Another "Pale Blue Dot" photo

[Kilmeister]

I always love these. This time it's Curiosity who gets to join this photo club. There's a full rez picture on the JPL site, but it's nowhere near as photogenic as the recent Cassini photo.

http://news.discovery.com/space/curiosity-photographs-earth-and-moon-from-mars-140206.htm

[Albert VDS]

Earth, the Martian evening star.

[K^2]

That's something I've never even thought about, but yeah, Earth and Moon actually have sufficient separation and brightness to appear as two distinct objects even to a naked eye as viewed from Mars. Can you imagine what sort of stories and legends this would have sparked in primitive star-gazing cultures? Two "stars" that move through the skies, but always stay very close together.

[Scotius]

I wonder if Earth really is blue(-ish?) when seen from this distance? Photo looks this way, but as we all know photos sent from deep space often come in false colours.

[ZetaX]

Yes it should be blue-ish, but only in the same way that mars is red-ish if seen from earth.

[lajoswinkler]

Martian nights do come in bluish tints, and yes, Earth would have a bluish tint ZetaX described.

[Exoscientist]

That's something I've never even thought about, but yeah, Earth and Moon actually have sufficient separation and brightness to appear as two distinct objects even to a naked eye as viewed from Mars. Can you imagine what sort of stories and legends this would have sparked in primitive star-gazing cultures? Two "stars" that move through the skies, but always stay very close together.

Good point. Also is that a real disk visible in that blown up photo or just fuzziness of the blown up image?

Bob Clark

[lajoswinkler]

It's a compression artifact. That camera doesn't have enough resolution or optical zoom to pick up an actual disc.

It would be cool to see a timelapse video of Moon rotating around Earth from Mars. Every sol one image. After 30 sols, a nice clip. It could be done.