31 Million Miles from Planet Earth

antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov...

On July 4th, 2005, the Deep Impact spacecraft directed a probe to impact the nucleus of Comet Tempel 1. Still cruising through the solar system, earlier this year the robotic spacecraft looked back to record a series of images of its home world 31 million miles (50 million kilometers) away. In a sequence from top left to bottom right, these four frames from the video show a rotating Earth. They combine visible and near-infrared image data with enough resolution and contrast to see clouds, oceans, and continents. They also follow a remarkable transit of Earth by its large, natural satellite, the Moon. The Moon's orbital motion carries it across the field of view from left to right. Imaging the Earth from this distant perspective allows astronomers to connect overall variations in brightness at different wavelengths with planetary features. The observations will aid in the search for earth-like planets in other solar systems.

It kinda brings into perspective how small we humans really are, and that our bickering, greed, hate, and war, is so insignificant to the universe.

I agree with you, 38181. It also boggles my mind that 31 million miles is only a fraction of how large our universe is. Theres stuff out there thats so far away, its takes the fastest thing known, light, BILLIONS of years to get from there to us.

I suppose that is the dark side of the moon.

Now that is really cool! Im surprised that they don't have a satellite parked in orbit a little further out than that watching the Earth and taking video all the time (maybe they already do but I haven't found anything on it.)

WOW! that is really cool. So does that mean that the side of the moon we are seeing is the dark side that we never get to see on earth? just kidding great find Star and Flag for you.

Originally posted by QBSneak000
Now that is really cool! Im surprised that they don't have a satellite parked in orbit a little further out than that watching the Earth and taking video all the time (maybe they already do but I haven't found anything on it.)

Al Gore had once tried to do something similar, here's an article from '98 www.cnn.com...

But as always, the US Gov't saw little value in it, so it didn't happen. But from what I read on wikipedia, it was built (or at least partly) and it just sits in storage

Triana Satellite

[edit on 3-9-2008 by jra]

Absolutely Beautiful.

Amazing! It's so unreal that we can even photograph the Earth from that distance, even a little fraction of a degree error and it's not possible.