Sky & Telescope February 1999 [antikvár]

LJspectrumHigh-Grading the Oref you go online and access NASA's Astrophysics Data System (http: //adswww.harvard.edu/), you can get abundant snapshots of what's happening in astronomical research. In the database for 1997, for example, there are 19,525 citations, "a pretty good approximation of the complete literature in astronomy for that year," says ADS project scientist Guenther Eichhorn. A cogent assessment, it seems to me a paper or two for every professional astronomer in the world.Imagine reading even a tiny fraction of the technical papers abstracted in the ADS. Then imagine maicing sense of all that stuff. Then imagine putting each discovery into the context of the sum total of astronomical knowledge this is the hard part, to be tried only by experts so you can select a handful of the year's "greatest hits." To taste the immensity of this task, try choosing your top 10 discoveries from among the already filtered 187 News Notes that appeared in Sky Telescope during 1998.Remember the old TV show called The 64,000 Question''. If it were reinvented today (and this time not rigged!), and if there were an "Astronomy" category (as there was), the only person I'd bet big money on to have all the answers would be Virginia Trimble of the University of California, Irvine, and the University of Maryland.I've known Virginia for more years than either of us should care to remember, and I can say that she simply knows "everything," from where the important discoveries lie to what they mean when we try to color in The Big Picture. It's not surprising that she's an award winner, particularly the J. Murray Luck Prize in Science Reviewing given by the National Academy of Sciences.Virginia and I agreed that she should write her reflections on the major events of 1998 in her signature style, which is sometimes "technical" and sometimes punctuated by insider allusions. Some of you might scratch your heads once or twice, but that's OK; it's a good prompt that it may be time to expand your horizon with a trip to the library or a search on the Internet.Trying to highhght a whole year of research and discovery in one article is an experiment for SiScT. But so many things are happening in so many areas of astronomy that a synthesis should serve us all well; at least we'll have a better feel for the road we're traveling.I'd really appreciate receiving your comments about Virginia's overview, which begins on page 32.1 hope you enjoy it as much as I did!PS. Considering the number of items that cross my desk, I've got a really good track record for not losing stuff. But one got away a manuscript about mirror temperature and seeing in response to my November 1997 Spectrum. I'd love to receive another copy.8 February 1999 | Sky & Telescope