Interplanetary Earth

Interplanetary Earth
On July 19, 2013, Earth was photographed from two other planets in the Solar System: the innermost planet, Mercury, and the ringed gas giant, Saturn. This was the first time that an interplanetary photograph of Earth was taken on the same day. The image on the left depicts Earth as a pale blue dot situated just below the rings of Saturn. This image was captured by the robotic Cassini spacecraft, which was then orbiting the outermost gas giant. On that same day, individuals across the globe captured numerous images of Saturn. On the right, the Earth-Moon system is observed against the dark background of space as captured by the sunward MESSENGER spacecraft, which was then in Mercury orbit. MESSENGER captured the image as part of a search for small natural satellites of Mercury, moons that would be expected to be quite dim. In the MESSENGER image, the brighter Earth and Moon are both overexposed and shine brightly with reflected sunlight. Both Cassini and MESSENGER have since retired from their missions of Solar System exploration, having fulfilled their intended purpose.

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