This stunning picture is the first image of Earth ever taken from another planet that shows our home as a planetary disc, with the Moon in the distance.
Captured by Nasa’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter as the spacecraft orbited the Red Planet, both the Earth and the Moon appear as crescents, engulfed in the vast darkness of space.
Our planet is captured in a ‘half-Earth’ phase, while the image also shows the Earth-facing hemisphere of the Moon.
Because the Earth and the Moon are closer to the Sun than Mars, they exhibit phases, just as the Moon, Venus, and Mercury do when viewed from Earth.
When the image was captured in 2007, Earth was 88million miles from Mars, giving the HiRISE image a scale of 88 miles per pixel.
Nasa could only picture the Earth and moon at full disk illumination when they are on the opposite side of the Sun from Mars. However, then the range would be much greater and the image would show less detail.
On the Earth image you can make out the west coast outline of South America at lower right, although the clouds are the dominant features.
This image required a processing, with the Moon image brightened so it would show up next to Earth.
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