The crew of the last crewed lunar mission, Apollo 17, took this " blue marble" photo of Earth — one of the most-reproduced images in history , though no one is certain which astronaut took it — from 28, miles away on their trip to the moon.
Africa is visible at the top left of the image, and Antarctica on the bottom. This series of images was taken between p. During a broadcast with Earth, Lovell said: "The vast loneliness is awe-inspiring and it makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth.
Launched by NASA in , LRO normally stares down at the cratered surface of the moon — but took a moment to snap this modern-day "Earthrise" composite photo. Lunar Orbiter 1 took this photo while scouting for places astronauts could land on the moon. Because s technology couldn't access the full depth of image data that NASA had recorded on analog tapes, however, the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project recently recovered this version of the famous image.
The full-size version is large enough to print as a billboard. The "Eagle" lunar module of Apollo 11 as it returns from the surface of the moon. A rare view of the far side of the moon, taken by the China National Space Administration's lunar probe. Its next moon mission: to return a lunar soil sample.
If it succeeds, it will be the first collected since the last Apollo missions in the s. The astronauts Thomas Stafford, John Young, and Eugene Cernan took this video during Apollo 10 , the second crewed mission to the moon — essentially a dry run for Apollo 11 without the landing.
Because the same side of the moon always faces our planet, such "Earthrise" views only happen when a spacecraft is moving. Before spinning wildly out of control on May 7, , it took this composite photo of Earth, as seen across the northern pole of the moon. In May, China launched two small microsatellites, called Longjiang-1 and Longjiang-2, into orbit around the moon.
One of the spacecraft took a stunning photo of Earth and the moon using a Saudi Arabian camera system. The microsatellites were part of a mission to launch a lunar relay satellite called Queqiao, which China will use to communicate with a rover that may be the first to explore the moon's far side. A combination of two photos one of Earth and one of the moon taken by NASA's Mariner 10 spacecraft, which journeyed to Mercury, Venus, and the moon after launching from a repurposed Intercontinental Ballistic Missile.
The moon, which is about one-third as bright as Earth, is closer to the viewer in the foreground. Antarctica is visible in the south pole. NEAR eventually reached Asteroid Eros, began orbiting the space rock, and deployed its Shoemaker lander spacecraft in Most photos of Earth and the moon are artful cut-and-paste composites, since they are so far away from one another. However, this is the first photo of both worlds ever taken in a single frame, when Voyager 1 was 7.
Nearly 5 million miles from Earth, the Mars Express spacecraft snapped this photo on its way to the Red Planet. The satellite has orbited Mars and photographed its surface in 3D since December This infrared photo, taken from 2. The Mars Odyssey spacecraft recorded the image on its way to the Red Planet.
NASA's Juno spacecraft took this shot and many others, which were made into a fantastic animation during its nearly 5-year-long trip to Jupiter. The probe is documenting the gas giant in ways scientists had previously only dreamed of — including the first-ever images of the planet's poles. When the mission wraps up, NASA will plunge Juno into the clouds of Jupiter to prevent contaminating nearby icy moons. This picture was taken , miles away from Earth by a tiny satellite on its way to Mars.
Scientists used the image to check the deployment of an antenna, but two familiar objects appear in the distance: Earth and its moon. About two months after a textbook landing on Mars, the Spirit rover gazed up at the sky to look for Earth — and found it as a tiny dot. Given the Moon's location in the photo and the glint of sunlight on Harrison's visor, my hunch is he was facing north-northeast when Cernan snapped the image. If you are a Moon lover like I am, Saturday October 20th is International Observe the Moon Night , a worldwide celebration of lunar science and exploration.
Italian astronomer Gianluca Masi will offer a live, online observing session where viewers can watch the Moon rise above the Roman skyline. How cool is that? Click here for details. If you have good weather, take a walk some night this week, look up at the Moon and use it to get a better view of the planet you're standing on. Thanks Bob, this is wonderful. I especially appreciate the explanation of the Earth's apparent motion in the sky as seen from the Moon.
The animation is really cool. I wish there was a way to slow it down, so I could figure out which constellations are in the background. I think NASA or somebody should put a video camera right in the middle of the Moon's nearside pointed toward the Earth, and post the live feed on the internet. It would be really popular when the Moon is fully eclipsed as seen from Earth, but I would probably look at it every day, just like I look at the Moon every clear night.
Log in to Reply. Bob King Post Author. Anthony, What a great idea! It's absolutely time for this the next time astronauts go to the Moon. Bob, very good report here.
Reports like this help teach astronomy. If earth is four times bigger than moon why does it look so small from the moon landing photos as in the Apollo 17 landing you show? Shouldn't it look much bigger than a typical moon here on earth? My son did a science project on the moon landing and asks this question and I can't find an answer. Hi Sally, Glad you asked. The full moon is half a degree across. From the moon, Earth appears 3.
While it would clearly appear larger to your eye, you could still fit nearly 3 Earths between the two stars at the end of the bucket of the Big Dipper. So yes, it's bigger but not that big. It doesn't look as large as you'd guess in the photos because the picture was taken with a "normal" lens, similar to what you'd use on Earth.
The apparent size of objects in the sky has everything to do with what lens you use to take the picture. The astronauts used 60mm and 70mm lenses for lunar scenes so the Earth isn't big in the frame. If they had taken a photo of it with a telephoto lens it would appear larger.
If you composed a scene on Earth that included the moon, it would look really small — just a little dot in the frame. The Earth looks larger to MY eye relative to the scene because I've taken lots of pictures of the moon in the sky and have a basis for comparison. If you have a mm focal length lens, you might try a little experiment with the upcoming full moon by taking a photo of a scene that includes the moon in the frame.
You'll get a feel for how small it looks. Bottom line though: Earth's size in a photo depends on what lens you use, making it hard to judge how big it appears unless you're standing there and looking up at it yourself. Bob, I too am a lover of the Moon. I have been fascinated by it since I was a child. I have recently come across some information that has me questioning everything we know about the Moon.
Maybe you can clear some things up for me. First off, how do account for the phases of the Moon always being the same, cycle after cycle? Secondly, how do you account for the convex surface of the Moon being able to reflect sunlight the way it does.
From my teaching and experience, a convex object cannot reflect light in a spread out patter, only a singular, focused point; whereas a concave surface can spread light out just as we observe it.
Third, how do you account for the parallax in the relative positions of the constellations? They never change. If we are hurling through space millions of miles per hour, rotating on a tilted axis why do the stars never change positions?
Fourth question: How do you explain Polaris and time lapse photography clearly showing concentric circles in the night sky? Wouldn't you have to be able to see through miles of land mass anywhere below 89 degrees? Are you familiar with the book? Sorry so long winded, but I have had these questions for some time now and just found your blog today. Please feel free to email me privately at thutchens11 yahoo. Thanks for your time, have a great day! That's a lot of questions!
Here we go: 1. The phases are the same cycle after cycle because the Moon is constantly revolving around the Earth. Just a matter of wash and repeat. I think you might be confusing the Moon with a convex lens. Light passes through a convex lens and focuses at a point. The Moon is also convex approx. When struck by sunlight, its rough surface reflects and scatters light all over the place, so it appears brightly lit. The Sun lights up a soccer ball the same way it does the Moon.
The constellations don't show parallax effects because the stars that comprise them are incredibly far away.
Only over thousands of years, do stellar motions and the Sun's movement around the center of the galaxy accumulate to the point of distorting the constellations' outlines. You could transport someone from ancient Greece to the present, and they'd probably would see no changes unless they were really sharp-eyed observers. In which case they'd notice that Sirius and Arcturus had moved a bit. Earth's north polar axis happens to point in the direction of Polaris.
As the planet spins, stars in the northern half of the sky appear to describe circles around Polaris. Stars closer to Polaris make smaller circles, while stars further away make bigger ones.
Together they make concentric circles as you've seen in time exposure photographs. Pop open an umbrella. The shaft is the Earth's axis and the umbrella the sky. Spin the shaft and guess what happens? The "sky" turns in circles. Both the Southern Cross and Polaris are visible at the same time from the northern tropics in the late spring evening sky. The Southern Cross is low in the south; Polaris is low in the north.
The southern pole star — the equivalent of Polaris — is considerably farther south in the sky than the Southern Cross and below the horizon from the northern tropics. At the equator Polaris sits at the very bottom of the northern sky while Sigma Octantis southern pole star sits at the bottom of the southern sky.
This is as close as you'll get to seeing them together in the same sky, but they're basically invisible for all practical purposes because their altitudes are close to zero degrees. First, a few details. The further north of that you go, the more days of midnight sun. Because the Sun is relatively far from the tiny Earth it shines over a huge area, so there's no looking through land mass. Only if the Sun were impossibly close to Earth and extremely tiny would it be hidden by land.
It is neither. I had not heard of the book before, so I took a quick browse and quickly saw that the author makes a number of fallacious arguments. For instance, his interpretation of the law of refraction when the Moon and Sun are near the horizon is not correct. He is also incorrect when he writes that the shadow of the Moon during a lunar eclipse is not caused by the Earth.
I would take what's written in this book with a large grain of salt. Thank you for your questions! Thank you very much for answering my questions. There is so much information out there on the net that some of it contradicts what I learned in college.
Bob, Sorry to be a bugaboo but I have one last issue that has me perplexed. The very tentative date for that is NASA then hopes to have Artemis 3, a landing mission, touch down in But these dates may change as Artemis 1 is finalized and technology development and funding are further along. The spacesuits for Artemis, for example, appear to be too far behind to make a deadline, according to NASA's inspector general. Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter howellspace.
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