Just about everything having to do with the Solar System this year has been -- or is about to be -- really amazing...
Spirit & Opportunity, Sedna, Jovian moons, planetary lineups, MESSENGER launching, two comets, and Cassini...
oh, and the preznit thinks he can make a Mars mission happen just by saying so...
Spirit and Opportunity -- oceans on Mars, and even the president pretending he's JFK (oh, if only he was serious) and thinking he's going to shoot for the Moon and Mars.
Last month we discovered Sedna, reopening discussion on the Oort cloud, Kuyper Belt, whether Pluto's a planet, and the limits of the solar system.
Last week there was a triple shadow on Jupiter, as three of its moons at once crossed the disk.
For the last two weeks you could go outside right after sunset and see all five naked-eye planets (the last time you'll be able to do this all at once for nearly fifteen years).
Next month we launch MESSENGER, which will take about six years to get itself into a Mercury orbit.
In the next month or two you'll be hearing about (hell, you'll be seeing) two, count them, two, naked-eye comets -- C/2002 T7 (LINEAR) and C/2001 Q4 (NEAT) -- both of which could rival Hale-Bopp and Hyukatake.
And then there's Cassini, seven years in transit, now 84 days from orbit insertion... Cassini will rock our world for the next four years as the book on Saturn, its rings, and its moons (particularly Titan) gets completely rewritten.
It perhaps should get mentioned more that this is the best year for planetary science in, like, ever?