A Starwatch column described a recent Hubble space telescope image of two spiral galaxies and their smaller neighbour (13 April, page 33). A mistyped unit of distance led to the following exchange, which also serves, correctionwise:
Reader: "I am well aware that the credit crunch has made us wholly confused between millions, billions and trillions but can a spiral galaxy really be only 60 million km beyond two other spiral galaxies? They must all be very minute as this is only the approximate distance between Earth and Mercury."
Columnist: "You are correct, thank you. The middle galaxy of the three may only be 60 million light years beyond the other two galaxies and not 60 million km; a small factor of 9,460,700,000,000 [km per light year] in distance!"
Accompanying an article about emerging short-story writers (The view from somewhere else, 4 April, page 2, Review), a miscaptioned agency photograph purported to show Sana Krasikov, whose collection One More Year was praised in the article. The person shown was another young writer, Rivka Galchen.