So did you get out and Wave at Saturn on The Day the Earth Smiled? If you did (and even if you didn’t) here’s how you — and everyone else on Earth — looked to the Cassini spacecraft in orbit around Saturn, 898.4 million miles away.* As Carl Sagan famously said, “That’s here, that’s home,…
Tag: Earth
Smile, Earth!
Hey everyone! Today, THIS is happening: That’s right — the entire planet will be photographed from Saturn by Cassini, 900 million miles away. So whatever you’re doing at that particular time, take a moment to look up, smile and wave! This will be one for the history books. Read more here.
50 Unbelievable Facts About Earth: an Infographic
Do you know how long a tardigrade can survive in space? How much gold is in seawater? How long it’s been since it rained in Antarctica’s Dry Valleys? There are a whole lot of amazing facts about our planet and this infographic has 50 of them (and while seemingly unbelievable, they’re all true!) See the…
Our Electric Earth at Night: the “Black Marble”
In daylight our big blue marble is all land, oceans and clouds. But the night is electric. This image of North and South America at night is a composite assembled from data acquired by the Suomi NPP satellite in April and October 2012. The new data was mapped over existing Blue Marble imagery of Earth to provide a realistic…
Blue Marble, Pale Blue Dot…whatever you call it, it’s Home
35 years ago today, September 18, 1977, NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft turned its camera homeward just about two weeks after its launch, capturing the image above from a distance of 7.25 million miles (11.66 million km). It was the first time an image of its kind had ever been taken, showing the entire Earth and Moon together…
Goodbye, Earth!
If you haven’t seen this before, you’re probably not alone. It’s a video made from a series of several hundred images acquired by NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft as it swung past Earth, departing forever on its journey to Mercury on August 2, 2005 — just a day shy of one year after its launch. Many blogs…
Canadarm Soars Above Waves of Aurora
Sparked by a coronal mass ejection emitted from a sunspot on July 12, Earth’s aurora leapt into action both at the north and south poles three days later. Here we can see a view of the southern lights, or aurora australis, shimmering in green waves below the Space Station’s Canadarm on July 15. With 7…
Soaring Over a Shadow: An Eclipse Seen From Space
The May 20 annular eclipse, seen by many around the world as a “ring of fire” in the sky, was also seen by the astronauts aboard the ISS — although they also got a great view of the shadow that the Moon cast on the Earth as well! This HD video, a time-lapse made from…
High-Flying Ice Clouds Spotted From Space
Glowing high-altitude ice clouds were spotted over western Asia by the crew of the International Space Station on June 13 during one of their 16 daily orbits of the planet… the photo above shows the wispy filaments shining brightly in the mesosphere above western Iraq and Uzbekistan. Read the rest of this article here.
A Blue Marble Martini – With Extra Ice
This latest portrait of Earth from NASA’s Suomi NPP satellite puts the icy Arctic in the center, showing the ice and clouds that cover our planet’s northern pole. The image you see here was created from data acquired during fifteen orbits of Earth. Read the rest of this article here.
Annular Eclipse Seen From The Moon
The May 20 annular eclipse may have been an awesome sight for skywatchers across many parts of the Earth, but it was also being viewed by a robotic explorer around the Moon! During the event NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter turned its camera to look back home, acquiring several images of the Earth with the Moon’s…
Is Earth Alive?
Proposed by scientists James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis in the 70s, the Gaia theory suggests Earth is a self-supporting singular life form, similar to a cell. The theory claims that, rather than being merely a stage upon which life exists, life — in all forms — works to actively construct an Earthly environment in which it can…
Lights in the Dark 