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Stars on the Net
The biggest cosmic event of the year,
the meteor showers was not as
impressive as most experts had us
believe. A few meteors here, a few
there and then it was over. But
star gazers with a Net connection can
still freak out, provided you hit the
right sites. And here's a list of a few
exciting astronomy-related Websites
you can take a peck at. For 50 years,
the five-metre Halt Telescope on
Mount Palomar in California
reigned supreme as the biggest astronomical "eye" in the world. You too
can take a look at what it sees at
http;//astro.caltech.edulobscrvatoriesipalomaripubliclindex.litnil.
then came a revolution. In the last 10
years, new technologies have made
possible the construction of a clutch
of giant telescopes. By 2005, there
could be as many as to telescopes
with mirrors more than eight metres
across.

What the Keck?
The biggest "light buckets", as
astronomers call them, am the twin
10-m Keck telescopes on top of
Mauna Kea, a volcano in Hawaii.
Keck I and 11 have "segmented
mirinars", each made of 36 hexagonal
pieces. Discover more about
the Kecks at http://www2.
kcck.hawaii. edu:36361. used in
conjunction, and with their
smaller "brothers", they could
mimic a telescope almost 100 metres
in diameter.

ET phone home
Looking for aliens? Extra-terrestrial
intelligence? Well, then SETI's the
place to be. The SETI League, an
international band of radio
astronomers based in New Jersey
have stuff that can interest you. Visit
http:/1wwwsctiIeapc.or#. Their aim
is to have some 5,000 amateurs
across the world continually scanning the skies with satellite dishes in
their backyards.