Should post asap A spacecraft orbiting Mars has turned its eye homeward to photograph Earth as it has never been seen before, capturing a surprisingly detailed image of our blue world suspended in the vast black of space.
Unlike any previous image of Earth from another planet, clouds and continental features are visible.
Earth, as seen from Mars.
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Planet Earth is seen as a half-globe. The effect is the same as seeing phases of Venus from Earth. Like Earth's Moon, an inner planet reflects sunlight differently depending on its location in relation to the planet it is viewed from.
In various versions of the image, Earth's Moon can also be seen, along with Jupiter and some of its moons.
Jupiter shows up as a complete disk, because the giant gas planet is beyond the Sun, reflecting a full compliment of light back toward Mars. [See graphic of orbits at the time the image was made] The picture, released today, was taken by NASA's Mars Global Surveyor.
"From our Mars orbital-camera perspective, we've spent the last six-and-a-half years staring at Mars right in front of us," said Michael Malin, president and chief scientist of Malin Space Science Systems, which operates the spacecraft's camera, in a statement. "Taking this picture allowed us to look up from that work of exploring Mars and take in a more panoramic view. This image gives us a new perspective on that neighborhood, one in which we can see our own planet as one among many."
Malin and his colleagues took advantage of an alignment of Earth and Jupiter, as seen from Mars, on May 8. Mars and the Surveyor probe were 86 million miles (139 million kilometers) from Earth and almost 600 million miles (1 billion kilometers) from Jupiter.
It is the first picture of Earth from another planet that resolves our world into a disk, rather than a point of light.
Special processing was needed to make Earth and the Moon both visible in the same picture, because the Moon was much darker at the time.
On Earth, a bright area near the top of the image is a cloud cover over central and eastern North America, scientists said. A darker region below that represents parts of the Gulf of Mexico and Central America. Clouds over northern South America are also visible.
The image is reminiscent of one taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft in 1991. That photograph of Earth, from more than 4 billion miles away, showed only a dot. In his 1994 book, "Pale Blue Dot," Carl Sagan employed the photograph as a metaphor for the insignificance of Earth in the universe.
Later this year, Mars will be closer to Earth than ever in recorded history, offering skywatchers and photographers on this planet a unique opportunity to examine Mars.
ALL IMAGES: NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems
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