Today at the Capitol, a couple of lawmakers are playing outsize roles in the debate over health-care legislation that will profoundly affect millions of lives. In Paris, a couple of presidents met.

Zoom out. Way out. Let’s go off-world.

An interesting sub-story around the newsmaking flight of the Juno spacecraft – now delivering spectacular views from above gaseous Jupiter’s cloud deck – is the outsize role of ordinary people.

The scientific stakes are high. Humanity last took a close look at Jupiter a generation ago (Galileo). Before that, fully two generations ago (Voyager). This time around, a relatively low-budget device called the JunoCam – added to the mission simply for “public outreach” – is being directed by telescope-armed citizen scientists suggesting points of interest to observe, and then helping to process the images that Juno beams home in a way that, as Scientific American reports, “leaves professionals spellbound.” (To judge for yourself, check out our Viewfinder gallery below.)

“[T]he overarching takeaway from these new images,” a planetary scientist tells the magazine, “is how relatively blinkered most of our earlier views have been.” Power, in part, to the people.

Now to our five stories for today.