Progress report

Zooming back from the icy moons of Διας (Jupiter) to a pasture nearby, we noticed that the lamb we were watching is still with us. Our story from February 8 (photos from February 7) showed that there was reason for concern for the immediate health of the lamb. Today’s photos show him to be a little bigger and more steady on his feet.
He apparently has a twin, or at least a best friend, and they appear to hang out together.

I (Tom) noticed that Mom ewe seems to have a distended udder compared to her colleagues. Perhaps this is the problem – she is producing milk but can’t deliver. The shepherd seems to be aware of this and told me that everything is “Μιά χαρά” or very well. So who am I to argue? The shepherd appreciates my concern but knows, deep in his heart, that I’m stupid about such things.

white arrow points to the lamb – the orange to Mom’s udder

In any case, the twins seem to be slowly progressing and have survived the worst of the cold weather. They are stabled at night so all 10 ewes, older lambs and the 6 newborns are together in the dark. Who knows what happens away from prying human eyes?

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Way out there

While getting my morning dose of Doonesbury, the site also offers daily an unrelated video usually of interest. This AM they presented via JPL this video which I found interesting, almost, but not quite, fascinating to my jaded sultry and heavy lidded eyes.
I thought that maybe others would appreciate the concept.

Jupiter (Διας in Greek), only 650,750,739 km (404,357,762 miles) from Earth at the moment, comes up in the early evening in the East and if the night is clear, the bigger 4 moons (out of a total of 67) are visible with standard binoculars (if you can hold them steady enough). The bigger moons are called the Gallilean Moons after Guiseppe who first saw them in 1610. They are named Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.

Europa is the subject of the video.

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