design, a drive motor that follows the stars across the sky, and all the accessories you need to observe celestial objects make the new 8-inch reflector from Orion a winner.
Departments
This month in Astronomy
Beautiful universe
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Bob Berman’s strange universe
Glenn Chaple’s observing basics
Interview
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The sky this month
Ask Astro
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