		Site Map \| Contact Us \| Search:

JOIN

The Planetary Society Blog

By Emily Lakdawalla

Show this movie to your "non-spacy" friends

Jul. 17, 2008 | 18:50 PDT | Jul. 18 01:50 UTC

We need your help.
Please donate to support our blog, website, and podcast.

Weblog Archive

The Deep Impact extended mission, EPOXI, just released an amazing movie (Quicktime format, 1 MB) of the Moon transiting Earth, taken from 50 million kilometers away (or very roughly 150 times the distance from Earth to the Moon). You see Earth spinning away, and then from the left of the frame the Moon comes in to view and flies across Earth's disk. This movie makes obvious the albedo difference between Earth and the Moon -- the surfaces of both worlds have similar colors, but Earth is covered about 50% by highly reflective clouds, which makes it way brighter.

I don't think I'll ever get tired of looking at Earth from space. All the worlds of our solar system are fascinating, but our own planet has a unique beauty that nothing else in the solar system can match.

The Earth and Moon, from Deep Impact
This image of the Earth and Moon was taken by Deep Impact on May 29, 2008 from a distance of 49,367,340 kilometers (30,675,43 miles). The image was taken with three filters -- blue, green, and orange. It is one frame from a long movie, which you can download here (Quicktime format, 1 MB). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UMD/GSFC

Post this page to:

Comments


Name

E-mail (Will not appear online)

Title

Comment


To prevent automated Bots form spamming, please enter the text you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.

This comment form is powered by GentleSource Comment Script. It can be included in PHP or HTML files and allows visitors to leave comments on the website.

Emily's on Twitter! »