The Earth and Moon, as seen from Mars
Cool image time! The image above, a composite of four separate Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter pictures, was taken on November 20, 2016.
Each was separately processed prior to combining them so that the moon is bright enough to see. The moon is much darker than Earth and would barely be visible at the same brightness scale as Earth. The combined view retains the correct sizes and positions of the two bodies relative to each other.
The reddish region on Earth is Australia, with Antarctica the bright white area below that.
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Cool image time! The image above, a composite of four separate Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter pictures, was taken on November 20, 2016.
Each was separately processed prior to combining them so that the moon is bright enough to see. The moon is much darker than Earth and would barely be visible at the same brightness scale as Earth. The combined view retains the correct sizes and positions of the two bodies relative to each other.
The reddish region on Earth is Australia, with Antarctica the bright white area below that.
Readers!
My annual February birthday fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now over. Thank you to everyone who donated or subscribed. While not a record-setter, the donations were more than sufficient and slightly above average.
As I have said many times before, I can’t express what it means to me to get such support, especially as no one is required to pay anything to read my work. Thank you all again!
For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Just way too cool. Summertime in Antarctica.
If you use a program like Stellarium, you can change you location to Mars and then set it to view the Earth, as seen from Mars. Then plug in the date May 11, 1984 you can view a simulation of the Earth and the Moon transiting the Sun together.
The Moon is TINY and very far from the Earth!
The above image was taken when the Earth and Moon were close to the same alignment, as seen from the orbiter, or they cropped out a lot of ‘space’ between them.
Still a view I’d like to see from my own telescope, from Mars!
BSJ: They admit that the Earth and Moon were taken in different images and then placed near each other, aligned correctly but much closer than they would be seen in real life. Read the link I provided.
I’ve never understood why the Moon is so bright white when seen from Earth, but so dark when imaged from space.
It doesn’t say that at all.
“The combined view retains the correct sizes and positions of the two bodies relative to each other.”
I just ran the simulation of the view through Stellarium for Nov. 20. and it shows that the Earth and Moon were in near alignment as seen from Mars. About 52″ of separation. Matching the image…
The 1986 simulation had about 12′ of separation. The Earth had an apparent diameter of 32.7″ and the Moon 8.9″. The view is similar to what I saw in the most recent transits of Venus and Mercury, but combined.
BSJ: I stand corrected. And am actually thrilled to discover this is how the Earth and Moon actually appear from Mars. I had been under the impression that they are generally too far apart to get a photo of both at the same time.
Question on these NASA pictures:
Do they release the associated meta-data (or “EXIF” data) for these pictures?
Even my little digital camera, produces all sorts of data on focal-length, shutter speed, ISO value, bit-depth, pixels, color balance, etc. It even tags the GPS coordinates if I have that function turned on.
BSJ– good deal on the Stellarium software! Appreciate your leg-work.
Yeah, I should have run the Nov. 20 simulation before. Rather than just relying on memory of the 1968 transit image…
The Moon is about 30 Earth diameters away from Earth. But this image can have been taken when the Earth is between Mars and the Moon (since the Moon is a bit more than half lit). The Moon’s inclination is about 5 and Mars’ about 2 degrees. So the Moon being about two Earth diameters below Earth in the image, is reasonable given that its actual distance from Earth is 30 dE.
Imagine that the Moon has only 1.2% of the Mass of Earth, it is a small little world! Still, moons don’t get larger than this. There’s a complicated explanation for the upper size limit of moons in the Solar system. When they formed out of the stuff in the protostellar disk, they spiraled into their gas giant. Many moons were destroyed that way. Jupiter’s moons were the ones that remained when the disk got thin enough for them to stay where they were. Stars with another density in their disk and their sized gas giants could form larger moons. Earth’s moon is a freak that doesn’t fit that theory, so a big unique collision is the accepted explanation. Just by chance it happens to have the same size as the other largest moons. Hmmm. Like Triton of Neptune which obviously was captured because it orbits the wrong way around. Hmmm. Well, one can’t have a Solar system for 4,567,000,000 years completely without coincidences. It would be unlikely to not have some unlikely outcomes.