MRO Captured Rare photo of Earth & Moon, as seen from Mars

NASA have released a rare detailed photo of the Earth and the moon, as seen from Mars some 127 million miles (205 km) away.

The photo is a combination of the best Earth image and the best moon image from four sets of pictures taken on November 20, 2016, by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRise) camera onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

NASA admitted the moon was brightened significantly before compositing the image, as it is actually much darker and would be barely visible at the same brightness scale as Earth.

However, the image does reflect “the correct sizes and positions of the two bodies relative to each other”. For scale, Earth’s could fit about 30 times in the distance between it and the moon.

In the image, Earth appears in shades of green, blue and red (due to vegetation).

Australia is the reddish image in the middle of Earth, Southeast Asia is the reddish area near the top, and Antarctica is the bright section down the bottom-left. The other bright spots are clouds.

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This is an image of Earth and the moon, acquired on October 3, 2007, by the HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

At the time the image was taken, Earth was 142 million kilometers (88 million miles) from Mars, giving the HiRISE image a scale of 142 kilometers (88 miles) per pixel, an Earth diameter of about 90 pixels and a moon diameter of 24 pixels. The phase angle is 98 degrees, which means that less than half of the disk of the Earth and the disk of the moon have direct illumination.

We could image Earth and moon at full disk illumination only when they are on the opposite side of the sun from Mars, but then the range would be much greater and the image would show less detail.

Images Credit:

NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona