Free Republic

No, I'm not obsessed with Saturn. OK, I am obsessed with Saturn. But so is Time, who picked this deliciously crispy photo as one of the images of the year, revealing ring bumps as high as the Rocky Mountains. I'm not surprised, because it's a truly unique moment, one that happens at Saturn's equinox, which is an event that only happens twice in 10,179 Earth days. And this time, we had Cassini there to take this amazing photo, just when the sun illuminates the rings edge-on. As Carolyn Porco—Cassini imaging team leader—puts it: The geometry revealed structures and phenomena in...

LOS ANGELES - From a lofty perch atop a Martian hill, NASA's Spirit rover has been soaking in a commanding view of a vast horizon since completing a difficult climb to the summit late last month. On Thursday, scientists released the first full-color panoramic picture of the landscape taken by the rover from its lookout point, showing the rover's tracks in the dust, flat plains of the surrounding Gusev Crater region, rugged terrain dubbed "the geologic promised land" by one scientist, distant plateaus on the crater rim and more hills. The solar-powered Spirit's yearlong ascent to the peak of Husband...

<p>PASADENA, Calif. (AP) - The NASA rover Opportunity turned a camera skyward to photograph Mars' moon Deimos eclipsing the sun and also carried out the most complex movements yet of its robotic arm to record microscopic images of a rock, Jet Propulsion Laboratory said Thursday.</p>