Jupiter

The ancient Romans made up stories about gods and goddesses. These stories are called myths. According to one ancient Roman myth, Jupiter was the top god. He had two brothers and three sisters. The three boys got to divide up the world, with Jupiter getting the sky, Neptune getting the ocean and Pluto getting the underworld. Jupiter was powerful, and he really liked to throw his weight around. He hurled lightning bolts, created booming thunder and cloudbursts of rain, and generally made the other gods nervous.

The sunshine is plentiful. The smiles are genuine. The beers are cold. Ah, spring training, where the losses don't count and hope runneth over. As the Angels enjoy their first six weeks of the Albert Pujols era, and as the Dodgers count down the final six weeks until owner Frank McCourt selects his successor, here are other places of interest around the Cactus and Grapefruit leagues: JUPITER, FLA. — The St. Louis Cardinals and Miami Marlins train here, but the team generating all the excitement is not the team that won the World Series last fall.

NASA's spacecraft Juno lifted off Friday in an incandescent arc over the Atlantic Ocean, the start of a five-year, 1.7-billion mile trip to Jupiter that scientists believe will unlock some of the secrets behind the origin of the solar system. NASA's spacecraft Juno lifted off Friday in an incandescent arc over the Atlantic Ocean, the start of a five-year, 1.7-billion mile trip to Jupiter that scientists believe will unlock some of the secrets behind the origin of the solar system.

The ancient Romans made up stories about gods and goddesses. These stories are called myths. According to one ancient Roman myth, Jupiter was the top god. He had two brothers and three sisters. The three boys got to divide up the world, with Jupiter getting the sky, Neptune getting the ocean and Pluto getting the underworld. Jupiter was powerful, and he really liked to throw his weight around. He hurled lightning bolts, created booming thunder and cloudbursts of rain, and generally made the other gods nervous.

Jack Grout, 78, Jack Nicklaus' first and only golf teacher, died of cancer at his home in Jupiter, Fla.

At least one in every four stars like the sun has planets about the size of Earth circling in very close orbits, according to the first direct measurement of the incidence of such planets, researchers said Thursday. That means that our galaxy alone, with its roughly 200 billion sun-like stars, has at least 46 billion Earth-size planets orbiting close to the stars, and perhaps billions more circling farther out in what scientists call the habitable zone, said astronomer Andrew Howard of UC Berkeley, a coauthor of a paper on the subject published in Friday's edition of the journal Science.

Venus and Jupiter are brilliant low in the southwest during evening twilight. Look for them about 5:30 p.m. Venus is 10 times brighter than Jupiter, and the two are separated by 13 degrees--a distance that is decreasing daily. Much fainter Mars is midway between then. Source: John Mosley, Griffith Observatory

Although not of the same cosmic significance as the Simpson trial, the comet that collided into Jupiter had to be the story of the week ("Jupiter Takes Huge Blow From Comet," July 19). Especially interesting--although, again, not quite as interesting as the O.J. Simpson trial--was the fact that one comet fragment created a plume with a width (9,600 miles) greater than the diameter of the Earth; I found this to be a precautionary item worth noting. Because, I feel, it would be particularly unpleasant to live through such a plume, I propose we not procrastinate, but immediately begin construction of three large baseball gloves to orbit above the Earth; attached to each glove would be a long rope for hauling, which would allow for easy fielding by a NASA Shuttle craft.

Because I am fascinated by history, I found "Travels With Tom Jefferson" (June 22) interesting. I am, however, deeply disturbed by the journalist's use of language, which downplays the horrors associated with the cruelest of institutions. Whether intended or not, the article reinforces the fallacious impression that enslavement of Africans was acceptable in the context of the times. The author writes that Thomas Jefferson arrived in Tuckahoe in 1745 "held on a pillow by his beloved slave Jupiter."

The Galileo spacecraft made history Tuesday when it became the first spacecraft to encounter an asteroid, a cold chunk of rock and metal left over from the formation of the solar system. Galileo passed within 1,000 miles of Gaspra, snapping pictures as it sailed toward the asteroid at a relative velocity of 17,900 m.p.h., but it will be a year before scientists know whether their photos are any good.

For Les Halos de Jupiter's Philippe Cambie, "Grenache is the king of all grapes and the natural leader of all Rhone varietals. " The southern Rhone rising-star enologist makes wines for a number of famed estates, but Les Halos de Jupiter is his own project. His Vacqueyras is a blend of 83% Grenache old vines and 17% Syrah from 35-year-old vines. With its intensely inky color, lush body and notes of wild herbs, deep dark fruit and spice, the 2009 shows why Vacqueyras can be such a beguiling wine — a close relative of Chateauneuf and Gigondas, which he also makes.

NASA's spacecraft Juno lifted off Friday in an incandescent arc over the Atlantic Ocean, the start of a five-year, 1.7-billion mile trip to Jupiter that scientists believe will unlock some of the secrets behind the origin of the solar system. NASA's spacecraft Juno lifted off Friday in an incandescent arc over the Atlantic Ocean, the start of a five-year, 1.7-billion mile trip to Jupiter that scientists believe will unlock some of the secrets behind the origin of the solar system.

Even for scientists versed in the grand scale of astronomy, it's never been easy to grasp the scope of Jupiter. After all, you could fit every piece of the solar system other than the sun inside Jupiter — all the other planets, moons and asteroids — with plenty of room to spare. Jupiter has cannibalized 20 moons over the years and still has at least 63, one bigger than Mercury. Jupiter's "spot" is actually a hurricane, which has lasted for hundreds of years and is more than twice the diameter of Earth.

The Milky Way galaxy may be filled with millions upon millions of Jupiter-sized planets that have escaped their solar systems and are wandering freely in space, researchers said Wednesday in a finding that seems certain to make astronomers rethink their ideas about planetary formation. Scientists had previously thought that about 20% of stars had massive planets attached to them, but the new results reported in the journal Nature suggest that there are at least twice as many planets as stars, and perhaps several times as many.

Astronomers have discovered an unusual planet that challenges several widely held assumptions about the way solar systems work. The planet, about 2,000 light-years away from us, is orbiting an unlikely star at an unlikely distance. The find, reported Thursday in the online edition of the journal Science, also indicates that planets may be more common outside our own Milky Way galaxy than had been thought. When astronomer Rainer Klement of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, began observing the planet, his expectations were low. "To be honest, it started as kind of a fun project," he said.

At least one in every four stars like the sun has planets about the size of Earth circling in very close orbits, according to the first direct measurement of the incidence of such planets, researchers said Thursday. That means that our galaxy alone, with its roughly 200 billion sun-like stars, has at least 46 billion Earth-size planets orbiting close to the stars, and perhaps billions more circling farther out in what scientists call the habitable zone, said astronomer Andrew Howard of UC Berkeley, a coauthor of a paper on the subject published in Friday's edition of the journal Science.

Bob Kahl slips in through a side door of the vast, abandoned hangar and looks at what's left of the assembly plant where he worked for nearly 40 years. He remembers the hum of power tools, the biting aroma of cutting oil, swarms of workers plugging away on a labyrinth of yellow scaffolding. All that's left is a few piles of broken concrete and a sea of colorless dust that coats a Palmdale factory floor the size of two football fields. "Welcome to the birthplace of America's space shuttle fleet," said Kahl, 60, smiling.

David Joyce marched his way to the front of the U.S. immigration line using his pocketbook, sinking half a million dollars into a Vermont ski resort. The British citizen had spent years in a futile effort to secure green cards for himself, his wife and their 9-year-old son so they could relocate to sunny Florida. Then, a fellow emigre tipped him off to a little-known federal program that helps foreigners gain permanent U.S. residency by investing in American businesses. Graphic: Number of investors' visas to U.S. "In six months, we had our green cards," said Joyce, 51. "Considering everything we've been through, this was easy.

It's raining on Jupiter. And probably on Saturn too. But it isn't raining rain, you know. It's raining . . . helium. Yes, droplets of that inert gas that keeps the Goodyear blimp aloft and that powers the runaway house in the movie "Up" are falling like a soft rain from the upper atmosphere of the planet into the gas giant's high-pressure interior. In the process, they're washing away the neon that should also be in the upper atmosphere, researchers from UC Berkeley reported Monday in the online version of the journal Physical Review Letters.

For only the second time in recent history, scientists have observed the results of an object plunging into the solar system's largest planet. The object, thought to be an asteroid or comet, left a large dark bruise that can still be seen spreading over Jupiter's southern hemisphere, according to Leigh Fletcher, a planetary scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada-Flintridge. "This is an incredible event," Fletcher said in an interview.