NASA Encourages Earthlings to Wave at Saturn as NASA’s Cassini Prepares to Photograph the Earth

 All you space lovers say "cheese!!" as you stand a chance to be captured by not one but two of NASA's spacecrafts - 'Cassini' and 'MESSENGER'.

NASA is encouraging Earthlings to participate in some cosmic fun by looking and waving in the direction of Saturn Friday, as two NASA spacecrafts, one studying the Saturn system and the other observing Mercury, are scheduled to take photos of Earth as they move into place on July 19 and 20.

The photograph of the blue planet will be taken from Saturn system by NASA's Cassini spacecraft and this will occur between 2.27 and 2.42 PDT, Friday 19 July when Cassini will be located at a distance of 900 million miles away from the blue planet. This indicates that Earth will occupy a pixel.

"While Earth will be only about a pixel in size from Cassini's vantage point 898 million (1.44 billion kilometers) away, the team is looking forward to giving the world a chance to see what their home looks like from Saturn. We hope you'll join us in waving at Saturn from Earth, so we can commemorate this special opportunity," said Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif.

The multi image portrait of the Saturn system that will be composed by Cassini is designed for a special purpose. The image captured will have Earth next to Saturn and its rings that will be a part of a mosaic or multi-image portraits in which our blue planet will appear as a small pale blue dot between the Saturn rings. Cassini will take nearly 15 pictures of the Earth that would start from 5.27 p.m. EDT as Saturn will be eclipsing the sun from Cassini's point of view.

This is not the first time that Cassini will be composing eclipse mosaics of Saturn along with its rings, it had done so previously in the year 2006 and 2012. But what is unique this time is that it will be captured in its natural blue color.

The portrait is extensive as it is backlit by the sun, highlighting the tiniest of ring particles that will allow the scientists to view the patterns within Saturn's dusty rings. It will take a few days to process the images of Earth while it will take several weeks to process the entire Saturn system mosaic.

On the other hand, inspired in part by the Cassini team plan to capture pictures of the blue planet, scientists monitoring NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft re-examined the spacecraft's planned observations as it orbits Mercury. They noticed that Earth coincidentally might appear in some images taken while it searches for natural satellites around Mercury on July 19 and 20 between 4:49 a.m., 5:38 a.m. and 6:41 a.m. PDT.

Parts that are not illuminated in Cassini images such as Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia will appear illuminated in the MESSENGER images, which will take a few days to process before it could be released.