Our Earth and Moon, as seen from Mars



500earthandmoon

NASA released an image of the earth and the moon in one picture, as seen from Mars. It was taken by the HiRISE Instrument on October 3rd, 2007.

On the Earth image we can make out the west coast outline of South America at lower right, although the clouds are the dominant features. These clouds are so bright, compared with the Moon, that they are saturated in the HiRISE images. In fact, the RED-filter image was almost completely saturated, the blue-green image had significant saturation, and the brightest clouds were saturated in the IR image. This color image required a fair amount of processing to make a nice-looking release.

“Nice-looking” is an understatement. Link -via Bad Astronomy Blog

(image credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)


Previous Post
Get Neatorama by RSS or email
 Next Post
this post? Please email to a friend  +reddit  +del.icio.us  +SU
Posted on March 4, 2008 at 9:45 pm by Miss Cellania
Category: Pictures, Science & Tech



9 comments to "Our Earth and Moon, as seen from Mars"

  • Sofar
    March 4th, 2008 at 9:54 pm

    That’s very pretty. The Earth is not visible as a disc from Mars, but it’d still be a pretty blue dot.

  • Adam Stanhope
    March 4th, 2008 at 9:55 pm

    HiRISE lives on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter which is in Mars’ orbit. It’s hair-splitting, I know, but the photo of Earth and our moon comes from Mars orbit - not Mars itself.

  • Johnny Cat
    March 4th, 2008 at 9:59 pm

    I can see my house!

  • Ali S.
    March 4th, 2008 at 10:07 pm

    I had the opening scene from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey playing in my head the moment I saw this. Gorgeous stuff!

  • electro^plankton
    March 4th, 2008 at 10:14 pm

    So this is what I would see waking up each morning on Mars. NEATORAMA!

  • aj
    March 4th, 2008 at 10:42 pm

    @ electro^plankton
    You would see that from Mars, kind of - if you were looking through a telescope. Look at the size of the moon, Mars is bigger than that and we still need a scope to make out any detail.

    Its pretty awesome to get a good look at the distance from the earth to the moon - I knew the number (approx) but it doesn’t sink in ’till you see it like that.

  • kaloran
    March 5th, 2008 at 12:05 am

    # Ali S. Says:
    March 4th, 2008 at 10:07 pm

    ‘I had the opening scene from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey playing in my head the moment I saw this…’

    I had Halo 3 adagio playing at the time. Sorta works too.

  • L
    March 5th, 2008 at 7:17 pm

    Does the moon ever come between the Earth and Mars? Or is it on a different plane? That would make an interesting photo, too.

  • lilith
    March 6th, 2008 at 12:41 pm

    It would make an interesting photo, then we could see the alien moonbases on the dark side of the moon, as well as the OTHER artificial moon behind the moon.

    Of course, NASA would probably airbrush it out.

    Silly NASA, don’t they know we can handle the truth?

Want your own avatar? Get one for free at Gravatar!


Neatorama Comment Policy
You don't have to register or login to comment, but it's easier if you do so. We don't censor comment based on your point of view but comments that are abusive, use excessive profanity, or contain off-topic links may get edited or deleted. On some posts, it may take up several minutes for you comment to show up.


Stay updated on the comments in this post with Comment RSS