On Earth, where we find water, we find life, so that's where we like to look for life in space, too. That's not just limited to planets, though, and a few moons in our own solar system seem to be hiding sub-surface oceans that could harbor alien life. One of those is Saturn's moon Enceladus, which NASA announced today is giving off a chemical that's a potential sign of habitability deep within the planet's ocean.

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Check out this stunning shot that NASA acquired of Saturn's razor-thin bisecting one of its moons, Dione. It's like something out of Mass Effect, isn't it?

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Do you love stargazing? Do you also love sleep? Well, one of those loves is gonna have to go - at least for one morning this month. For the next thirty days, you'll have a chance to see all five planets visible to the naked eye all lined up in a row for the first time in ten years.

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planetary-ringsAstronomers at the University of Rochester have discovered a planet that puts our ringed giant to shame.

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NASA's Cassini spacecraft has been zooming around taking raw images of Saturn for the past ten years. Though sometimes blurry and usually in black-and-white, these pictures are also some of the closest and most compelling images of the ringed planet that humanity has ever witnessed. Like, geez. Can you even imagine this is a real thing that actually exists in the universe? Because I cannot wrap my brain around it.

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Imagine that gravitational forces were completely irrelevant and Saturn just decided to pop by for a visit en route to the Sun. I don't know; maybe it wanted to go on a playdate with the Moon or something. I heard they're pretty tight. Anyway, this video is pretty mathematically accurate to what that encounter would look like.

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Saturn's looking good and wants everyone to know about it (show off). The planet is going to be at its brightest all year tonight, so you might want to step outside and take a peek. But don't worry if you can't make it to the great outdoors - you can see her ringiness live on the internet, too (saucy).

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NASA will hold a live Google Hangout today to presumably talk about how great the pictures from Cassini have been (as well as some science stuff, probably) and where it's going in the future. If you like amazing space pictures as much as we do, watch the hour-long live chat with NASA scientists at 3:30PM EST.

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The film In Saturn's Rings takes over a million photographs from Cassini, Hubble, Voyager and more and turns them into an incredible animated ride through the universe. Sure, you've flown through pretend space plenty of times in movies, but when you watch this and realize that what you're seeing is real, it's spectacular.

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Remember those pictures of Saturn's eclipse that the Cassini spacecraft took back in July of this year? They've been combining all the different images into several gorgeous mosaics that are so pristine they look computer-animated. This one, which was just released today, shows us the dark side of Saturn as it's never been seen before.

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In "you won't believe it's real" news, NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day brings us an image of Saturn that looks like really convincing computer graphics. Amazingly, it's a real image of the planet brought to us by the Cassini spacecraft that is now orbiting Saturn.

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On July 19th the Cassini spacecraft pointed itself at the Earth to snap a picture, and NASA encouraged everyone to smile, wave, and snap a photo of their own. Folks submitted more than 1,400 images from around the world. To says thanks, NASA made this lovely composite from the images. Can you find yourself?

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If you don't have a favorite moon of Saturn, let us make a case for Mimas. Thermal images make it look like Pac-Man, but regular pictures like this new one from NASA's Cassini spacecraft make it look like the Death Star. It shows Mimas passing by its little oblong-shaped buddy Pandora. Space is pretty.

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Remember how we told you to all stand outside your houses and wave at the sky between 5:27 and 5:42 EDT (2:27 to 2:42 PDT) on Friday afternoon, because NASA’s Cassini probe would be snapping a picture of Saturn in which Earth would be visible? Yeah, you probably didn't have to actually do that, because all we can see are little white dots, which is how we look in the photograph above. It's still a pretty cool picture, but we can't help thinking maybe you should have waved harder. Y'know. For science.

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If you love photos from space but are always secretly bummed out that you're not in them, today is your lucky day. NASA's Cassini probe is snapping a picture of Saturn today, and hundreds of millions of miles distant in the background of the resulting image, you'll be able to see the Earth. That's right -- today and today only, you have the opportunity to photobomb NASA. Make it count, people.

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1.3 billion kilometers is a great distance, but tonight consider it relatively close. That's how far away close Saturn will be to the Earth tonight. What does that mean for you? It means that with a telescope -- even a cheap one -- you can get a beautiful view of another planet that's more than 800 million miles away. Oh, you don't have a telescope? Go buy a telescope. There's still time.

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Every once in a while, a story comes along to which the only appropriate response is "Dang." This morning brings us one such story, as images taken by NASA's Cassini probe in orbit around Saturn show it was host to a thunderstorm so massive that it wrapped around the entire planet. Like a snake attempting to eat its own tail, the atmospheric disturbance raced through Saturn's atmosphere with such speed and power that it eventually ran into its own rear end. That encounter seems to have caused it to sputter out, as if the storm somehow consumed itself, though the reasons for that are unclear to researchers.

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