Io Is The First Galilean Moon Of Jupiter, It Is Slightly Larger Than Earth’s Moon.  Io Experiences

book character fancast for repfest: #5

Xolo Maridueña as Kit Rodriguez, Young Wizards by Diane Duane

NASA on Tumblr, http://n-a-s-a.tumblr.com/

In the OH SWEET POWERS THAT BE, HOW DID THEY FIND OUT...? dep't...

I was just ordering some flour from our local miller, Kells Wholemeal. Their big bag of plain flour is way cheaper/better value than buying it bag-by-small-bag from the grocery store. (We "decant" the flour bags into five-kilo plastic birdseed buckets, and stack them up out in the boot room at the back of the cottage.)

The other thing we usually get from them (besides yeast and bread flour) is chocolate for baking. I was adding a bag of this stuff (which is extremely good)...

... and then noticed something slightly unnerving.

...The notation: "Only for use as an ingredient in food making."

And my first thought, off But what the hell else are we going to be using chocolate for...?

...OH SHIT, THEY'VE FOUND OUT ABOUT CARMELA. THE JIG IS UP.

And then I relaxed. Because (a) She doesn't get that much of her chocolate in this country. If she's after this stuff, she'll grab it elsewhere in the EU.

And (b):

...They've got to catch her first. :)

(per the note from @anoddreindeer: Huh, weird about that. I need to check what the SSL on the main [under-construction] Errantry Concordance site is up to. Meanwhile, dropping the "s" off the "https" seems to sort it for the moment...)

Since it came up in the chat, the “official”, from Diane Duane herself, pronunciation of ‘dai stiho’.

rebloggable by request - what exactly is young wizards?

I love nebulas

One of Fred’s shyer relatives breaks cover…

(via Black Hole Discovered Which Emits Brilliant Light)

Technology drives exploration and we’re building on the Apollo program’s accomplishments to test and fly transformative, cutting edge technologies today for tomorrow’s missions. As we develop and test the new tools of 21st century spaceflight on the human path to Mars, we once again will change the course of history.

NASA's Next Giant Leap

Kepler-62 Has Two Water Worlds Circling in its Habitable Zone

NASA’s Kepler spacecraft has discovered two planets that are the most similar in size to Earth ever found in a star’s habitable zone — the temperate region where water could exist as a liquid.

The finding, reported online today in Science1, demonstrates that Kepler is closing in on its goal of finding a true twin of Earth beyond the Solar System, says theorist Dimitar Sasselov of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who is a member of the Kepler discovery team.

Both planets orbit the star Kepler-62, which is about two-thirds the size of the Sun and lies about 1,200 light years (368 parsecs) from the Solar System. The outermost planet from the star, Kepler-62f, has a diameter that is 41% larger than Earth’s and takes 267 days to circle its star. The inner planet, Kepler-62e, has a diameter 61% larger than Earth’s and a shorter orbit of 122 days.

Kepler detected the planets by recording the tiny decrease in starlight that occurs when either of them passes in front of their parent star. Astronomers used those measurements to calculate the planets’ relative size compared to that star.

Continue: Worlds Apart