Earth as seen from Akatsuki's UV camera

Filed under pretty pictures, pics of Earth by planetary missions, Earth, Akatsuki (Planet-C)

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As Akatsuki sped away from Earth, it captured "First Light" images with its optical instruments pointed at its home planet in an extreme UV phase. This view is from the UVI camera, which captures images at a near-ultraviolet wavelength of 365 nanometers.

JAXA / ISAS

The photos were taken at around 20:50 on May 21 (I think that is Japan time, so it would be 11:50 UT if that were true). At the time, Akatsuki was about 250,000 kilometers from Earth, which subtended about 3 degres of its field of view.

Here are views from the other two instruments.

JAXA / ISAS

Earth as seen from Akatsuki's IR1 camera

As Akatsuki sped away from Earth, it captured "First Light" images with its optical instruments pointed at its home planet in an extreme crescent phase. This view is from the IR1 camera, which captures images at a near-infrared wavelength of 0.9 microns.

JAXA / ISAS

Earth as seen from Akatsuki's LIR camera

As Akatsuki sped away from Earth, it captured "First Light" images with its optical instruments pointed at its home planet in an extreme crescent phase. This view is from the LIR or Longwave IR camera, which captures images at a wavelength of 10 microns.