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Curiosity Sees 'Evening Star' Earth

Posted: Fri Feb 07, 2014 10:03 pm
by MargaritaMc
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA17936
JPL/NASA: This view of the twilight sky and Martian horizon taken by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover includes Earth as the brightest point of light in the night sky. Earth is a little left of center in the image, and our moon is just below Earth. Two annotated versions of this image are also available in Figures 1 and 2.
Researchers used the left eye camera of Curiosity's Mast Camera (Mastcam) to capture this scene about 80 minutes after sunset on the 529th Martian day, or sol, of the rover's work on Mars (Jan. 31, 2014). The image has been processed to remove effects of cosmic rays.

A human observer with normal vision, if standing on Mars, could easily see Earth and the moon as two distinct, bright "evening stars."

The distance between Earth and Mars when Curiosity took the photo was about 99 million miles (160 million kilometers).
Click to play embedded YouTube video.
Uploaded on 6 Feb 2014
The Mars Science Laboratory captured imagery of the brightest object in its twilight sky, Earth and its orbiting Moon. The rover's Mast Camera imaged them on January 31st, 2014, its 529th day on the Red Planet.

Read more about it here: Space.com

Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech

Re: Curiosity Sees 'Evening Star' Earth

Posted: Sat Feb 08, 2014 1:56 am
by Beyond
I couldn't see the moon even with a magnifying glass, although the earth showed right up, once it zoomed in.

Re: Curiosity Sees 'Evening Star' Earth

Posted: Sat Feb 08, 2014 2:53 am
by neufer
Beyond wrote:
I couldn't see the moon even with a magnifying glass, although the earth showed right up, once it zoomed in.
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2014/02050918-curiosity-earthset.html wrote:
Looking Backward: Curiosity gazes upon the setting Earth
By Emily Lakdawalla, Planetary Society, 2014/02/05
<<One of the amateurs (who goes by a pseudonym, fredk) noticed a tiny dot preceding Earth in the setting motion. Could that be the Moon? Let's do the numbers. A look at the solar system simulator shows that the Moon was very nearly as far from Earth as it gets at the time of the observation -- 360,000 kilometers from Earth. At the same time, Earth is relatively far from Mars, about 159 million kilometers. So Earth and the Moon were separated by about (360k/159000k)=2.3 milliradians. The angular resolution of the Mastcam-100 is 0.074 milliradians. So they should be separated by 30 pixels. I measure 25. Could be the Moon, though the math didn't work out quite as close as I'd've liked it to. Stacking the images together, fredk achieved this view of Earth and the Moon, as seen by a telephoto camera mounted on the head of a rover built on Earth but sitting on Mars.>>

Re: Curiosity Sees 'Evening Star' Earth

Posted: Sat Feb 08, 2014 3:58 am
by Beyond
Ah, there it is, barely. Thanks neufer.

Beyond has stolen the Space Modulator

Posted: Sat Feb 08, 2014 1:23 pm
by neufer
Click to play embedded YouTube video.

Re: Curiosity Sees 'Evening Star' Earth

Posted: Sat Feb 08, 2014 1:34 pm
by Beyond
ha-ha, Bugs always seems to have the last woird on everything. :yes:

Re: Curiosity Sees 'Evening Star' Earth

Posted: Sat Feb 08, 2014 1:52 pm
by JimWWhite
Hey, let's see if we can make it a priority to see the full-sized pic on APOD that we can zoom in on of Earth and the Moon. It's got to be better than a missing crater or whatever you have planned for tomorrow.

Re: Curiosity Sees 'Evening Star' Earth

Posted: Sat Feb 08, 2014 3:15 pm
by neufer
http://astrobob.areavoices.com/2012/08/10/what-does-earth-look-like-from-mars/ wrote:
Curiosity snaps 1st photos of Earth and moon from Mars
Astrobob, February 7, 2014

<<The pictures were made on Jan. 31, 2014 from the sandy dunes of Dingo Gap inside Gale Crater and show the Earth setting in the evening sky over the crater’s rim. If you could be there in person, the home planet would appear as a pale blue “star” shining at magnitude -1, a little fainter than Sirius, the brightest star in the skies of both planets. The moon would also be visible very close to the planet and much fainter at around magnitude 2.7. Observers with keen vision might see the two tightly-spaced worlds with the naked eye, but a pair of binoculars would come in handy for most of us.>>

Re: Curiosity Sees 'Evening Star' Earth

Posted: Sat Feb 08, 2014 3:35 pm
by Beyond
A brilliant blue earth :?: I can almost see Ann trying to get a booking on the first flight to mars. :yes: