Galaxy

WASHINGTON -- Major League Soccer drew an announced 15,504 fans per game last year. But that was before David and Victoria "Posh" Beckham moved from Europe to the United States and became magnets for folks to whom soccer finishes a distant second to their favorite sport of celebrity-gazing. Many in the sellout crowd of 46,686 at last night's D.C. United-Los Angeles Galaxy game were there for goals and kicks and saves. But - if the number of Beckham jerseys and swooning fans was any indication - many also came out to forge some connection, even a distant one, with the Galaxy soccer diva known as "Becks," who was making his Washington debut.

GLASGOW, Scotland - Marc Lester expects jeers and boos to ring loudly in his ears when he lines up in the color purple of the Frankfurt Galaxy at World Bowl XI today. Morgan State's all-time leading wide receiver confronts traditional foe Rhein Fire in the annual championship game of NFL Europe at Hampden Park (noon on Fox). Lester is the primary reason the hometown Scottish Claymores will not contend for the World Bowl, and he will feel the wrath of their bitter supporters. The Ravens' practice squad receiver scored four touchdowns, including three in one game, in sweeping the Claymores during the regular season.

Take 1.2 billion stars the size of our sun, and squeeze.Crush them down to a volume the size of your thumbnail, and you'll have something like the black hole just discovered by scientists at the Johns Hopkins University using the Hubble TTC Space Telescope."

Hoping to stake a bigger claim in the multibillion dollar cruise industry, Maryland transportation and tourism officials welcomed the Celebrity cruise ship Galaxy to Baltimore yesterday for the first of what will be about two dozen voyages the ship will make to the port this year. Though cruise ships have routinely called over the years, the 78,000-ton Galaxy's arrival marked the first time in years that a cruise line has dedicated such a large ship to serving Baltimore for a substantial part of the season.

FOXBORO, Mass. -- The weather -- a rainstorm and temperatures in the low 50s -- was atrocious. The television competition -- the NFL -- was stiff.But the soccer was nothing short of thrilling.Eddie Pope redirected a corner kick with his head four minutes into sudden-death overtime yesterday to give D.C. United an improbable 3-2, come-from-behind victory over the Los Angeles Galaxy in MLS Cup '96 at Foxboro Stadium."If we wanted an exclamation point on our first season," Major League Soccer commissioner Doug Logan said, "we couldn't have asked for a better one."

FOXBORO, Mass. -- The vast majority of soccer games are won or lost at midfield, and the Major League Soccer championship game today will be no different.For both the Los Angeles Galaxy and D.C. United, finalists in the inaugural major-league season, midfield is their strength. John Harkes, Marco Etcheverry, Richie Williams and John Maessner of United have been the league's best combination in midfield in the playoffs; the Galaxy relies heavily on the inventiveness of Mauricio Cienfuegos and the speed of Cobi Jones on the flanks.

IT'S BEEN 50 years since Arthur C. Clarke, the author of "2001: A Space Odyssey" and other futuristic visions, proposed creating satellite relay stations in space. Although the first communications satellite was launched only 37 years ago, Americans have become so reliant on them that the outage last week of a single satellite silenced about 80 percent of the nation's pagers, disrupted program feeds to radio and television stations and created hardships for businesses.There have been occasional satellite mishaps -- or "anomalies," as the industry calls them -- before, but never on this scale.

CollegesHofstra: Announced retirement of Jim Garvey, athletic director. Named Harry Royle interim athletic director.FootballBears: Named Rick Spielman pro personnel director.SoccerGalaxy (MLS): Fired Lothar Osiander, coach. Named Octavio Zambrano interim coach.Pub Date: 6/11/97

An article in last Thursday's Sun on discovery of a super-massive black hole in the galaxy M87 included an incorrect comparison. The speed measurements of gases in M87 were taken at a distance of 60 light years from the galaxy's center. That is equivalent to 15 times the distance from Earth to the nearest star, Alpha Centauri.The Sun regrets the error.

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Astronomers are anxiously studying a bright galaxy that seems to be giving birth to stars faster than rabbits produce bunnies."It's the most spectacular object in the universe," says Philip Solomon of the State University of New York at Stony Brook. "It's truly a fantastic starburst."The galaxy is so far away -- a 12 billion-year journey at the speed of light -- that powerful telescopes show it as a small smudge. But it is actually one of the brightest objects ever discovered, as radiant as 100 trillion suns.