Free Republic

Just in time for the holidays, the folks at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, give us a glimpse of a heavenly angel—not literally one of the seraphim, of course, but an astronomical delight nonetheless. The two-lobed star-forming region, dubbed Sharpless 2-106, is located in an isolated part of our Milky Way galaxy nearly 2000 light-years from Earth. The bluish "wings" are lobes of super-hot gas illuminated by a monster star—dozens of times the mass of our sun—forming in the center of the still-expanding nebula. A dark ring of dust and gas circling the star (dark bands, center),...

Fox News is announcing that Tony Snow has died. Heartbreaking news.

BISMARCK, N.D. -- Among thousands of people frantically flapping in the snow yesterday in an attempt to set the record for the most snow angels ever made were parents, children, even snowplow drivers. And then there was Pauline Jaeger -- who on her 99th birthday, was making her very first angel. "I feel just like a kid," she said. "It's fun." More than 8,900 people flapped their arms and legs on the North Dakota Capitol grounds in an attempt to reclaim the record, which was snatched away about a year ago in Michigan. The Guinness Book of Records still must...