Only three solar twins were previously known: 18 Scorpius, HD 98618, and HIP 100963. But while they were all like the Sun in many ways, there was one major difference: the amount of lithium they contained. They all had several times more than the Sun. Astronomers wondered if the Sun was unique in its low amount of lithium.

The discovery of this new solar twin puts that question to rest: it has the same low lithium content as the Sun. The study turned up another solar twin, HIP 73815, that contains a similarly low amount of lithium.

Funny, but the night sky just feels like a freindlier place to me, now that we KNOW exoplanets really are there....

Not subscribing much to conspiracy theories, but in the two L257 trios that have come down, each pair has a "data loss" area on a channel. Not unusual, it happens. But usually, the black data loss area has a fuzzy "jpeg border", and these two occurances have pixel-sharp data loss area borders, which is very unusual.

26 October 2007, Munich: In response to an increasing need among the growing community of astronomy communicators, the International Astronomical Union is today announcing the advent of a new journal called “Communicating Astronomy with the Public Journal”. Subscriptions to print and online versions are free of charge to communicators.

Does anyone know when Epsilon Eridani b reaches its "Kodak Moment"?

Does anyone know the RADAR SAR plots for the next few CASSINI Titan passes. I believe we have six more over the southern hemisphere, but I am sure not all the passes will utilize RADAR.

Man...she is dusty!!! Really struck by the accumulation on just the one side of the omni antenna mast. One result of this might just be the need to drag a grounding strap like many cars in the southwestern deserts of the US do to prevent occupant shocks when debarking, but in this case it would be to make rovers less electrostatically attractive... ...

In fact I was about to post a reply saying that I don't see any planets at all, but by carefully adjusting the angle of the screen and twisting my head back and forth, I can just barely tell that they're there. The planets still don't register unless I consciously look for them.

One can argue that we should be further along with the agenda by now, but as we look at the great variety of exploratory missions that our species has recently launched, and are currently controlling, I look back at the collective enterprise as quite an outstanding accomplishment for our planet's diverse nations. I think we can all feel proud, and thank the Sputnik creators for kick-starting the whole thing.

As I think back on my personal experiences from 50 years ago, they very much parallel those described by PDP8E. I was 7 years old that day, and I remember my Dad taking me outside at night to see if we might see the satellite pass overhead.

As an international community, we all need to find ways to instill the wonders of space into the minds of our children.

For those who feel inclined it is possible to compare the new look with the old look using Google's cached pages.

For example, here's the front page in the old look..

Seems like the Russians ought to have plenty of plutonium lying about which they'd be happy to sell to a legitimate buyer - or is there some rule prohibiting Nasa from buying Pu from foreign nations?

Bell said he was hoping they could figure out a way to use these calibrated images to generate the JPEGs that go out to the public every day, so that those who are working to make their own mosaics or are otherwise working with the images on their own don't have to completely re-invent this wheel. Stay tuned for that.

Sorry, but (so far) I didn't listen to the show... However, some years ago, I got a transcript from a US radio show where Dutch Jurrie VanderWoude spoke about his days at JPL. It was probably Planetary Radio

We've already discussed the Pioneer anomaly but do the Voyagers suffer a similar effect?
Pioneer 10 and 11 were spin stabilised and the Voyager were three-axis stabilised, would the latter be better for accurate trajectory holding?