Friday, October 04, 2013

The Earth as Seen From Saturn

Pale blue dot

Earth can be seen in the bottom right part of the image beyond Saturn's majestic ring system

Nasa has released photos of the Earth and Moon taken by a spacecraft orbiting Saturn - nearly a billion miles away. Our planet and its only satellite appear only as dots in the picture, which was taken by the Cassini spacecraft on July 19.


Earth and Moon
Say cheese: the Earth and the Moon pictured from a billion miles away

The wide-angle image is part of a larger mosaic - or multi-image portrait - that imaging scientists are putting together of the entire Saturn system.

Pictures of Earth from the outer Solar System are rare because, from that distance, Earth is very close to the bright Sun. Just as a person can damage their retina by looking directly at the Sun, a camera's sensitive detectors can be damaged by the bright rays.

These images were taken when the sun had moved behind the planet Saturn from the spacecraft's point of view, blocking out most of the light.

2 comments:

  1. The food monster found an article for you .

    I love this post it's so beautiful from space and we are so small , just a tiny speck , but a very important tiny speck .

    Check wag and the link is at the bottom . Manage to get a paper with headlines ... see you soon .
    PIC

    ReplyDelete
  2. Okay PIC Thank you.

    ReplyDelete

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