Planet

OK, so it isn't Paris. This city -- one of two European Cultural Capitals for 2007 and capital of the richest per-capita-income country on the planet -- is pretty nice. Like all worthwhile European cities, this is a center of commerce -- but also a city of beautiful fruit stands and pastry shops, of historic churches and requisite statues and back streets worth poking around in, and of outdoor places to sip a cup of coffee or a glass of wine or a local brew while furtively enjoying the passing scenery.

Astronomers at the University of Central Florida have spied what may be the hottest planet ever observed. Physicist Joseph Harrington, using NASA's orbiting Spitzer Space Telescope, measured the amount of reflected light that disappears as the planet ducks behind its star. From that, he calculated its temperature. Called HD 149026b, the Saturn-sized orb registers a steel-melting 3,700 degrees Fahrenheit. "It would look like an ember in space, absorbing all incoming light but glowing a dull red," he said.

Scientists and engineers who launched NASA's Messenger spacecraft in 2004 to study the planet Mercury are hoping to learn more about another planet - Venus - when their spacecraft soars by that cloud-shrouded world tonight. Among other things, they would like to know more about global warming on Venus and why the "greenhouse" effect has made that planet's atmosphere hot enough to melt lead, while Earth's climate has so far remained habitable. The $426 million, Maryland-built Messenger spacecraft will fly within about 210 miles of Venus' surface just after 7 p.m. It will use Venus' gravity to bend its course toward a first encounter with Mercury in January, according to mission managers at the Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory near Laurel.

Nagging small price to pay to save planet The Sun deserves its own eco-scolding for characterizing environmentally aware people as annoying wackos ("Squeaky green," Nov. 4). As the editors of The Sun should know well, our planet's future, and hence our own, faces dire threats. The many decisions, large and small, the billions of us humans make each and every day have an enormous collective impact on the planet that sustains us. So why malign the good people who are environmentally aware and are changing their personal habits for the sake of the planet?

The last time Michael Jordan considered retirement, it was from baseball, not basketball. There was a lockout in professional baseball in 1994 and he was then a minor-league fly-chaser. Would he return to basketball and the Bulls because he had become disgruntled with the labor impasse?T-shirts were being sold in Chicago that read, "City Sweats Michael Chills." Chicago is no longer sweating -- it's freezing, below zero on the thermometer, snowdrifts up to the first floor and long underwear selling like hot cakes.

WHAT IF physicians had ignored death rates that suggested bloodletting wasn't such a great cure? What if mapmakers kissed off sailors' stories that disproved the Earth is flat? What if astronomers had evidence that Pluto isn't really a planet but decided to keep calling it one anyway? Hold it, that's where we are.The International Astronomical Union says it will continue to list Pluto as our solar system's ninth planet even if it doesn't measure up. The IAU has gone medieval by placing tradition over science.

Armed with data collected over the past 11 years, a team of crack astronomers has determined that our solar system is not unique: There is at least one more sun-like star with several objects in its planetary family. This star and its trio of companions are changing our fundamental view of how planetary systems form.Upsilon Andromedae lies 44 light-years from us, a mere stone's throw in the cosmos.It is very much like our own sun, only slightly larger and more massive, and it glows three times as brilliantly.

When Planet Hollywood opens tomorrow, decked out with costumes and props that link Maryland to the silver screen, the goal is to draw a share of the tourist crowd while giving area movie buffs enough local color to call the place their own."We cater to tourists and visitors," said Kevin Bonner, general manager. "But we really want it to be a local Baltimore shrine. Here it is on the walls."The shrine starts beneath the pink and green zebra-striped awnings, just beyond the trademark plastic palm trees that flank the entrance.

Social CalendarAug. 6: Grant-A-Wish Casino Night at Edgar's Billiard Club, 1 E. Pratt St., Suite 14. Fund-raiser for the Grant-A-Wish Foundation. Includes a pool shootout pitting WJZ-TV's Marty Bass against Lisa Willis, formerly of WBFF-TV. 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Tickets $50. Buffet and two drinks included. 410-752-8080.Aug. 9: Summer concert at Ladew Topiary Gardens, 3535 Jarrettsville Pike, Monkton. Hard Travelers play. 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Picnics welcome, but not pets, alcohol or athletic equipment.

A university sophomore in England, corresponding by e-mail, volunteered advice to the two American astronomers with a knack for finding planets around stars beyond our solar system: Focus their planet search on 30 overlooked stars and they might HTC make further discoveries.The astronomers agreed to look with the powerful Keck Observatory telescope in Hawaii. Sure enough, orbiting one of the student's candidate stars, 154 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus and designated HD187123, is a planet the size of Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system.

Scientists say they may have to re-think some of their best theories about the origins and evolution of the planet Mercury as new data from the Sept. 29 flyby of the planet by the Maryland-built Messenger spacecraft continue to surprise. In their latest discussion of the mission's scientific findings, scientists said Tuesday they have found evidence that volcanic activity, including explosive eruptions, continued until unexpectedly recent times. The evidence appears in photos of an unnamed volcanic crater, 180 miles wide with a double ring around it. Its interior is surprisingly smooth and free of subsequent meteor impact craters, suggesting there were lava flows into the center as recently as a billion years ago. Scientists had thought Mercury's vulcanism, like that on Earth's moon, was among the first in the solar system to cease, at least 3 billion years ago. But "if the basin is young and the interior is even younger ... that may not be the case," said Brett Denevi, an imaging team member from Arizona State University in Tempe.

If you can roust yourself from bed before dawn on a clear, dry morning next week, you might catch a glimpse of the elusive planet Mercury, very low in the east, before sunrise. The nearest planet to the sun reaches its greatest "elongation" on Monday, which means its highest point in the sky and out of the sun's glare. Look due east, between 6 a.m. and 6:30 a.m., for a tiny point of steady light below bright Venus.

Meteors that smashed into the planet Mercury 3.9 billion years ago are giving scientists a glimpse deep into the tiny planet's interior and providing clues to how it has evolved in the eons since. The 430-mile-wide Rembrandt impact basin, first seen by NASA's Maryland-built Messenger spacecraft during two flybys last year, preserves cracks created during ancient upheavals from beneath the basin, as well as ridges formed like wrinkles as the planet cooled and shrank. "This is really exciting, because this pattern of tectonic land forms is different than anything we see anywhere in the solar system," said Thomas Watters, a scientist with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington who is part of the Messenger team.

In the 1998 movie Armageddon, audiences thrilled as Bruce Willis, Steve Buscemi and Ben Affleck scrambled to save life on Earth from destruction by an asteroid - and the vast majority left the theater safely confident that such a far-fetched threat could not possibly reflect reality. They should not have been so sure. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory reported that on March 2, asteroid 2009 DD45 came within about 48,000 miles of Earth. In astronomical terms, that's way too close for comfort.

Year of Astronomy talks, Planet Walk The Friends of Anne Arundel County Trails will celebrate the International Year of Astronomy with One Hundred Hours of Astronomy, Thursday to April 5. Co-sponsored by Anne Arundel Community College and the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, the Saturday event will feature a free interpreted Planet Walk on the B&A Trail between Glen Burnie (Harundale) and Earleigh Heights Road, on which a proportional sculptural model of the solar system is being created.

Kurt Kroncke in Federal Hill has been reading about orbital collisions: "Will all the space junk orbiting planet Earth eventually form a ring around our planet?" It already has. Communications satellites and others, working and defunct, already form a ring 22,236 miles above the equator, orbiting once a day. Track them in real time at a way-cool NASA site. Google: "3D JTrack"

Warm enough? Scientists at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York say that 2008 was the coolest year globally since 2000. But the same analysis concluded that, while cool for the new century, 2008 was still the ninth-warmest year for the planet since records began in 1880. The 10 warmest years have occurred between 1997 and 2008.

Director/writer Howard McCain takes the age-old story of the loner-hero who comes to the defense of innocents - think The Road Warrior and the classic Western Shane - and gives it a few novel twists in Outlander, an unexpectedly enjoyable science-fiction adventure that should be generating louder fanboy buzz than it has so far. What McCain apparently realized is that you can't go wrong when you add a little alien-on-alien death-match action to the heroic...

Love it or hate it, the biggest show on the planet - American Idol - is back and rarin' to go with a new judge (meet Kara DioGuardi) and some new twists (the semifinal round will consist of 36 singers, not 24). The changes come after Idol showed signs of waning popularity in Season 7. Still, the musical juggernaut is once again expected to crush everything in its path. And, as usual, it kicks off with the audition rounds, which too often prove to be an assault on both the ears and eyes.

Hornets@Suns 10:30 p.m. [TNT] The two best point guards on the planet - New Orleans' Chris Paul and Phoenix's Steve Nash (far right) - match up here. And that's as good a reason as any to watch an NBA game during the season's first week.