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      THE INTERNATIONAL MARSWATCH ELECTRONIC NEWSLETTER
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                     Volume 5; Issue 2
                       Dec 15, 2000
                     Circulation: 1647

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(1) Welcome message from the editor
(2) New MarsWatch Web site!
(3) Some good WWW sites for observational planning

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Dear Marsphiles,

I realize there has been quite the dry spell between issues 1
and 2 of the current volume of the MarsWatch Newsletter.  I
have been working in part on trying to procure a machine to 
host the MarsWatch web and ftp sites.  However, the newsletter
is back and I will try to keep it up on at least a monthly
basis from here on through at least the end of 2001.  I
suspect that during the height of the opposition there may
be several quick announcements between newsletters.  Please
note that content of newsletter will depend on all of you
observers - I hope this can become a central location
where you will be able to let others know of all the interesting
discoveries you are making in your observations.  Just
e-mail your comments and information to me and I will
collect it all together to pass on to everyone getting this
newsletter.

Here's wishing us all happy holidays and Clear Skies!

				- Dave

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It's here!  We have a new site for the International MarsWatch.
After trying to go through several channels I settled on putting
the burden upon myself (and any students I can happen to snag).
The site is at http://www.rowan.edu/marswatch/ and the associated
ftp site, for uploading all the images we will be taking this
observing season, is at ftp.rowan.edu.  You can submit images
to the /pub/marswatch/incoming directory.  Full instructions
on using the ftp site are on the web page.

I would like to thank the Astroleague for hosting the 1999
MarsWatch site and especially Bert Stevens for his tireless
efforts during the last opposition at getting all the image
up for viewing with a surprisingly short turn-around time.
I hope I will be able to live up to the standard you set.

The current incarnation of the site was inspired in form by
both Bert's version from 1999 and the 1994/5 web site which
was designed and run by Jim Bell - your former MarsWatch
newsletter editor.  If you have any advice on how to deal
with the deluge of images, let me know!

At the bottom of this, and subsequent newsletters, you will
see links to all the MarsWatch sites.  Be sure to check them out.

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For those of you planning your observations I thought I'd give
a plug to our friends at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for their
wonderful Solar System Dynamics WWW page http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/
From this page you can go to great web based tool to calculate
the ephemerides of Mars - location in the sky in several formats,
L_s, sub-Earth point, sub-Solar point, etc. etc.  An extremely
useful tool!

A second tool is Jim Bell's Mars Now web page at 
http://clamcake.tn.cornell.edu/marsview.cgi which will
show you what Mars should look like for just about any
date and time.  The image produced is based on the Viking
albedo maps and is a great way to get oriented.

If you have other suggestions of sites that will help out in
making our observations, please pass them along.

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Marswatch WWW sites:
	http://www.rowan.edu/marswatch/
	http://www.astroleague.org/marswatch/
	http://mpfwww.jpl.nasa.gov/mpf/marswatch.html
	http://astrosun.tn.cornell.edu/marsnet/mnhome.html

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Questions, comments, concerns, and contributions to:
David R. Klassen                             voice: 856-256-4500 x3273
Department of Chemistry & Physics              fax: 856-256-4478
Rowan University
201 Mullica Hill Road                        klassen@rowan.edu
Glassboro, NJ 08028                          http://elvis.rowan.edu/~klassen