Mountain Views News, Sierra Madre Edition [Pasadena] Saturday, April 21, 2018

THE WORLD AROUND US

11

Mountain Views-News Saturday, April 21, 2018 


NASA’S JUNO MISSION PROVIDES INFRARED TOUR OF JUPITER’S NORTH POLE

Scientists working on NASA’s Juno 
mission to Jupiter shared a 3-D infrared 
movie depicting densely packed 
cyclones and anticyclones that permeate 
the planet’s polar regions, and the first 
detailed view of a dynamo, or engine, 
powering the magnetic field for any 
planet beyond Earth.

Juno mission scientists have taken data 
collected by the spacecraft’s Jovian 
InfraRed Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) 
instrument and generated the 3-D fly-
around of the Jovian world’s north 
pole. Imaging in the infrared part 
of the spectrum, JIRAM captures 
light emerging from deep inside 
Jupiter equally well, night or day. The 
instrument probes the weather layer 
down to 30 to 45 miles below Jupiter’s 
cloud tops. The imagery will help the 
team understand the forces at work in 
the animation—a north pole dominated 
by a central cyclone surrounded by eight 
circumpolar cyclones with diameters 
ranging from 2,500 to 2,900 miles.

“Before Juno, we could only guess what 
Jupiter’s poles would look like,” said 
Alberto Adriani, Juno co-investigator 
from the Institute for Space Astrophysics 
and Planetology, Rome. “Now, with Juno 
flying over the poles at a close distance 
it permits the collection of infrared 
imagery on Jupiter’s polar weather 
patterns and its massive cyclones in 
unprecedented spatial resolution.”

Another Juno investigation was the 
team’s latest pursuit of the interior composition of the gas giant.

 “Prior to Juno, we could not distinguish between extreme models of Jupiter’s interior rotation, which 
all fitted the data collected by Earth-based observations and other deep space missions,” said Tristan 
Guillot, a Juno co-investigator from the Université Côte d’Azur, Nice, France. “But Juno is different—it 
orbits the planet from pole to pole and gets closer to Jupiter than any spacecraft ever before. Thanks 
to the amazing increase in accuracy brought by Juno’s gravity data, we have essentially solved the issue 
of how Jupiter’s interior rotates: The zones and belts that we see in the atmosphere rotating at different 
speeds extend to about 1,900 miles.

“At this point, hydrogen becomes conductive enough to be dragged into near-uniform rotation by the 
planet’s powerful magnetic field.”

The same data used to analyze Jupiter’s rotation contain information on the planet’s interior structure 
and composition. Not knowing the interior rotation was severely limiting the ability to probe the deep 
interior. “Now our work can really begin in earnest—determining the interior composition of the solar 
system’s largest planet,” said Guillot.

Juno is only about one-third of the way through its planned mapping mission and already we are 
beginning to discover hints on how Jupiter’s interior dynamo works. 

Juno has logged nearly 122 million miles to complete 11 science passes since entering Jupiter’s orbit on 
July 4, 2016. Juno’s 12th science pass will be on May 24.

More information on the Juno mission:

https://www.nasa.gov/juno 

https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu 

Follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter:

https://www.facebook.com/NASAJuno https://www.twitter.com/NASAJuno 

More information on Jupiter: https://www.nasa.gov/jupiter 

You can contact Bob Eklund at: b.eklund@MtnViewsNews.com.


NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM


OUT TO PASTOR 

A Weekly Religion Column by Rev. James Snyder

CHRISTOPHER Nyerges

HOW TO TRICK SUMMER INTO 
COMING EARLY DR. JAMES L. SNYDER

PLANTS GONE WILD


[Nyerges is the author 
of “Nuts and Berries of 
California,” and several 
other foraging books. 
Information about his 
books and classes is 
available at www.SchoolofSelf-Reliance, or Box 
41834, Eagle Rock, CA 90041.]

In my “Nuts and Berries of California” book, I 
describe native nuts and berries that have long 
histories of use by Native Americans throughout 
California and North America. 

Many generations of rural Americans grew up 
collecting nuts and berries as a family tradition: 
going out to collect black walnuts, hickory nuts, 
pine nuts, blackberries, wild strawberries, and other 
foods from the forest. These are some of the foods 
that people from just a few generations ago took for 
granted.

I also include many of the introduced ornamental 
plants in my book which seem to have firmly 
established themselves in California. They are not 
natives, but they are everywhere anyway.

I wondered, what should we call these plants? We 
thought of calling them FUN plants, for “Feral 
Urban Neighborhood” plants, but that seemed to 
convey a misleading message, that introducing non-
natives is somehow fun or good or desirable. 

HIP VS. “hip”

 HIP seems to be the best term, for Horticulturally 
Introduced Plants. The thing is, when these 
introduced exotics were planted, it was often 
because the gurus of horticulture of the day were 
pronouncing them as the greatest new thing since 
sliced bread. Grow these bushes and trees and you 
too will be hip! Really! And lots of people fell for 
that idea. This is the “in” plant to grow this season, 
and then yards and backyards fill up with new “hip” 
plants with great colors and much to talk about at 
dinner parties. Sometimes the new hip and HIP 
plants are edible and useful, sometimes not – as in 
the case of oleanders.

 And just like the idol-worshippers who adore 
the newest rock star of the season, when a new 
one comes around, the old one is forgotten. Maybe 
forgotten, but all the HIP “hip” plants are still here, 
hip or not, and often they expand their habitat into 
wild areas.

 And since we’re calling these plants HIP, it’s 
worth commenting on the “rose hip,” which is the 
common way of referring to the fruit of a rose. I am 
not sure how the term “hip” came to mean fruit, but 
one theory is that the ovary of the flower become 
the fruit, and the enlarged fruit might seem visually 
similar to a woman’s hips. Hmmmm. If that were 
the case, why isn’t every fruit called a hip?

 Regardless, the rose is one of the unique plants 
in this book since there is a native rose (and so we 
included it with the native plants) but there are 
also many HIP roses. HIP roses are probably in 
everyone’s yard, which are the commercial hybrids 
with multiple petals of all hues of the rainbow. Our 
wild rose is not a HIP!

 The plants in the HIP section of my book are not 
what we’d call “wild” plants. These are bushes and 
trees that have been widely planted for landscaping, 
street, or yard trees, which sometimes survive well 
when they are no longer tended. All of these are 
commonly used as ornamentals, though the fruits 
are typically allowed to fall to the grown and then 
discarded as if they were just trash. 

 I have observed every one of these plants in 
wilderness areas where cabins once existed. After the 
cabins were destroyed by fires or floods, these plants 
survived for years and decades with no human 
intervention. These are survivors. And, that means 
that if we grow these plants, they can provide us with 
food with very little work and care. Furthermore, 
they are probably already growing in or near your 
neighborhood, just waiting for you to discover and 
to appreciate them.

 Some cultivated plants, which can also survive 
on their own, are just so common that we decided 
not to try to include all of them. Such as citrus, for 
example.

 Rather, we’re including many of the ornamentals 
which are common, but are either not commonly 
known, and not commonly used for food. They are 
HIP, but not necessarily hip…….

 Some of the very common HIP plants included in 
the book are ficus trees (figs), loquats, mulberries, 
pyracantha, olives, ginkgo, and others. 

 Watch this space in the coming weeks, and I’ll talk 
about many of these individually.

Just when you think summer has come, winter 
giggles and sticks her icy nose into my life.

 Not being much of a fan of winter I can stand it for 
so long, but not as long as it’s been this year. Either 
I’m getting old and cannot remember or this has 
been a very long winter. Shivering is not my favorite 
activity, although it’s the only activity I get to do 
lately.

 The Gracious Mistress of the Parsonage and I were 
talking; rather she was talking and I was listening. 
That is what makes us a great pair. She talks, I listen 
and our world goes rolling on.

 What she was talking about was summer. “When,” 
she asked, “will summer really get here?”

` Of course, we can look at the calendar and pick 
out a date when summer is going to get here, but it 
is like playing the lottery, which I believe is rigged. I 
think picking the date of summer is rigged as well. I 
like to know who has rigged it because I would like 
to give them a piece of my wife’s mind.

 We talked a little bit about summer coming, 
when it is going to come and what we are going 
to do when summer actually gets here. She had a 
long list of activities she was anxious to jump into. 
Unfortunately for me, most of those activities were 
visiting thrift stores.

 I often wonder why they are called “thrift” stores. 
When my wife goes, thriftiness goes out the window. 
She can bargain Scrooge out of his last dollar.

 I know this and she was talking about the 
upcoming summer that her eyes were twinkling 
which meant only one thing. “Thrift stores, here I 
come.”

 Unfortunately, we did not solve the problem 
concerning the weather. If you think about it, the 
weatherman who is paid to predict the weather 
cannot predict the weather accurately. Oh, for a job 
like that.

 Soon the wife had to get up and do something in 
her craft room. I do not know what is in that craft 
room. I do not go in for fear of my life. She is very 
crafty and I am not going to second-guess anything 
in that room.

 When she left I got to thinking about the 
upcoming summer. What in the world can we do to 
hurry summer along?

 If it were up to me, winter would only be one 
month long and the rest of the time it would be 
summer. That is how I would parse things out. As 
you know, Mrs. Winter has a domineering spirit and 
wants to be here all the time, even when she is not 
welcome.

 As I was thinking about this, I thought there 
must be some way we can trick Mr. Summer into 
coming earlier. After all, everybody can be tricked 
into something, whether they like it or not. I know 
I’ve been tricked into many things and it’s hard to 
untrick yourself when you get tricked by someone 
like my wife.

 Surely there something we can do to scam 
summer into coming a little earlier. I am sure Mr. 
Summer has its weaknesses like the rest of us. Our 
problem is to try to find that weakness. Once you 
find the weakness, then you are in control.

 I thought of a few things but nothing seemed 
to stick in my mind. I am not used to thinking on 
my own and I was a little fearful of pulling in the 
Gracious Mistress of the Parsonage to this “Think 
Tank” on an early summer.

Then a thought hit me. When I got up off the ground, 
for I am not accustomed for a thought to hit me, I sat 
back in my chair and smiled very broadly. I think I 
know what we can do. I believe I know how to trick 
good old Mr. Summer.

 Everybody is really invested in themselves to some 
degree. The same can be said for Mr. Summer. Why 
not convince him that he is not needed anymore in 
our life?

 Get up in the morning when it’s very cold, put 
on a coat, go outside and dance and sing and just 
enjoy the coldness of the weather. Maybe one song 
we could sing is, “I Don’t Need Summer Anymore.” 
Just pretend that we love the cold and the colder it is, 
the more we love it.

 I don’t think it would take long for Mr. Summer 
to get jealous of Mrs. Winter and want to come back 
as soon as he can. Nobody likes to be out flagged on 
anything particularly in this category.

 I was sitting in my chair with a smile all over my 
face and my wife came in and said, “Why are you 
smiling?”

 “I was just thinking,” I said, “how nice it is on such 
a cold winter day to spend the time indoors with 
you.”

 She smiled and went back to her craft room. I 
guess it really does work. I thought of one of my 
favorite Bible verses. “The Lord is not slow to fulfill 
his promise as some count slowness, but is patient 
toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but 
that all should reach repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).

 Even though I am very impatient about many 
things, like Mr. Summer, I am so thankful that God 
is patient toward me in all things.

 

 The Rev. James L. Snyder is pastor of the Family of 
God Fellowship, 1471 Pine Road, Ocala, FL 34472. He 
lives with his wife, Martha, in Silver Springs Shores. 
Call him at 352-687-4240 or e-mail jamessnyder2@
att.net. The church web site is www.whatafellowship.
com.


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