BIGGER THAN THE SUN 11-16-07

A hand kids past a misplaced believer.

A comet that has delighted backyard astronomers in recent weeks after an unexpected eruption has now grown larger than the sun.
The sun remains by far the most massive object in the solar system, with an extended influence of particles that reaches all the planets. But the comparatively tiny Comet Holmes has released so much gas and dust that its extended atmosphere, or coma, is larger than the diameter of the sun. The comparison is clear in a new image.
"It continues to expand and is now the largest single object in the solar system," according to astronomers at the University of Hawaii.
The coma's diameter on Nov. 9 was 869,900 miles (1.4 million kilometers), based on measurements by Rachel Stevenson, Jan Kleyna and Pedro Lacerda of the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy. They used observations from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. The sun's diameter, stated differently by various sources and usually rounded to the nearest 100, is about 864,900 miles (1.392 million kilometers).
Separately, a new Hubble Space Telescope photo of the comet reveals an intriguing bow-tie structure around its nucleus.
The comet's coma—mostly microscopic particles—shines by reflecting sunlight.
See for yourself
Holmes is still visible to the naked eye as a fuzzy star anytime after dark, high in the northeast sky. You can find it by using this sky map. It is faintly visible from cities, and from dark country locations is truly remarkable.
"Right now, in a dark sky it appears as a very noticeable circular cloud," said Joe Rao, SPACE.com's Skywatching Columnist. Rao advises looking for the comet this weekend, before the moon becomes more of a factor. The comet will likely diminish in brightness yet remain visible for the next two to three weeks, he said.
"Over the next few weeks and months, the coma and tail are expected to expand even more while the comet will fade as the dust disperses," Stevenson and her colleagues write.
On Monday, Nov. 19, the comet will create a unique skywatching event with its see-through coma, according to the Web site Spaceweather.com: "The comet will glide by the star Mirfak [also called Alpha Persei] and appear to swallow it—a sight not to be missed."
A small telescope will reveal the fuzzy coma. Lacking a long tail characteristic of some great comets, however, Holmes is not the most dramatic object in the sky for casual observers.
Mystery outburst
Nobody knows why Holmes erupted, but it underwent a similar explosive brightening in 1892. The recent display, which began Oct. 24, brought the comet from visual obscurity to being one of the brighter objects in the night sky. It has since dimmed somewhat as the material races outward from the nucleus at roughly 1,100 mph (0.5 km/sec).
The Hawaiian astronomy team writes in a press statement: "This amazing eruption of the comet is produced by dust ejected from a tiny solid nucleus made of ice and rock, only 3.6 kilometers (roughly 2.2 miles) in diameter."
The new image from the Hawaiian observatory also shows a modest tail forming to one side, now just a fuzzy region to the lower-right. That's caused by the pressure of sunlight pushing on the gas and dust of the coma.
But the comet is so far away—149 million miles (240 million kilometers), or about 1.6 times the distance from Earth to the sun—that even Hubble can't resolve its nucleus.
The offset nature of the coma, seen in ground-based images, suggests "a large fragment broke off and subsequently disintegrated into tiny dust particles after moving away from the main nucleus," Hubble astronomers said in a statement today. The comet's distance, plus all the dust, prevent Hubble from seeing any fragments, however.

BARRY BONDS DONE 11-16-07

Barry Bonds is effectively suspended. And Bud Selig didn't have to do a thing.

Rosenthal on Bonds' indictmentFOXSports.com's senior baseball writer Ken Rosenthal weighs in on Barry Bonds' indictment. Hear what may be in store for MLB's home run king.No team will sign Bonds as a free agent now that he has been indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice by the federal government.
If any club was even considering Bonds it will quickly abandon the idea, knowing his availability would be in question, his presence a crippling distraction and marketing nightmare.
It's over, folks — Bonds' playing career, and maybe any chance for him to reclaim his name.
Bonds, 43, could play again if he is found not guilty, but by then who knows what kind of condition he might be in? And who knows if any team would still want him?
For baseball, the only negative is that the indictment didn't come last off-season, before Bonds broke Hank Aaron's all-time home-run record. Bonds was also a free agent then, and the Giants re-signed him for one more season — a business decision they surely would not have made under the present circumstances.
Finally, Bonds is in a corner.
If he is found guilty, he can forget about the Hall of Fame, which instructs voters to consider character, integrity and sportsmanship, subjective standards that surely would be influenced by jail time.

Even if Bonds is found not guilty, his image is almost certain to take another severe hit. More incriminating evidence against him will surface if the case goes to trial — and rest assured, neither side is in the mood for a plea bargain.
For years Bonds' supporters defended him — with some justification — by saying that he committed no crime and never tested positive for steroids.
Both premises are about to be challenged. The indictment alleges that Bonds tested positive for steroids in November of 2000, three years before Major League Baseball began its testing program. The test might have come from the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO). Bonds was a BALCO client.
To convict Bonds, the government must demonstrate that he lied to a grand jury investigating BALCO when he said he never knowingly used performance-enhancing drugs. The author of Game of Shadows made that argument rather convincingly, though not in a court of law.
Which isn't to say that Bonds will be found guilty.
Perjury is difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, and Bonds' lawyers will fight the government at every turn. The only way Bonds can become a sympathetic figure is if it appears he is being persecuted. Bonds' lead attorney, Michael Rains, already is playing that angle.
Judging from Rains' past comments and post-indictment news conference, his strategy could turn into as much of an attack on the prosecutors' conduct as their case. Rains kicked off the battle for public opinion Thursday night by criticizing prosecutors for releasing the indictment to the media before informing Bonds and his defense team.

"Now that their biased allegations must finally be presented openly in a court of law, they won't be able to hide their unethical misconduct from the public any longer," Rains said in a prepared statement. "You won't read about those facts in this indictment, but now the public will get the whole truth, not just selectively leaked fabrications from anonymous sources."
Perhaps, but the stakes are high for the government in any high-profile case. After taking nearly four years to prepare an indictment, the prosecutors would look incredibly foolish if they stumbled at trial. They might not get a conviction, but it's doubtful they will present a slipshod case.
One way or another, Bonds is fighting a losing battle. Even if he escapes relatively unscathed from a legal perspective, his standing with the public is so low that the majority of fans are unlikely to forgive him. Not that he seems to care.
No, he won't recover like Martha Stewart, who agreed to a five-month prison term when confronted with similar charges. Stewart went to jail and 2½ years later, she is again a popular homemaking expert, having revived her business empire seemingly overnight.
Bonds, thanks to his surly personality, has built no such empire, even though he was the Michael Jordan of his sport. Fans wonder if a conviction would result in Selig placing an asterisk next to his records, but there would be no need. Bonds is a walking asterisk, a constant reminder of an unseemly era.