Earth and moon

Image of the Day… Earth and Moon as Seen From Mercury !!!

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MESSENGER spacecraft sees lunar eclipse from Mercury

The MESSENGER spacecraft, now orbiting Mercury, caught the images to make this movie of last Wednesday’s lunar eclipse. See Earth and moon from Mercury!

Earth and Moon from Mercury orbit, with Moon entering eclipse. Imaged on Wednesday, October 8, 2014 by MESSENGER, a spacecraft in orbit around Mercury.

The MESSENGER spacecraft – which has been orbiting the sun’s innermost planet Mercury since 2011 – made this movie of the the Hunter’s Moon passing into the Earth’s shadow on October 8, 2014. The movie consists of 31 MDIS NAC (Mercury Dual Imaging System Narrow Angle Camera) frames taken two minutes apart from 09:18 UTC to 10:18 UTC on October 8. MESSENGER made the movie from a distance of 107 million kilometers / 66 million miles.

Notice the orientation of bright side of Earth. Earth’s shadow always extends in the direction opposite this bright side – or day side – approximately 1,400,000 kilometers / 1,000,000 miles into space. On October 8, the moon passed into the shadow, causing the eclipse.

The images have been enlarged 2 times and the moon brightened 25 times. The Earth was five pixels wide and the Moon one pixel wide.

The Earth – moon pair appeared in front of the constellation Aries, near the border of the constellation Pisces, as seen from Mercury.

The Earth was very bright magnitude minus 4.38 and the Moon was magnitude minus 0.03.

Read more from Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society

Bottom line: The MESSENGER spacecraft, now orbiting Mercury, caught the images to make this movie of last Wednesday’s lunar eclipse. See Earth and moon from Mercury!

SOURCE:::: earthskynews

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Image of the Day…First Ever Photo Of Earth and Moon in a Single Frame !!!

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Here is the first-ever photo of the Earth and moon in a single frame. Voyager 1 took the photo on September 18, 1977, when it was 7.25 million miles (11.66 million kilometers) from Earth. Image Number: P-19891 via NASA/JPL

September 18, 1977. Previous images had shown a part of the Earth, and a part of the moon, together. But – until this image by Voyager 1, taken on today’s date 37 years ago – we had never seen the Earth and moon as whole worlds in space, in the same frame and in color. Can you imagine how the image affected people, at the time? It was a stunning revelation.

Voyager 1 left Earth on September 5, 1977. It lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida aboard a Titan-Centaur rocket.

It was 11.66 million kilometers (7.25 million miles) from Earth – directly above Mount Everest, on the night side of the planet – when it captured this image.

Today, Voyager 1 still communicates with NASA’s Deep Space Network. It receives routine commands and returns data. Both Voyager 1 and 2 are currently in the heliosheath – the outermost layer of the heliosphere, or sphere of our sun’s influence. In that part of space, the solar wind is slowed by the pressure of interstellar gas, that is, the gas between the stars.

Voyager 1 is currently the farthest earthly spacecraft from Earth.

Source::::Earth sky news

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