NASA’s Cassini Beams Back Stunning Pictures of Earth and Moon From Space

NASA's Cassini spacecraft beamed back stunning pictures of Earth captured on July 19 from Saturn and Mercury. Our home appears as a bright dot of light from millions of miles away in space.

The photographs of Earth taken from unusual vantage points on July 19 reveal Earth as a mere speck in the vast universe.  This is the first time that the highest resolution camera of Cassini spacecraft captured Earth and its moon as two distinct objects.

A set of colored images of the Earth along with its moon was taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft from Saturn at a distance of 900 million miles (1.5 billion kilometres) away from Earth. Apart from the colored images, a black and white image of Earth was taken by MESSENGER, the first probe to orbit Mercury, from a distance of 61 million miles (98 million kilometres) as a part of the campaign to hunt for the natural satellites of the planet.

The images produced by Cassini, show Earth and the moon as mere specks where Earth appears as pale blue and the moon appears as a stark white object that is seen in between the Saturn's rings.

"We can't see individual continents or people in this portrait of Earth, but this pale blue dot is a succinct summary of who we were on July 19. Cassini's picture reminds us how tiny our home planet is in the vastness of space, and also testifies to the ingenuity of the citizens of this tiny planet to send a robotic spacecraft so far away from home to study Saturn and take a look-back photo of Earth," Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist, at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., said in a press statement.

It is difficult to capture pictures of Earth from the outer solar system as the sun can damage the camera. Thanks to the orbital geometry, this time Cassini succeeded in taking the images because the sun had shifted behind Saturn for a while and most of the sun's light was blocked by the planet.

On the other hand, in the image produced by MESSENGER, Earth and moon look extremely large as they are overexposed. In reality they are not more than 1 pixel each (from that vantage point).

"It thrills me to no end that people all over the world took a break from their normal activities to go outside and celebrate the interplanetary salute between robot and maker that these images represent," said Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team lead at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo. "The whole event underscores for me our 'coming of age' as planetary explorers."

To make this occasion even more special, last week, NASA had urged the earthlings to participate in the cosmic fun by looking and waving in the direction of Saturn.

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