http://www.universetoday.com/71503/messenger-looks-back-at-the-earth-and-moon/

Seems to tick all the boxes – its easily the closest match so far – although there’s a slight issue in that it wasn’t posted by the BA on the Bad Astronomy blog but by the Universe Today one instead so I’m still not 100% certain on this – 95% maybe! Guess only Román can tell us for sure.

Thanks to (#24) Buckley on the “favourite new lunar eclipse image” (December 22nd, 2010 11:59 a.m.) thread for that.

The only picture I’m missing from both lists is the one of the Earth and the Moon taken from Mercury orbit by… I can’t remember..

But nup, nothing.

Beats me as there seems to be no such photo simultaeously :

1) Showing earth and Moon together
2) Taken this year (or justpossibly very late 2009?) &
3) From a spacecraft (relatively) near Mercury.

Does anyone have any idea which photo Román might’e been meaning? Because I could sure use some help tracking it down! Please?

“How in all the Cosmic Gulfs of Space did that photo not get in the top 24, BA!?”

Precisely. The new Hubble close-up of M66 is my favorite APOD of all time. It’s my wallpaper, and I’d love to find a good poster of it.

Don’t what exactly makes it so gorgeous – the galaxy’s rakish angle, the wash of hot-white stars seen through and (apparently) beneath the pinwheels of dust, the clusters of glowing red stars… just a beautiful, beautiful picture.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/06/11/the-cloudy-warming-earth/

Of cloudy milky Earth seen from the GOES satellite back on June 11th 2010?

Or the Deep Impact of glinting EPOXI, er water here :

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/01/07/a-glint-from-earth/

Taken from a greater distance back at the very start of this year on the 7th Jan?

Or just maybe this :

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/02/25/happy-anniversary-terra/

Global mosic and multiple Earth’s seen from the artificial Terra in the sky from February?

Any of these the one you were thinking of, Román? Guess if naught else it might’ve eliminated some possibilities ..

Durn this nagging curiosity! I won’t be able to sleep till I know now!

Yeah, I missed the picture from ISS in your first list. The only picture I’m missing from both lists is the one of the Earth and the Moon taken from Mercury orbit by… I can’t remember the spacecraft’s name,

Or wait .. Aha! It wasn’t anywhere near Mercury but there might’ve been an image taken by the Rosetta spaceprobe like that this year.

Let’s see .. There’s this :

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2007/11/20/earth-from-rosetta/

Great image incl. my hometown but, er, taken in 2007. So nup, can’t be.

Then there’s this :

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/11/12/rosetta-takes-some-home-pictures/

Crescent Earth one which being Nov. 2009 made last years “BA’s best images” list rather than this years.

But, wait, nothing matching your description via Rosetta this year but there was this one via the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter :

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/09/16/from-the-moon-to-the-earth/

Which the BA raved about but I must admit left me rather cold. Hey, tastes differ I guess.

Yeah, I missed the picture from ISS in your first list. The only picture I’m missing from both lists is the one of the Earth and the Moon taken from Mercury orbit by… I can’t remember the spacecraft’s name, but I think that is an awesome pic, and that the fact that it can be taken is just as awesome.

You mean MESSENGER surely? :

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/messenger/main/

It’s not technically in Mercurian (Hermean? Hephaistosean?) orbit yet but it is well on the way to being the first spaceprobe to ever do so and is only the second after Mariner 10 to visit the innermost planet having flown past that world two or three times already.

However, I can’t seem to find any post about MESSENGER imaging our Earth & Moon this year by the BA on it despite this long and rather odd listing in the “search” box:

http://discovermagazine.com/search?SearchableText=MESSENGER&Submit.x=36&Submit.y=12

About the closest thing to I can see is this old BA blog entry :

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2006/04/20/messenger-moves-off/

from back in April 2006 of its slingshot pass by Earth. [Puzzled.]

Please can you elaborate further?

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/06/21/gravitys-galactic-brushstrokes/

bu, indeed, pretty much my fave of all-time.

How in all the Cosmic Gulfs of Space did that photo not get in the top 24, BA!?

[Shakes head in bafflement.]

Personally, I’d also have opted for this one :

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/09/20/pluto-wanders-into-a-messier-situation/

Of Pluto in the rich starfield of Messier 24 and dark nebulae Barnard 92 and 93 taken 2010 September 20th as well as this incredible one :

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/08/05/saturn-and-the-nearest-star/

Of Saturn and Alpha Centauri captured togther by Cassini on the 5th of August 2010.

But I suppose it shows how much we’re all different and have our own subjective ideas and preferences.

Although there’s still so many more breath-taking one’s that could’ve made the cut this year.

And the high-res ( click on the picture ) is the original dark one. Much more dramatic.

But still, I dream of the stars. I hope and dream for footprints and flags and colonies amongst the crimson dunes, for nanotube elevators 101,000 km high, and interstellar flights to alien earths. My hopes are probably worthless in the light of the aforementioned problems, but I’ve dreamed of it all my life. Even if the economics, politics, and rationale argue against colonization, I still dream. And I hope that we and our children can still make at least some of that dream come true.

Ad astra per aspera.

and yet, when I see that photo, I can only hear “paf!”

I played around with the original “ISS copula” image to improve the lightning and colors without introducing noise: http://www.astrokraai.nl/dump/ba_astronaut_iss.jpg

I don’t. People can’t drive well on the ground, between painted lines, and with helpful signs posted all about them. I would live every moment in terror if they could fly their SUVs over my house.

Oh and ditto on having the cupola picture as a desktop image for that “space traveler looking back at her home planet” vibe. Which is just what it is, of course.