The ESA spacecraft Rosetta swings past the Earth in a few hours, but look at what it did when it was still 630,000 km (400,000 miles) from home:
Sigh. So lovely.
Rosetta took an image every hour for 24 hours; they’re making a movie which will be online soon. That should be spectacular!
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The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking, movie reviews, and all that) can be found here.
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November 12th, 2009 at 10:12 pm
Any idea what part of the Earth we’re looking at here?
November 12th, 2009 at 10:56 pm
The night side?
(Kidding!)
I think I see an ice cap on the far left, Antarctica or Greenland?
November 12th, 2009 at 11:16 pm
The oceans! That’s most of “Earth” o’course.
@ 2. PlasticRectangle Says:
The night side?
Yes – but not *all* of it’s night side – there’s are strip there that’s experiencing sunrise or sunset and a strip where its dusk / dawn /early morn / late evening depending on direction.
Awesome crescent Earth – I love seeing our globe as a planet with phases!
I’m looking forward to the movie!
THX for sharing this with us all BA & thanks for your marvellous work to all the Rosetta operators, engineers and other folks.
November 12th, 2009 at 11:16 pm
@Levi:
Tsk tsk for not reading the ESA page.
It says the following about the image:
“Three images with an orange, green, and blue filter were combined to create this one. The illuminated crescent is centered roughly around the South Pole (South at the bottom of the image). The outline of Antarctica is visible under the clouds that form the striking south-polar vortex. Pack ice in front of the coastline with its strong spectacular reflection is the cause for the very bright spots on the image.”
And Phil, thank you so much for posting about this. That image made my day. Utter gorgeous.
November 12th, 2009 at 11:21 pm
Deleted by author; Brett from Canada beat me to it.
November 12th, 2009 at 11:29 pm
I can see a huge poster of this with the words “Home sweet home!” emblazoned across the bottom.
Beautiful sight.
Followed in my mind by a scary one: The amount of Earth that’s illuminated here that thin crescent could well symbolise the ratio of our planet’s human population that’s enlightened by science and reason and living in luxurious Western style vs those teeming massses on Earth that are metaphorically “in the dark” struggling on with lives shadowed by crushing 3rd world poverty, ignorance and superstition.
Sorry – hope I didn’t spoil it for anyone.
We can always hope that as the world turns so Sagan’s metaphorical science ” as a candle in the dark” casts it light into more and more folks lives until everyone is standing in the light & the darkness of poverty, circumstance and superstition has been abolished making us all more equal and better off.
@ 5. IVAN3MAN AT LARGE Says:
Deleted by author; Brett from Canada beat me to it.
Can’t speak for everyone here I guess, but I wouldn’t have minded a slight bit of repetition there. You didn’t have to delete it y’know. Not in my book. A PS “Durn Brett beat me to it.” would’ve sufficed.
November 12th, 2009 at 11:44 pm
Hi, be sure to follow the Livestream of today’s Rosetta Earth swingby event live from ESA/ESOC, Darmstadt Germany: http://www.livestream.com/eurospaceagency
November 13th, 2009 at 12:00 am
Reminds me of a couple of quotes:
{On space Exploration / terraforming Venus}
“Earth will benefit in the end, and not just because there’s a new world to go to, but because of what we’ll learn.”
- Page 237, ‘Venus of Dreams’, Pamela Sargent, Bantam, 1986.
& noting the lack of artificial human borders here there’s this one from Isaac Asimov himself :
“The Earth should not be cut up into hundreds of different sections, each inhabited by a self-defined segment of humanity that considers its own welfare and its own “national security” to be paramount above all other considerations. … There are no nations! There is only humanity. And if we don’t come to understand that right soon, there will be no nations, because there will be no humanity.”
- Isaac Asimov, Pages 419-421, ‘ I Asimov : A Memoir’, Chapter 7 : ‘Anti-Semitism’, Bantam Books, 1995.
(Emphasis added.)
I’m afraid that one is a bit political but still I think its true & worth sayin’..
PS. Happy Friday 13th y’all!
November 13th, 2009 at 12:16 am
The ESA spacecraft Rosetta swings past the Earth in a few hours, but look at what it did when it was still 630,000 km (400,000 miles) from home:
Er .. Phil wouldn’t we need another nearby spaceprobe monitoring the Rosetta one to observe what *it*, ie. the Rosetta spacecraft itself, did?
We can’t really see what Rosetta *did* (how do you photograph the act of taking a photograph? Esp. when the “photographer” is a spaceprobe that pretty much always looks the same?) – but we sure can enjoy the results!
November 13th, 2009 at 1:22 am
I wonder if there is intelligent life there?
November 13th, 2009 at 1:29 am
It. Is. Gorgeous.
November 13th, 2009 at 3:26 am
That looks so beautiful!
We should go there one day.
November 13th, 2009 at 3:29 am
@ Nomen Publicus (9) -
Depends how you define intelligence.
From The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:
Man had always considered himself to be more intelligent than the dolphins because he had achieved so much – the wheel, New York, wars, and so on – while all the dolphins ever did was muck about in the water having a good time. Curiously, the dolphins considered themselves to be more intelligent than man for exactly the same reasons.
November 13th, 2009 at 3:48 am
[...] Rosetta takes home some pictures — Bad Astronomy with some serious wow factor. [...]
November 13th, 2009 at 3:54 am
An interesting planet. It seems very Earth-like.
November 13th, 2009 at 4:19 am
Gorgeous photo!
November 13th, 2009 at 4:23 am
[...] http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/11/12/rosetta-takes-some-home-pictures/ [...]
November 13th, 2009 at 4:39 am
our small blue dot is lovely
November 13th, 2009 at 4:56 am
Darn. They caught me while I was blinking. Awesome photo that will have to played around with a bit and I’ll have a new desktop background. Thanks
November 13th, 2009 at 5:18 am
Nice pic.
1 photo every hour for 24 hours. So 24 or 25 frames. At a standard-ish frame rate that video will be 1 second long.
Do you have those numbers correct? Are they going to interpolate some extra frames somehow?
November 13th, 2009 at 6:03 am
At 50 earth diameters the view is just a bit over 1 degree (whereas the moon and sun appear to be about 0.5 degrees across from earth). That’s still better than any camera I have. What is the angular field of view of the instrument and what is the angle subtended by a pixel? I’m just curious since I have no idea how close the bird is meant to get as it photographs its target.
November 13th, 2009 at 6:52 am
That surely is a pretty-looking planet. Wonder who lives there, and if they realise how lucky they are?
November 13th, 2009 at 7:03 am
Yeah… You think that is spectacular?
I’ve started work at the Swedish Institute of Space Physics, which new job is both keeping me busy and provide daily-fresh, intense-close-up data from Rosetta and other probes. [Not that I work with that, more's the pity.] The other day Anders throw up some spectacular fresh and raw Rosetta Langmuir Probe data on the coffee table.
[Takes another look at the image] … oooh, but that is lovely.
You win.
November 13th, 2009 at 8:14 am
Earth certainly is a sight to behold.
November 13th, 2009 at 8:41 am
Slartibartfast would be proud.
November 13th, 2009 at 9:22 am
Why are there no lights visible? Are South America / Africa / Australia (whichever might be facing the camera) really that dark? I’d think at least the orange filter would let some signs of civilization through.
November 13th, 2009 at 9:47 am
“Frightfully damn pretty,” to quote Monty Python.
November 13th, 2009 at 9:50 am
Thanks for the new desktop wallpaper.
November 13th, 2009 at 9:52 am
And over at Blake Stacys’s blog: (Slightly NSFsmallchildren.)
Boombya-Boombya-Boombya-Boombya
November 13th, 2009 at 10:26 am
I’m beginning to think the Earth isn’t flat after all.
November 13th, 2009 at 10:29 am
^^ I know! It’s obviously crescent-shaped, and we all live in Antarctica
November 13th, 2009 at 10:45 am
Ah, my new desktop background.
November 13th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
Brock @26
Short exposure time to prevent overexposure of the south pole. The same thing why we can’t see the stars on the Apollo Moon photos
Some more here: http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEM8KIHVY1G_index_0.html
November 13th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
You are here.. somewhere.
J/P=?
November 13th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
Thanks Fritriac, I figured it was something simple like that
November 14th, 2009 at 4:21 am
It’s a beautiful planet we live on. Would be a shame to ruin it.
November 15th, 2009 at 11:40 am
What a shot. Where can I buy this camera?
November 15th, 2009 at 8:48 pm
All I can say is that I’m freakin’ stoked to be living in this age of space flight.
November 16th, 2009 at 8:00 pm
What’s the bet this will be one of the BA’s top ten photos of 2009?
June 2nd, 2010 at 9:52 pm
So, did a movie ever get made from these photos?
June 3rd, 2010 at 2:28 pm
Who said planet earth. This is space ship earth. And all its little inhabitants. In a vast
cosmic wonder speeding along waiting for a incounter with other life like beings.
Hope fully more civilized then us. And they take pity on us. And rescue those that
want pease. Beautiful picture.