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New Photo Of Planet Earth and its Moon, As Seen From Mars.

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PIA21260_hires.jpg

This composite image of Earth and its moon, as seen from Mars, combines the best Earth image with the best moon image from four sets of images acquired on Nov. 20, 2016, by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Each was separately processed prior to combining them so that the moon is bright enough to see. The moon is much darker than Earth and would barely be visible at the same brightness scale as Earth. The combined view retains the correct sizes and positions of the two bodies relative to each other.

HiRISE takes images in three wavelength bands: infrared, red, and blue-green. These are displayed here as red, green, and blue, respectively. This is similar to Landsat images in which vegetation appears red. The reddish feature in the middle of the Earth image is Australia. Southeast Asia appears as the reddish area (due to vegetation) near the top; Antarctica is the bright blob at bottom-left. Other bright areas are clouds.

These images were acquired for calibration of HiRISE data, since the spectral reflectance of the Moon's near side is very well known. When the component images were taken, Mars was about 127 million miles (205 million kilometers) from Earth. A previous HiRISE image of Earth and the moon is online at PIA10244.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA21260
 
The combined view retains the correct sizes and positions of the two bodies relative to each other.

Note that the Moon must be closer to the "camera" though as it should be much further away from Earth.
 
Wow it's really big, I don't feel so bad about fucking it up now.

The thing is that the surface area of Mars and Earth are roughly the same. Even though Earth is much much much much bigger than Mars, the fact is that a lot of earth is covered up by water (more than 70%).

It's really not good for us to have the poles melting!
 

theJwac

Member
I'm pretty sure that the distance between the Earth and the moon is not to scale in that image, but hopefully the relative sizes of the two are.
 

theJwac

Member
yeah I'm guessing this

lZthloO.png

The shadow of the moon and Earth indicate the relative position of the sun to Earth, moon, and ultimately, the viewpoint on Mars. Given this, I'm under the impression that the moon is slightly further away from Mars than Earth in this image. I'd be interested to know one way or the other for sure though.
 

Bronetta

Ask me about the moon landing or the temperature at which jet fuel burns. You may be surprised at what you learn.
Amazing photo, the vastness of space really puts some things into perspective.





Time doesnt wait for anyone and the future doesnt change for anyone.
 
I'd wager on the moon being closer to Mars than the Earth in this picture. Earth is ~3.67 times larger in diameter than the moon, and this image seems to have the moon a bit larger than its relative size (though not by much).

Also, the moon is 238,000 miles away from the Earth, or enough to fit 110 moons between the Earth and the actual moon in orbit.
 

Bold One

Member
Amazing, didnt think there would be so much detail of the earth from that distance, Mars is but a red dot from here...
 
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