LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – Lake County Animal Care and Control has a big, diverse group of dogs needing homes this week.

This week's available dogs include mixes of Alaskan Malamute, border collie, boxer, Corgi, dachshund, German Shepherd, Great Dane, Great Pyrenees, Labrador Retriever, McNab, pit bull, pointer and terrier.

Dogs that are adopted from Lake County Animal Care and Control are either neutered or spayed, microchipped and, if old enough, given a rabies shot and county license before being released to their new owner. License fees do not apply to residents of the cities of Lakeport or Clearlake.

If you're looking for a new companion, visit the shelter. There are many great pets hoping you'll choose them.

The following dogs at the Lake County Animal Care and Control shelter have been cleared for adoption (additional dogs on the animal control Web site not listed are still “on hold”).

Great Pyrenees mix

This male Great Pyrenees mix has a long white coat.

He is in kennel No. 3, ID No. 5263.

'Princess'

“Princess” is a pit bull terrier mix.

She has a brindle coat with white markings, and already has been spayed.

Princess is in kennel No. 4, ID No. 5361.

'Penelope'

“Penelope” is a female shepherd mix with a short tricolor coat.

She's in kennel No. 5, ID No. 5280.

'Kush'

“Kush” is a female adult pit bull terrier mix.

She has a short tan coat and already is spayed.

She's in kennel No. 6, ID No. 5249.

Dachshund-terrier mix

This male dachshund-terrier mix has a short white coat with tan markings.

He's in kennel No. 7a, ID No. 5323.

Pointer mix

This male pointer mix has a short white coat with black markings.

Shelter staff said he may be deaf.

He's in kennel No. 9, ID No. 5310.

'Brandy'

“Brandy” is a female Alaskan Malamute-retriever mix.

She's got a short tan coat with black markings. She already is spayed.

She's in kennel No. 11, ID No. 5245.

Labrador Retriever-pit bull terrier

This female Labrador Retriever-pit bull terrier puppy has a short brindle coat.

She already has been spayed.

She's in kennel No. 12, ID No. 5116.

Shepherd mix

This male shepherd mix has a short tan and brown coat with white markings.

He already is neutered.

He's in kennel No. 13, ID No. 5299.

Chihuahua mix

This older male Chihuahua mix has a short white coat.

He's in kennel No. 14, ID No. 5300.

McNab-border collie mix

This female McNab-border collie mix has a short black and white coat.

She's in kennel No. 16, ID No. 5211.

German Shepherd

This male German Shepherd has a tan coat with black markings.

He's in kennel No. 17, ID No. 5248.

'Badger'

“Badger” is an adult male border collie mix.

He has a short black and white coat.

He's in kennel No. 18, ID No. 5075.

Labrador Retriever mix

This young male Labrador Retriever mix has a short golden-colored coat.

He's in kennel No. 23, ID No. 5165.

Boxer-pit bull terrier mix

This older female boxer-pit bull terrier mix has a short brown coat.

She's in kennel No. 25, ID No. 5322.

Great Dane-Labrador Retriever mix

This male Great Dane-Labrador Retriever mix has a short black coat with white markings.

He's in kennel No. 26, ID No. 5104.

Pit bull terrier mix

This male pit bull terrier mix is in urgent need of a new home. He's been available for adoption since May 11.

He has a short brown coat.

Shelter staff said he does not jump and is very friendly, walking well on a leash, showing no food aggression, and allowing handling of his mouth, ears, paws and tail with no problems. He also enjoys a good tummy rub.

He would do great in a home with no cats.

He's in kennel No. 28, ID No. 4850.

'Sammy'

'Sammy' is a female pit bull terrier mix.

She has a short brown coat with white markings.

She's in kennel No. 30, ID No. 5214.

Labrador Retriever mix

This male Labrador Retriever mix has a short all-black coat.

He's in kennel No. 32, ID No. 5158.

'George'

“George” is a male Corgi-shepherd mix has a short tan coat with white and black markings.

He's currently in foster, ID No. 5166.

To fill out an adoption application online visit http://www.co.lake.ca.us/Government/Directory/Animal_Care_And_Control/Adopt/Dog___Cat_Adoption_Application.htm .

Lake County Animal Care and Control is located at 4949 Helbush in Lakeport, next to the Hill Road Correctional Facility.

Office hours are Monday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., Saturday. The shelter is open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and on Saturday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Visit the shelter online at http://www.co.lake.ca.us/Government/Directory/Animal_Care_And_Control.htm .

For more information call Lake County Animal Care and Control at 707-263-0278.

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.

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If you thought Luke Skywalker's home planet, Tatooine, was a strange world with its two suns in the sky, imagine this: a planet with either constant daylight or triple sunrises and sunsets each day depending on the seasons (which last longer than human lifetimes).

Such a world has been discovered by a team of astronomers led by the University of Arizona using direct imaging.

The planet, HD 131399Ab, is unlike any other known world – one with, by far, the widest known orbit within a multi-star system.

The discovery was published in an early online edition of the journal Science on July 7.

Located about 340 light years from Earth in the constellation Centaurus, HD 131399Ab is believed to be about 16 million years old, making it one of the youngest exoplanets discovered to date.

With a temperature of 850 kelvins (about 1,070 F or 580 C) and weighing in at an estimated four Jupiter masses, it is also one of the coldest and least massive directly-imaged exoplanets.

“HD 131399Ab is one of the few exoplanets that have been directly imaged, and it's the first one in such an interesting dynamical configuration,” said Daniel Apai, an assistant professor of Astronomy and Planetary Sciences at the University of Arizona. He is the principal investigator of one of NASA’s teams in the Nexus for Exoplanet System Science (NexSS), which is an interdisciplinary network dedicated to the search for life on planets outside our solar system.

“For about half of the planet’s orbit, which lasts 550 Earth-years, three stars are visible in the sky, the fainter two always much closer together, and changing in apparent separation from the brightest star throughout the year,” said Kevin Wagner, a doctoral student in Apai's research group and the paper's first author, who discovered HD 131399Ab.

“For much of the planet’s year the stars appear close together, giving it a familiar night-side and day-side with a unique triple-sunset and sunrise each day,” Wagner said. “As the planet orbits and the stars grow farther apart each day, they reach a point where the setting of one coincides with the rising of the other – at which point the planet is in near-constant daytime for about one-quarter of its orbit, or roughly 140 Earth-years.”

The planet marks the first discovery of an exoplanet made with SPHERE, which stands for the Spectro-Polarimetric High-Contrast Exoplanet Research Instrument. It is installed on the Very Large Telescope operated by the European Southern Observatory on Cerro Paranal in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile, and dedicated to finding planets around other stars.

SPHERE is sensitive to infrared light, making it capable of detecting the heat signatures of young planets, along with sophisticated features correcting for atmospheric disturbances and blocking out the otherwise blinding light of their host stars.

Although repeated and long-term observations will be needed to precisely determine the planet's trajectory among its host stars, observations and simulations seem to suggest the following scenario: At the center of the system lies a star estimated to be 80 percent more massive than the sun and dubbed HD 131399A, which itself is orbited by the two remaining stars, B and C, at about 300 AU (one AU, or astronomical unit, equals the average distance between Earth and the sun).

All the while, B and C twirl around each other like a spinning dumbbell, separated by a distance roughly equal to that between our sun and Saturn.

In this scenario, planet HD 131399Ab travels around the central star, A, in an orbit about twice as large as Pluto’s if compared to our solar system, and brings the planet to about one-third of the separation of the stars themselves.

The authors point out that a range of orbital scenarios is possible, and the verdict on long-term stability of the system will have to wait for planned follow-up observations that will better constrain the planet's orbit.

“If the planet was further away from the most massive star in the system, it would be kicked out of the system,” Apai explained. “Our computer simulations showed that this type of orbit can be stable, but if you change things around just a little bit, it can become unstable very quickly.”

Planets in multi-star systems are of special interest to astronomers and planetary scientists because they provide an example of how planet formation functions in these extreme scenarios.

While multi-star systems seem exotic to us in our orbit around our solitary star – multi-star systems are in fact just as common as single stars.

“It is not clear how this planet ended up on its wide orbit in this extreme system, and we can't say yet what this means for our broader understanding of the types of planetary systems out there, but it shows there is more variety out there than many would have deemed possible,” Wagner said. “What we do know is that planets in multi-star systems are much less explored, and potentially just as numerous as planets in single-star systems.”

“This is the kind of discovery that helps us place our own solar system in the context of the diversity of worlds beyond it, by finding systems that are much different from our own,” said Mary Voytek, senior scientist for astrobiology and program manager of the NexSS network at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “By combining these results with research on the formation of habitable worlds, we will have a better understanding of the systems in which habitable worlds might form. NexSS will ensure such connections are made, within and beyond our NexSS teams.”

NexSS is a NASA-led research coordination network dedicated to the study of planetary habitability by bringing together researchers from different fields.

NexSS aims to build an international community of interdisciplinary researchers, including those supported by other agencies, dedicated to exoplanet research through NASA investments.

This network will explore the diversity of exoplanets and to learn how their history, geology and climate interact to create the conditions for life. NexSS investigators also strive to put planets into an architectural context – as solar systems built over the eons through dynamical processes and sculpted by stars.

Based on our understanding of our own solar system and habitable planet Earth, researchers in the network aim to identify where habitable niches are most likely to occur, which planets are most likely to be habitable.

NexSS will accelerate the discovery and characterization of other potentially life-bearing worlds in the galaxy.

The co-authors on the paper are Markus Kasper and Melissa McClure of the European Southern Observatory in Garching, Germany; Kaitlin Kratter at the UA's Steward Observatory; Massimo Roberto at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore; and Jean-Luc Beuzit with the University of Grenoble Alpes and the National Center of Scientific Research, both in Grenoble, France.

LAKEPORT, Calif. – The murder trial of a man accused of carrying out a fatal drive-by shooting last July in Clearlake is under way.

On Friday opening statements took place and the first witnesses were called in the trial of Billy Raymond Mount, 36, of Clearlake, who is accused of the July 2015 shooting that claimed the life of 40-year-old Steven Galvin, also of Clearlake.

Judge Andrew Blum is presiding over the trial.

The District Attorney's Office has charged Mount with homicide, assault with a firearm, discharge of a firearm from a vehicle, and two counts of being a felon in possession of a firearm – in this case, a .22-caliber semiautomatic handgun. Mount previously served a prison term for a 2007 felony robbery case, according to court records.

He's also facing numerous special allegations, including shooting a firearm from a vehicle, discharge of a handgun, personal use of a firearm, inflicting great bodily injury and being a member of a criminal street gang. Regarding the latter, the prosecution alleges that Mount is a known skinhead.

One of the key issues in the case is that, shortly before he died, Galvin identified a man other than Mount as his attacker.

The prosecution alleges that it has evidence to support Mount as the shooter, but the defense is arguing that Galvin's statements about his attacker – which were some of the last words he spoke – must be heeded.

In her opening statement, Deputy District Attorney Sharon Lerman said Galvin, also known as “T-Bone,” was walking alone through a residential area on 35th Avenue in Clearlake at around 3:40 p.m. on July 2, 2015, when a little white truck pulled up and two gunshots rang out.

Galvin was shot in the back, and died within an hour at St. Helena Hospital Clear Lake, according to the statements in court on Friday.

Lerman said Galvin was “shot in cold blood, on the street, in broad daylight.”

Firefighters and officers arriving on scene found Galvin on the ground, writhing in pain. He was mumbling and difficult to understand.

However, he spoke clearly when Clearlake Police Det. Ryan Peterson asked him, “Who did this to you?”

“Cyclops,” Galvin would say, four different times.

The individual known as “Cyclops,” however, isn't Mount, but Clearlake resident David Cox, who in court was identified as a known skinhead and white supremacist.

Cox was located and detained within an hour of the shooting, said Lerman.

“The story could have ended there,” said Lerman. However, it doesn't, she added.

Rather, the prosecution maintains that Galvin was unable to tell the whole story.

Within days, Clearlake resident Sean Whiteman would tell police that he was driving the pickup witnesses saw at the scene, and that it was Mount who had used a handgun to shoot and mortally wound Galvin.

Lerman said Whiteman also led police to the handgun that they believed was used, based on forensic evidence, and Mount's DNA and fingerprint was found on a CD cover in Whiteman's truck.

Explaining why Galvin would have named Cox – or Cyclops – as his attacker, Lerman said Galvin knew Cox was angry at him. Cox believed Galvin had stolen his tablet computer and was reported to have told other skinheads to go after Galvin, who he had a confrontation with two days before the shooting.

Mount and Cox would meet about an hour before the shooting, with Mount later reported to have been riding around town with Whiteman in his little white pickup.

Cox, who Lerman said has a criminal history like many of the case's witnesses and key players, has been granted limited immunity in the case.

Defense attorney Andrea Sullivan told the jury during her opening statement, “Sometimes things are exactly as they seem.”

Sullivan argued that it was Cox, not Mount, who was the gunman responsible for fatally shooting Galvin. She said the situation between Cox and Galvin had escalated to the point where they had pulled guns on each other on more than one occasion, and she argued that Cox had multiple chances to commit the slaying.

None of the eyewitnesses identified Mount as the shooter, according to Sullivan. “Not one.”

She added that Whiteman has been discredited and there is no physical evidence in the form of DNA, gun residue or fingerprints linking Mount to the killing.

“The prosecution in this case is based on a theory,” a theory that Sullivan argued has its foundation not on the evidence by on “smoke and mirrors.” She urged the jurors to give Galvin justice by actually listening to him.

Officers, paramedic testify

Witnesses on the stand on Friday included Clearlake Police Det. Elvis Cook and Officer Matthew Huot, who were among the first officers who arrived at the shooting scene, finding Galvin on the ground in the middle of a home's front yard.

Both men would also go to St. Helena Hospital Clear Lake, where Galvin was transported in anticipation of meeting an air ambulance but died before he could be flown out.

Cook also would go looking for Cox at the Kingfisher Mobile Home Park, where he lives with his grandmother, but didn't find him. Cook then went to a home on Maple Street that Cox was known to frequent, and it was there that Cox was found and detained by police.

Jason Trudell, a paramedic with the Lake County Fire Protection District who responded to the scene and assisted with transporting Galvin to the hospital, also testified.

Trudell recounted that it was difficult to get answers out of Galvin, who was having trouble breathing and moving around a lot. Galvin was vague about what had happened to him, first telling paramedics that he was assaulted, and later saying he was shot.

It took a few minutes for paramedics to find the exit wound, which was very small and on the right side of Galvin's chest, with no external bleeding. Galvin also appeared to be coughing up fluid tinged with blood, which indicated to Trudell that he had a possible lung injury.

On the way to the hospital landing zone, Galvin's vital signs dropped and he lost consciousness, Trudell said. Galvin's vital signs then briefly improved before his pulse stopped and paramedics diverted him to the hospital emergency room, where he died.

Also testifying on Friday was Det. Peterson, the case's arresting officer. As part of his testimony, Lerman played a brief video taken from Peterson's body camera, which he activated at the scene.

The footage showed Peterson arriving at the shooting location on 35th Avenue, getting a camera from his car and documenting the location before making his way over to the paramedics and Galvin, who was lying face down on the ground and writhing.

Galvin clearly stated the name “Cyclops” when asked who was responsible for his attack. He also said, “Help, I need some air,” then gasped and kept repeating “air.” Yet he pulled off an oxygen mask paramedics attempted to put over his face.

Peterson said he knew Cox as Cyclops. As Clearlake Police's gang enforcement officer, Peterson had met Cox about a year before the shooting. He said Cox had come to his attention in part because of his very distinctive appearance; Peterson said Cox's face is covered with tattoos, and when Cox met Peterson he identified himself as a skinhead who recently had been released from prison.

At the shooting scene, Peterson and his fellow officers canvassed the neighborhood, speaking to witnesses and looking for evidence.

Three days later Peterson would later contact Jeremy Green, a friend of Mount's, at a red-tagged home where Green, who is homeless, has been staying for some time.

During the investigation, Green had told Peterson that Mount admitted to him that he had shot someone. However, Green – who was brought from the Lake County Jail to testify in the trial – appeared to change his story while on the stand.

Green said he had been high on drugs when Peterson had spoken to him last July, and that because he was scared of police he told Peterson what he thought Peterson wanted to hear.

He also claimed that he only remembered parts of the conversation with Peterson, that he didn't recall bringing up Mount and the shooting to Peterson, and that the questioning in court was confusing him.

“Mr. Green, you don't really want to be here, do you?” asked Lerman.

“No,” he said. Lerman followed up by asking if he didn't want to hurt his friend. He said no.

He said he and Mount – who he thinks of as a brother – were driving around with Whiteman in the white pickup and doing drugs on the day of the shooting. Green recalled the day as mostly “a blur.”

Green also recounted stopping to buy drugs at the Maple Street house where Cox frequented, and Cox and Mount having a conversation in a back room. Afterward, Mount was “a little distracted” and upset, but calmed down.

During cross-examination by Sullivan, Green said he had been afraid that he was going to be implicated in the shooting.

When Sullivan asked if he would lie to protect Mount, his friend, Green said, “I haven't lied yet.”

The trial will continue at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, July 13.

Mount's trial is among three murder cases currently in trial or set to go to trial, according to Chief Deputy District Attorney Richard Hinchcliff.

Hinchcliff said another four murder cases are set for sentencing or other proceedings, and two more homicide cases are set for preliminary hearing or are pending preliminary hearing and not yet set for trial.

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.