Today's Guff

Two New Moons For Pluto?
Pluto struggles to assert its identity as a planet. Well, Hubble has seen what may be two new moons to the distant planet

"This is a whole new chapter in the Pluto story," says discovery team co-leader Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. The moons, which don't yet have formal names, also were spotted when Hubble scientists reviewed 2002 Pluto observations made by Lowell Observatory astronomer Marc Buie.

Charon, discovered in 1978, orbits much closer to Pluto at 12,024 miles and is bigger at 752 miles across. The astronomers estimate the moons range from 30 to 100 miles wide. The closer one orbits 30,000 miles from Pluto, and the more distant one is 40,000 miles out.

But all of Pluto's moons follow circular paths around its equator, on trajectories that appear to have been stable for millions, perhaps billions, of years, Stern says. That suggests all of Pluto's moons formed at the same time, perhaps after a collision between celestial bodies early in the history of the solar system, he says.

"Just to gloat a little bit for Hubble, this wasn't the first time people have looked" for more moons orbiting Pluto, says astronomer Keith Noll of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. About 20% of the large objects in the comet-rich Kuiper Belt near Pluto show evidence of having a moon, he notes.

Among them is UB313, a planet-like body larger than Pluto that scientists also found has a "natural satellite." Similarities between Pluto's new moons and ones orbiting other Kuiper Belt objects suggest they all formed the same way, but how this happened is unclear.

Astronomers hope that further study of the new moons — which are unobservable now until February because of Pluto's position in the sky — will answer questions about the planet before 2015, when a NASA probe is scheduled to arrive there. Measuring the moons' orbits should sharpen estimates of Pluto's mass and density

"The really striking thing about these two new satellites is they appear to be in 'resonance' with Charon," says astronomer Hal Levison, another Kuiper Belt expert at the Boulder institute. For example, the more distant one orbits Pluto precisely once for every six times Charon orbits the planet. Such synchronized orbits occur elsewhere in the solar system, such as between Neptune and Pluto.

Three moons! Maybe we should have moon envy.

ESA Venus Probe To Launch On 9 Nov



It was delayed after some problems in the Russian Space Program.

The European Space Agency’s first mission to Venus will be launched on Nov. 9, Russia has announced.

According to the Russian Space Agency’s announcement, quoted by the RIA-Novosti news agency, Venus Express will be launched on Nov. 9 at 3:33 GMT from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan on the Russian Soyuz-Fregat rocket.

Russia has delayed the launch of the mission to Venus, originally scheduled for Oct. 26, because of an insulation problem involving the spacecraft’s launch vehicle.

The European space probe carries a set of instruments to study the atmosphere of Venus and scientists hope the mission will help provide clues about the features and the evolution of the planet. The European Space Agency says it has invested 220 million euros ($265 million) in the mission.

The spacecraft was manufactured by French company Astrium and designed to carry out the first global study of Venus’ atmosphere.

I didn't write about the launch delay because I didn't quite get around to it, but this baby will be underway shortly.

Will You Fight An Entire Demographic?



The pickie is Liz Phair, noted and notable Soccer Mom. For a weblog that often features chimps, gorillas and monkeys, I guess this is a bit of a departure.

Check this out for banal. That's 'banal', not 'banana'. :)

Two-year-old Casandra King's bedroom is stocked with products that are very different from those her mother, Julia, had when she was that age. Instead of Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ - News) Baby Oil and Vaseline (NYSE:UL - News), the Edison (N.J.) toddler gets slathered daily with petroleum-free lotions from California Baby. Her mom pays three times the price of the mass brands. And Casandra's dresser is filled with organic cotton shirts and pajamas from niche marketers such as Hanna Andersson and Mama's Earth, which can cost 50% more than clothes from Sears (NasdaqNM:SHLD - News), where Julia's mother shopped for four kids 35 years ago.

Julia King, 38, is part of an emerging class of women whom marketers call Yoga Mamas. These middle- and upper-income mothers are more style- and brand-conscious than their parents. No matter their income, they spend like lottery winners on their babies and toddlers. In the process, they're revolutionizing the baby-products market and forcing manufacturers and retailers of all sizes to adjust.

From the start, they are focused on active, fashionable, and fit pregnancies, and then on the fitness and well-being of their offspring. They tend to be more educated and have more disposable income to spend on fewer children than past generations. As a result, the $27 billion infant and preschool products business is growing more than 4% per year, faster than the overall toy, apparel, and furniture industries. "This group is influencing other moms who have money and plenty of moms who don't," says Timothy Dowd, a senior analyst at market research firm Packaged Facts. "Yoga Mama is pumping up sales across the board."

Marketers say the evidence is in the brisk sales of premium-priced products: Burt's Bees Buttermilk lotion is $8.99 and a top seller at drugstore.com; $11.50 buys a 2 oz. jar of popular California Baby Calendula Cream at Whole Foods Market (NasdaqNM:WFMI - News); Italian leather toddler shoes are $129 at Nordstrom (NYSE:JWN - News); Bugaboo strollers Yoga moms love for ergonomic design and brand cachet are $700 and up. And the appeal is well beyond Rodeo Drive and Manhattan's Upper East Side, where baby-bling-buying includes Gund brand diamond and emerald jewelry for newborns.

And apparently, this is why new baby products are designed with Mummy in mind, more than the toddler. One fears for what kind of people these toddlers will grow up into.