Earth and Moon from 183 Million kilometers. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
A new image to add to the family photo album! The MESSENGER spacecraft is working its way to enter orbit around Mercury in March of 2011, and while wending its way, took this image of the Earth and Moon, visible in the lower left. When the image was taken in May 2010, MESSENGER was 183 million kilometers (114 million miles) away from Earth. For context, the average separation between the Earth and the Sun is about 150 million kilometers (93 million miles). It’s a thought provoking image (every one of us is in that image!), just like other Earth-Moon photos — Fraser put together a gallery of Earth-Moon images from other worlds, and this one will have to be added. But this image was taken not just for the aesthetics.
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Read the rest of MESSENGER Looks Back at the Earth and Moon (101 words)
© nancy for Universe Today, 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments |
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Post tags: Astrophotos, Earth, Earth Observation, Mercury, MESSENGER, Moon
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