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Hi Gentlemen,
 
This week we'll hold our LQS meeting on Thursday, June 30, at 2:00 PM Eastern.
 
We'll take round-table reports and continue our discussion from last week
on the recent astro-ph preprint concerning an improved measurement of the 
distance to Cygnus X-1 by means of a radio frequency parallax measurement:

 Reid et al., "The Trigonometric Parallax of Cygnus X-1", arXiv:1106.3688
 [astro-ph].  

The authors report a measurement uncertainty of about 6% of the 1.86 kpc 
distance, an improvement of more than a factor of two over the previous 
result.  I find it interesting that a direct, trigonometric distance 
measurement with that accuracy can be made at 6000 light-years.  Note that 
one of the authors is from MIT.
 
As usual, our call-in number the local ReadyTalk access number for your 
country (US: 866-740-1260, or check www.readytalk.com).  Access code 
is 3144955.
 
Thank you,
--Ray