Word: lighting
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...visible to the naked eye, and when viewed through a large telescope it looks very much like any of the ordinary cosmic bodies in its celestial neighborhood. But this pinpoint of light is anything but ordinary. Spotted more than three years ago, it seemed at first to be a garden-variety star--but it wasn't. It might have turned out to be an unremarkable galaxy or quasar--but it didn't. Frustrated in their attempts to learn its nature, and even its distance from Earth, astronomers have begun to refer to the mystery object as, well, the "mystery object...
Intrigued, the Caltech team turned a larger telescope on the object to analyze its light. They were confident that the resulting spectrum, not unlike the band of colors that appears when sunlight is passed through a prism, would tell them a lot. "Once you have a star's spectrum," says Djorgovski, "you can determine its temperature, its heavy elements and how fast it's moving with respect to Earth...
...spectrum has two large peaks that may or may not mark an ample presence of an as yet unidentified element, and many small dips that probably represent segments of the spectrum where light has been absorbed by other elements--perhaps those in the object's outer atmosphere or in gas clouds between the object and Earth. Bewildered, the Caltech team looked for other answers. Maybe the object was a supernova, an exploding star, which often projects what Djorgovski calls a "weird-looking" spectrum. But the team observed the target a number of times over several months and noted no change...
...those conditions they'll jibe the boat, with the spinnaker--at night, in the dark, alone!" Getting home alive was victory enough in the 1996-'97 race. Sixteen boats started from Biscay; nine finished. A Canadian sailor, Gerry Roufs, vanished in the Southern Ocean like a distant light winking out. The elaborate communications web binding Roufs' boat to the race's land handlers simply went dead...
...That would require the acquiescence of the three-judge panel that appointed Starr five years ago, when the nation was young and innocent; luckily for him, they seem to be amenable. The panel filed a 2-to-1 majority decision to keep the investigation going, in light of Starr's assurances that his office's work continues, and that it had been "unusually productive," yielding 24 indictments, 16 convictions and the impeachment of Clinton. If Starr gets his successor, the job may not last long anyway ? a Starr spokesman confirmed that the team has already begun writing their ominous...