Moon

It's all crossovers these days. From the polo grounds of Malibu to the campgrounds of Maine, nearly a fifth of all vehicles sold in the U.S. last year resided somewhere in this netherworld between a car and an SUV. So the stakes were high for Toyota's overdue redesign of the RAV4, a pioneer of the segment in the mid-1990s that had grown stale in comparison with competitors. Often resembling small sport utility vehicles, crossovers are truck-like vehicles built on front-drive car platforms.

Even from his earliest days as a musician, Rob Zombie displayed a deep-rooted interest in aesthetics and visual style, in creating an entire world stewed in a distinctive brew of horror movies, true crime, the occult and general weirdness. His latest film as writer and director, "The Lords of Salem," might be his most undiluted vision yet, a movie intended as a contraption for unsettling audiences, a mood piece meant to evoke a particularly dark turn of mind. PHOTOS: Movies Sneaks 2013 Set in modern-day Salem, Mass., the story concerns the spiraling downfall of a local radio DJ (played by Sheri Moon Zombie, the filmmaker's wife and something like the Leslie Mann to his horror Judd Apatow)

The Russian and European space agencies agreed jointly to build a vehicle for six-person flights around the moon, where only the U.S. has landed. Roscosmos and the European Space Agency chose a conical rather than winged design for the planned spacecraft after six months of study, Roscosmos said this week. The vehicle is to be used in near-Earth and low-lunar orbits. Roscosmos agreed to prepare a delivery rocket for testing by 2015, with people expected to begin flying three years later.

Like the offset eyes on a Picasso portrait, the volcanoes on Jupiter's moon Io seem to be strangely shifted, according to a study by NASA and ESA scientists. Io's clustered volcanoes seem to be lying 30 to 60 degrees eastward of where they were expected, according to a paper published this year in Earth and Planetary Science Letters. The study could shed light on the internal dynamics of Jupiter's volcano-pocked moon. Io's internal heat comes from the kneading it gets from Jupiter and its fellow moons.

Sometimes it's the simplest things that are the most confounding. Last year, right before Easter, I blogged about how to make a perfect hard-boiled egg. Basic? Yes. Popular? Very. This seemingly simple task received tens of thousands of page views. And, it seemed, almost as many complaints: "But how do you peel them?" Mea culpa. while my method ensures that hard-boiled eggs are never overdone (at last: the cure for the dreaded copper-green ring!), it also can make them harder to shell, because perfectly cooked eggs turn out to be stickier than ones that have been overcooked.

Nearly four decades after astronaut Neil Armstrong planted his boot on the surface of the moon, the U.S. is about to take the first small step toward colonizing Earth's tag-along satellite. On Wednesday, NASA is scheduled to launch a robotic mission aimed at finding the best site for Earth's first off-world colony, the centuries-old dream of science fiction writers and utopians.

Re "Long night? It was, by a second," July 1 You tell us that timekeepers have added a leap second to our clocks to match the Earth's spin, saying we are rotating "a bit slowly. " The phrase should have been that we are rotating a bit slower and will continue to do so. The moon, which has a tremendous gravitational effect on our planet, is moving away at the rate of nearly three inches per year, and as it does so, Earth's spin slows. The moon, which is now 240,000 miles away, was created when the Earth was young, and it loomed as a giant in our skies, being only a few thousand miles away.

Not long ago, while sorting through old books, I found a copy of Eric Carle's “Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me,” dedicated to his daughter Kirsten and first published in 1986. This was one of my favorite books to read to my son Noah when he was little, the story of a father, his daughter Monica and the moon. Part of what attracted me to the book was what attracted me to pretty much every other Carle title I can remember - its quality of tactile interaction, of literally pulling its readers in. And yet "Papa" is different, because the story it tells, with its various fold-ins and fold-outs, is not about a hungry caterpillar or a grouchy ladybug, but rather about a father so in love with his child that he will do anything for her, even capture the moon.

'The Twilight Saga: New Moon' MPAA rating: PG-13 for some violence and action Running time: 2 hours, 10 minutes Playing: In general release

New Year's Eve celebrations were a bit brighter this year with a blue moon shining in the sky Thursday night. A blue moon -- the second full moon in a month -- isn't really uncommon, occurring on average every 2 1/2 years. But "on New Year's Eve it is very rare," said Scott Kardel, a spokesman for the Palomar Observatory in San Diego County. The last one was in 1990. The name is a bit misleading -- the moon does not appear blue. Rather, the name refers to the expression "once in a blue moon."

Saturn's rings may be vintage jewelry as old as the solar system, and they're practically sparkling with water ice, according to data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. The findings, released this week in the Astrophysical Journal, give planetary scientists a window into the solar system's birth and development, and show that the formation of at least one of the planet's 62 known moons may have been a little more complicated than thought. Launched in 1997, the Cassini mission spacecraft is now on its third lifetime exploring Saturn's complex system and still turning up remarkable new information about the ringed gas giant.

SAN FRANCISCO - For decades, surfers, smelt fishermen and picnickers flocked to Martin's Beach - a crescent-shaped haven south of Half Moon Bay, backed by stunning cliffs. They paid a small entry fee to the family that ran the property for a century, and their good times were memorialized in bucolic postcards. Then in 2008 a new owner came along and barred the gate, spurring protests and a spate of litigation. That battle intensified Tuesday when a suit was filed on behalf of the Surfrider Foundation, alleging that the limited liability companies that own the land - with a Silicon Valley billionaire behind them - are in violation of the California Coastal Act. Helping to litigate the case is former Republican Rep. Pete McCloskey.

There's close to 40 years' worth of symmetry on "Old Yellow Moon," the new album from longtime friends and country-rock trailblazers Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell. Though it's taken until now for them to make their first full album as duet partners, the singers started out as a couple of unknowns who came together in the vibrant music scene of 1970s Los Angeles. "At one point it was just me and Rodney - two lead singers and two rhythm guitar players - sitting on the floor working up things like 'Sweet Dreams' and all these country songs, waiting for the band to show up," Harris, 65, said recently over lunch in Los Angeles with Crowell.

The people have spoken, and they would like the two smallest moons of Pluto to be named Vulcan and Cerberus. When scientists at the SETI Institute stopped accepting new votes on the Pluto Rocks website at 9 a.m. Pacific time Monday, Vulcan was the only candidate with more than 100,000 votes. In fact, it blew away the rest of the field with 174,062 votes from people all over the world. The biggest fan of the name has got to be William Shatner , who suggested it in a tweet on Feb. 12. “So what do you think of the idea of naming the two moons of Pluto Vulcan and Romulus?

NASA scientists have discovered a faraway planet that's smaller than Mercury - far tinier than they expected they could find when they launched the Kepler space telescope nearly four years ago. The hot, rocky world orbits a sun-like star that's about 210 light-years from Earth. Astronomers are excited about it because it's smaller than any planet in our solar system, said astrophysicist Thomas Barclay of NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif. "This is the smallest exoplanet that's ever been found," said Barclay, lead author of a report on the discovery published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

Scientists picking up signs of water on the moon's surface typically attribute them to deposits left by comets, asteroids and other heavenly objects. But a new analysis of lunar samples brought back to Earth by Apollo astronauts in the early 1970s indicates that the moon's interior may have been a little damp in its early days. The findings, published online Sunday in the journal Nature Geoscience, support mounting evidence that the moon once contained some "native" water - throwing a wrench into current beliefs about how Earth's companion formed.

James May begins his new documentary, "James May on the Moon" (BBC America, 8 p.m. Tuesday), where he belongs: in a car, on the ground. He's a host of "Top Gear," the cheeky British automobile variety show, and on that show, he passes for unambitious, the lumbering turtle up against Jeremy Clarkson's fox and Richard Hammond's rabbit. But May, it turns out, wants to go faster than any "Top Gear" segment could allow. A space enthusiast, he's used his bully pulpit to film "James May on the Moon," about the Apollo moon landings and his fascination with Earth's satellite, where -- spoiler alert -- he does not in fact end up. This extravagant hourlong program is actually three documentaries in one, leaving what must certainly be a tremendous amount of footage unused.

Full moons may make some people crazy. But to a group of Westside residents, a full moon means a nocturnal workout. The outdoorsy Brentwood residents hike in the Santa Monica Mountains on the evenings of full moons. Mark Stevens, who owns a fitness gym in Brentwood, says he has led groups of between five and 20 people on full-moon mountain hikes for the past eight years. "The full moon is so bright you don't even need a flashlight," Stevens said. "It's very mystical."

What an autograph-rush weekend it should be at the Northern Trust Open, with headliners such as Phil Mickelson, Bill Haas, Keegan Bradley, Adam Scott, Ernie Els, Sergio Garcia and Fred Couples all ... well, making the cut. Never mind the top of the leaderboard for a moment and please consider the thrill these TV needle-movers bring to every hole. You should have seen Mickelson at Riviera on Friday. He nearly holed out for double eagle on No. 1 but also bungled the par-four 10th hole.

South Korea's Sang-moon Bae shot six-under 65 on Friday morning to seize the second-round lead at the Northern Trust Open. Bae is currently nine-under 133 overall and holds a one-shot lead over John Merrick, who followed his first-round 68 with a five-under 66 on Friday. Luke Donald, the former world No. 1 who is playing his first event of the season, is seven under for 36 holes after his second-round 66. Seemingly ageless Fred Couples, 53, a two-time Northern Trust winner who is playing this week on a sponsor's exemption, birdied his first two holes Friday and was five under through seven holes.