Monday, July 22, 2013

Earth as seen from Mercury, and through Saturn's rings.

Every human alive or dead is in these two pictures.






















In a cross-Solar System interplanetary first, our Earth was photographed during the same day from both Mercury and Saturn. Pictured on the left, Earth is the pale blue dot just below the rings of Saturn, as captured by the robotic Cassini spacecraft now at the gas giant. Pictured on the right, the Earth-Moon system is seen against a dark background, as captured by the robotic MESSENGER spacecraft now orbiting Mercury. In the MESSENGER image, the Earth (left) and Moon (right) shine brightly with reflected sunlight. MESSENGER took the overexposed image last Friday as part of a search for small natural satellites of the innermost planet, moons that would be expected to be quite dim.

3 comments:

  1. Beautiful photographs! Makes you think how insignificant we really are in the scheme of things...

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    Replies
    1. Scary how insignificant, and how thin the crust of life is on Earth.

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  2. The Earth is our lifeboat in a dangerous sea.

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