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First Picture Of Earth From Another Planet - Mars

punychicken

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First pictrure of earth from another Mars

image here

A century after H.G. Wells wrote his novel about the invasion of the Earth by Martians, the first photograph of our planet as seen from Mars has been made. It is what Martians would see if they scrutinized the Earth.

The camera aboard NASA's Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft currently orbiting the red planet photographed Earth, the moon and Jupiter, as seen in the evening sky of Mars, at 9 a.m. EDT, May 8, 2003.

"This first-ever image of its kind not only shows Mother Earth as a tiny alien world in the vast darkness of space, but also includes a view of the giant planet Jupiter and some of its larger moons," Malin Space Science Systems (MSSS), of San Diego, which operates the camera aboard MGS, said in a statement accompanying the release of the image.



This is the first image of Earth (top and middle) taken from another planet, with a digitally created reference to show the Earth's position.


"From our Mars orbital-camera perspective, we've spent the last six-and-a-half years staring at Mars right in front of us," said Michael Malin, president and chief scientist of MSSS. "Taking this picture allowed us to look up from that work of exploring Mars and take in a more panoramic view. This image gives us a new perspective on that neighborhood, one in which we can see our own planet as one among many," he said in a statement.

The image showing Earth as a planetary disk—in a "half-Earth" phase—has been specially processed to allow both Earth and the much darker moon to be visible together. The bright area at the top of the image of Earth is cloud cover over central and eastern North America. Below that, a darker area includes Central America and the Gulf of Mexico. The bright feature near the center-right of the crescent Earth consists of clouds over northern South America.

The image also shows the Earth-facing hemisphere of the moon, since the moon was on the far side of Earth as viewed from Mars.

At the time, Earth was 86 million miles (139 million kilometers) from the camera orbiting Mars.

Mars Global Surveyor has been orbiting the red planet since September 1997. The mission has examined the entire martian surface and provided a wealth of information, including high-resolution imagery, about the planet's atmosphere and interior.

(and it looks pretty cool! You can see the moon too!)
 
Earth from Mars

Looks pretty much like Mars seen from Earth in my el-cheapo telescope, only blue-green instead of yellow-red. Still, I put it on my desktop as wallpaper.

By the way--August 27 is marked in my calendar as the most likely date for an Invasion from Mars, because the Red Planet will be closer than it has been in thousands of years--some say as much as 30,000.

Charles Fort made a connection between the proximity of Mars and Venus to Earth and UFO-type phenomena seen in the sky, but he vigourously pooh-poohed the idea that people were actually seeing the bright planets.

Mark your calendar--even without a telescope, August ought to be an interesting time for star-gazing.
 
Re: Earth from Mars

littleblackduck said:
By the way--August 27 is marked in my calendar as the most likely date for an Invasion from Mars, because the Red Planet will be closer than it has been in thousands of years--some say as much as 30,000.

I just mentioned this in another thread -- Whitley Strieber is
predicting a HUGE increase in UFO activity for late summer
for this very reason!

My eyes are skyward... ;)
TVgeek
 
I just mentioned this in another thread -- Whitley Strieber is
predicting a HUGE increase in UFO activity for late summer
for this very reason!

Well, so am I-
but I am afraid that most reports will be poor observations of Mars itself.
In the past I have a number of people of my aquaintance see the Angry planet and imagine they were seeing a spaceship-

when it is big,and red, in the warm summer sky-
just wait and see.
 
I think I remember that Fort collected data that he said could show a relationship between close conjunctions and earthquakes? I had heard somewhere that this was going to be the closest conjunction in a long time. (~century iirc).

Also, August 27th would still be considered to be in the dog days, right? So we have Mars and Sirius both prominent in the sky at the same time. Whoooooooo!
 
Fantastic, punychicken, thanks! According to space.com Mars will be the closest to Earth than in 60,000 years. The mind boggles. Shining at -2.9 magnitude, not quite Venus...but yeah, I smell lotsa UFO reports. Both Well(e)s, H.G. and Orson, will surely be smiling, wherever they are.:)
 
Philo T said:
I think I remember that Fort collected data that he said could show a relationship between close conjunctions and earthquakes?
Because gravity is an inverse square law, the effect of Mars on Earth (even at its closest) is only a squillionth of the effect of the Moon and Sun (in that order).

Yes, there will be earthquakes at conjunction - because there are earthquakes every day. :rolleyes:
 
rynner:

I made no claims about the actual causal effect. And you are correct in pointing out that the conventionally understood gravitational forces seem unlikely to be such a cause.

I'm pretty sure Fort (with his "data set", ie the newspaper archives at the British library), claimed to see some relationship between conjunctions and earthquakes. (He also talks about increased incidence of what we would nowadays categorize as "ufo sightings").


I throw this in with Vallee's "Wednesday" effect for UFO sightings. Currently no explanation, just noting what the raw data tells us. Gives us an idea of where to look.


Your point about the commoness of earthquakes does make me question the whole idea. I'm sure that in earlier days, there wasn't such comprehensive global monitoring. We'd have to go back and see if there is an increase in earthquake frequency and or severity. It could very well just be a matter of the reporting mechanism and selective focus.


lopka:
Yes, look for UFO reports. I suspect that most would be due to unusual brightness of the planet in the sky. Also, if the earthquake data does follow what I mentioned, we could also be seeing earthlights from increased geological stresses.

(Damn, I also recall Fort noting that UFO reports presage earthquakes. No, really. Now I wish I had online searchable copies of "Lo!" and "New Lands".)
 
rynner:
Thanks for the reminder!

Ok, so a quick : google turns up three chapters in "New Lands", which deal more with aerial objects than earthquakes.

A quick browsing of some of the chapters of "Lo!" and "New Lands" leads me to the conclusion that a lot of the sources often refer to "earthquakes" when describing indeterminate rumbles and boomings. What us modern sophisticates :D would class as sonic booms rather than sesmic activity. (And I'm sure future superintelligent ants will immediately recognize as "temporal backlash".)

Fort seems to try to tie aerial objects, falls of "stuff", and booms/earthquakes to conjunctions of Venus / Mars. But a lot of the situations seem to be "maybes" to me, often occuring weeks prior / post conjunction. Possibly "The War of the Worlds" gave Fort the idea that Martians would be shooting across their invasion fleet during conjunctions.

Of course, reviewing the texts serves as a good reminder that Mr. F would try on some pretty ludicrous theories on for size, many of which would be indefensible today.
 
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