Earth and Moon seen from Saturn and Mercury vantage points

摘要

Mid-July was an extraordinary time for Earthlings. On the 19th, two distant NASA spacecraft took a picture of our planet, while people worldwide were invited to wave and smile as the photographs were taken. MESSENGER, orbiting Mercury, captured the Earth and the Moon as a pair of bright star-like features. At the time of the photo, MESSENGER was 98 million kilometres from Earth. The spacecraft took the image as part of a campaign to search for natural satellites of Mercury, which is not known to have moons.