Earth view from space from satellite. The most amazing views of the earth from space

30.09.2019

Recently, NASA announced that on July 19, the Cassini probe orbiting Saturn will take a picture of the Earth, which at the time of shooting will be at a distance of 1.44 billion kilometers from the device. This is not the first photo shoot of this kind, but the first one that was announced in advance. NASA experts hope that the new image will take pride of place among such famous pictures of the Earth. Like it or not, time will tell, but for now we can remember the history of photographing our planet from the depths of space.

Since ancient times, people have always wanted to look at our planet from above. The advent of aviation gave mankind the opportunity to rise beyond the clouds, and soon the rapid development of rocket technology made it possible to obtain photographs from truly cosmic heights. The first pictures from space (if you follow the FAI standards, according to which space begins at an altitude of 100 km above sea level) were taken in 1946 using a captured V-2 rocket.

The first attempt to photograph the earth's surface from a satellite was made in 1959. Satellite Explorer-6 I took this amazing photo. By the way, after the mission of Explorer-6 was completed, he still served the American Motherland, becoming a target for testing anti-satellite missiles.

Since satellite photography has developed at an incredible pace and now you can find a bunch of pictures of any part of the earth's surface for every taste. But the vast majority of these photos were taken from low earth orbit. What does the Earth look like from more distant distances?

Snapshot of the Apollos

The only people who could see the entire Earth (roughly speaking in one frame) were 24 people from the Apollo crews. We have a few classic shots as a legacy from this program.

And here is a picture taken with Apollo 11, where the earth terminator is clearly visible (and yes, we are not talking about a famous action movie, but about a line dividing the illuminated and unlit parts of the planet).

Photo of the Earth's crescent over the surface of the Moon, taken by the crew Apollo 15.

Another Earthrise, this time over the so-called dark side of the Moon. Photo taken with Apollo 16.

"The Blue Marble"- another iconic photograph taken on December 7, 1972 by the crew of Apollo 17 from a distance of approximately 29 thousand km. from our planet. It wasn't the first image to show a completely illuminated Earth, but it became one of the most famous. The Apollo 17 astronauts are so far the last people who could observe the Earth from this angle. For the 40th anniversary of the photo, NASA remake this photo by gluing a bunch of frames from different satellites into a single composite image. There is also a Russian analogue made from the Elektro-M satellite.

When viewed from the surface of the Moon, the Earth is constantly at the same point in the sky. Since the Apollos landed in the equatorial regions, in order to make a patriotic avatar, the astronauts had to get the hang of it.

Shots from medium distances

In addition to the Apollos, a number of AMS photographed the Earth from a great distance. Here are the most famous of these pictures

Very famous photo Voyager 1 taken on September 18, 1977 from a distance of 11.66 million kilometers from Earth. As far as I know, this was the first image of the Earth and the Moon in one frame.

A similar picture taken by the device Galileo from a distance of 6.2 million kilometers in 1992

Photo taken on July 3, 2003 from the station Mars Express. The distance to Earth is 8 million kilometers.

And here is the most recent, but oddly the worst quality picture taken by the mission Juno from a distance of 9.66 million kilometers. So think - either NASA really saved on cameras, or because of the financial crisis, all the employees responsible for photoshop were fired.

Pictures from Martian orbit

This is what the Earth and Jupiter looked like from the orbit of Mars. The pictures were taken on May 8, 2003 by the apparatus Mars Global Surveyor, which was at that time at a distance of 139 million kilometers from the Earth. It is worth noting that the camera on board the device could not take color images, and therefore these are pictures in artificial colors.

Map of the location of Mars and planets at the time of shooting

And this is how the Earth looks already from the surface of the red planet. It is difficult to disagree with this inscription.

And here is another image of the Martian sky. The brighter point is Venus, the less bright one (pointed to by the arrows) is our home planet

Who cares, a very atmospheric photo of a sunset on Mars. It is somewhat reminiscent of a similar frame from a movie Stranger.

The same frame from Alien

Pictures from the orbit of Saturn

And here is the Earth in one of the pictures taken by the device mentioned at the beginning Cassini. The image itself is a composite image taken in September 2006. It was made up of 165 photographs taken in infrared and ultraviolet, which were then glued and processed to make the colors look like natural ones. In contrast to this mosaic, during the July 19 survey of the Earth and the Saturn system, for the first time, they will be filmed in so-called natural colors, that is, as they would be seen by the human eye. In addition, for the first time, the Earth and the Moon will fall into the lens of the Cassini camera with the highest resolution.

Here's what Jupiter looks like from Saturn's orbit. The picture, of course, was also taken by the Cassini apparatus. At that time, the gas giants were separated by a distance of 11 astronomical units.

Family portrait "from the inside" solar system

This portrait of the solar system was taken by the spacecraft MESSENGER in orbit around Mercury in November 2010. Compiled from 34 images, the mosaic shows all the planets in the solar system, except for Uranus and Neptune, which were too far away to be recorded. In the pictures you can see the Moon, the four main satellites of Jupiter and even a piece of the Milky Way.

In fact, our home planet

in higher resolution
Scheme of the location of the apparatus and planets at the time of shooting

Family portrait "outside" the solar system

And finally, the father of all family portraits and ultra-long distance photographs is a mosaic of 60 photographs taken by the same Voyager 1 between February 14 and June 6, 1990. After the passage of Saturn in November 1980, the apparatus was generally inactive - others celestial bodies he did not have left to study, and before approaching the border of the heliopause, there were still about 25 years of flight.

After numerous requests, Carl Sagan managed to convince NASA management to reactivate the ship's cameras that were turned off a decade ago and take a picture of all the planets in the solar system. Only Mercury (which was too close to the Sun), Mars (which, again, was prevented by light from the Sun) and Pluto, which was simply too small, could not be photographed.

Voyager 1 was chosen because it followed a trajectory that seemed to lift it above the plane of the ecliptic, which made it possible to shoot all the planets "from above".

This view at the time of filming was opened from the board of the apparatus

Snapshot of the Sun and the regions where the Earth and Venus were located

planets close up

Carl Sagan himself had this to say about this photo: "Take another look at this dot. This is here. This is our home. This is us. Everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you've ever heard of, all people who have ever lived lived their lives on Our many pleasures and pains, thousands of self-confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and gatherer, every hero and coward, every builder and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every couple in love, every mother and every father, every capable child, inventor and traveler, every ethics teacher, every deceitful politician, every "superstar", every "greatest leader", every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived here - on a mote suspended in a sunbeam.

Earth is a very small stage in the vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood shed by all these generals and emperors, so that, in the rays of glory and triumph, they may become momentary masters of a fraction of a grain of sand. Think of the endless cruelties committed by the inhabitants of one corner of this point on the barely distinguishable inhabitants of another corner. About how frequent disagreements are between them, about how eager they are to kill each other, about how hot their hatred is.

Our posturing, our imagined importance, our delusion of our privileged status in the universe, they all succumb to this point of pale light. Our planet is just a single speck of dust in the surrounding cosmic darkness. In this vast void, there is no hint that someone will come to our aid in order to save us from our own ignorance.

Earth is the only known world capable of sustaining life. We have nowhere else to go - at least in the near future. Stay - yes. Colonize - not yet. Like it or not, the Earth is our home now."

For free observation of the Earth's surface and viewing satellite images online, you can use several applications. In Russia, two of them are the most popular: Google Maps and Yandex Maps. Both services boast good quality high-resolution satellite images of most countries.

Yandex maps is an online application from Russian developers, so the cities of Russia are more accurately worked out in it. It has built-in functionality for viewing traffic congestion data (large settlements), demographic and geodata. In maps from Google, no less high-quality satellite images of the territory of the Russian Federation, but data on land plots and traffic are only available for the USA.

Watch a map of Planet Earth from a satellite online

Below you can see the Google map embedded on the site. For more stable operation of the plugin, we recommend using the Google Chrome browser. If you see an error message, then update the specified plugin, then reload the page.

Watch Google Earth from satellite, in real time online:

Another advantage of Google Maps is the presence of a client application for working with satellite images. This means that access to the service can be obtained not only through a browser, but also through a previously downloaded program. It has much more opportunities for viewing and studying satellite images, working with a three-dimensional virtual globe.

Google 3D satellite map (downloadable app, not online version) allows you to:

use a quick search for the desired objects by name or coordinates;
take screenshots and record high quality videos;
work offline (preliminary synchronization via the Internet is required);
use a flight simulator for more convenient movement between objects;
save "favorite places" for quick movement between them;
view not only the Earth's surface, but also images of other celestial bodies (Mars, the Moon, etc.).

work with satellite google maps through a client application or browser. A plug-in is available on the official page of the program that allows you to use an interactive map on any web resource. It is enough to embed its address in the program code of the site. For display, you can select both the entire surface and a specific area (you will have to enter the coordinates). Management - using a computer mouse and keyboard (ctrl + mouse wheel to zoom, cursor to move) or using the icons indicated on the map ("plus" - zoom in, "minus" - zoom out, move with the cursor).

The Google Earth real-time service allows you to work with several types of maps, each of which reflects certain data on satellite images. It is convenient to switch between them “without losing progress” (the program remembers where you “were”). Available view modes:

satellite landscape map (geographical objects, features of the Earth's surface);
physical map(detailed satellite images of the surface, cities, streets, their names);
schematic geographic map for a more accurate study of surface images.

A satellite image is automatically uploaded at the point of approach, so a stable Internet connection is required to work. For work Google Planet Earth offline need to download app for Windows or other operating system. Its operation also requires the Internet, but only for the first launch, after which the program synchronizes all the necessary data (satellite images of the surface, 3D models of buildings, names of geographical and other objects), after which it will be possible to work with the received data without direct access to the Internet.

August 16th, 2016

Photographs from space published on the website of NASA and other space agencies often attract the attention of those who doubt their authenticity - critics find traces of editing, retouching or color manipulation in the images. This has been the case since the birth of the "lunar conspiracy", and now the pictures taken not only by Americans, but also by Europeans, Japanese, Indians have come under suspicion. Together with the N + 1 portal, we understand why space images are processed at all and whether they can, despite this, be considered authentic.

In order to correctly assess the quality satellite images, which we see on the Web, it is necessary to take into account two important factors. One of them is related to the nature of the interaction between agencies and the general public, the other is dictated by physical laws.

Public relations

Space images are one of the most effective means of popularizing the work of research missions in near and far space. However, not all frames are immediately available to the media.

Images obtained from space can be divided into three groups: "raw" (raw), scientific and public. Raw, or original, files from spacecraft are sometimes available to everyone, and sometimes not. For example, images taken by the Curiosity and Opportunity rovers or Saturn's moon Cassini are published in near real time, so that anyone can see them at the same time as scientists studying Mars or Saturn. Raw photos of the Earth from the ISS are uploaded to a separate NASA server. Astronauts flood them by the thousands, and no one has time to pre-process them. The only thing that is added to them on Earth is a geo-referencing to facilitate the search.

Usually public footage that is attached to press releases from NASA and other space agencies is criticized for retouching, because it is they who catch the eye of Internet users in the first place. And if you want, you can find a lot of things there. And color manipulation:

Photo of the landing platform of the Spirit rover in the visible range of light and with the capture of the near infrared.
(c) NASA/JPL/Cornell

And overlaying multiple shots:

Earthrise over the lunar crater Compton.

And copypasta:

Fragment Blue Marble 2001
(c) NASA/Robert Simmon/MODIS/USGS EROS

And even direct retouching, with overwriting of some fragments of the image:

Bleached shotApollo 17 Expedition GPN-2000-001137.
(c) NASA

NASA's motivation in the case of all these manipulations is so simple that not everyone is ready to believe it: it's more beautiful.

But the truth is, the bottomless blackness of space looks more impressive when it is not interfered with by debris on the lens and charged particles on the film. A color frame is, indeed, more attractive than a black and white one. The panorama from the pictures is better than individual frames. It is important that in the case of NASA, you can almost always find the original frames and compare one with the other. For example, the original version (AS17-134-20384) and the “printable” version (GPN-2000-001137) of this image from Apollo 17, which is cited as almost the main evidence of the retouching of lunar photographs:

Frame comparison AS17-134-20384 and GPN-2000-001137
(c) NASA

Or find the rover's "selfie stick" that "disappeared" while taking its self-portrait:

Curiosity snapshots from Jan 14, 2015 Sol 868
(c) NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

The Physics of Digital Photography

As a rule, those who reproach space agencies for manipulating color, using filters, or publishing black and white photographs “in this age of digital advancement” do not take into account the physical processes of obtaining digital imaging. They believe that if a smartphone or camera immediately gives out color frames, then the spacecraft should be even more capable of it, and they don’t even know what complex operations are needed to get a color image on the screen right away.

Let us explain the theory of digital photography: the matrix of a digital apparatus is, in fact, solar battery. If there is light, there is current; if there is no light, there is no current. Only the matrix is not a single battery, but many small batteries - pixels, from each of which the output of current is read individually. The optics focuses the light onto the photomatrix, and the electronics reads the intensity of energy release by each pixel. From the received data, an image is built in grayscale - from zero current in the dark to maximum in the light, that is, at the output it turns out to be black and white. To make it colored, you need to apply color filters. It turns out, oddly enough, that color filters are present in every smartphone and in every digital camera from the nearest store! (For some, this information is banal, but, according to the author's experience, for many it will turn out to be news.) In the case of conventional photographic equipment, an alternation of red, green and blue filters is used, which are alternately superimposed on individual pixels of the matrix - this is the so-called Bayer filter .

The Bayer filter consists of half green pixels, and red and blue each occupy one quarter of the area.
(c) Wikimedia

Here we repeat: navigation cameras produce black-and-white images because such files weigh less, and also because color is simply not needed there. Science cameras allow you to extract more information about space than the human eye can perceive, and therefore a wider range of color filters is used for them:

Matrix and filter drum of the OSIRIS instrument on Rosetta
(c) MPS

The use of a near-infrared filter, which is not visible to the eye, instead of red, caused Mars to turn red in many frames that were leaked to the media. Not all of the explanation about the infrared range was reprinted, which gave rise to a separate discussion, which we also analyzed in the material “What color is Mars”.

However, the Curiosity rover has a Bayer filter, which allows it to shoot in the color familiar to our eyes, although a separate set of color filters is also attached to the camera.

(c) NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

The use of separate filters is more convenient in terms of choosing the ranges of light in which you want to look at the object. But if this object moves quickly, then in the pictures in different ranges its position changes. On the frames of Electro-L, this was noticeable on fast clouds, which had time to move in a matter of seconds, while the satellite changed the filter. On Mars, this happened when shooting sunsets at the Spirit and Opportunity rovers - they do not have a Bayer filter:

Sunset taken by Spirit in Sol 489 Superposition of images taken with filters at 753,535 and 432 nanometers.
(c) NASA/JPL/Cornell

On Saturn, Cassini has similar difficulties:

Saturn's moons Titan (behind) and Rhea (in front) in Cassini images
(c) NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

At the Lagrange point, DSCOVR faces the same situation:

The transit of the Moon across the Earth's disk in a DSCOVR image on July 16, 2015.
(c) NASA/NOAA

To get out of this shoot beautiful photo, suitable for distribution in the media, you have to work in an image editor.

There is another physical factor that not everyone knows about - black and white images have higher resolution and clarity compared to color ones. These are the so-called panchromatic images, which include all the light information that enters the camera, without cutting off any of its parts by filters. Therefore, many "long-range" satellite cameras shoot only in panchrome, which for us means black and white shots. Such a LORRI camera is installed on New Horizons, a NAC camera is installed on the LRO lunar satellite. Yes, in fact, all telescopes shoot in panchrome, unless filters are specifically used. (“NASA is obscuring the true color of the Moon” is where it came from.)

A multispectral "color" camera, equipped with filters and having a much lower resolution, can be attached to a panchromatic one. At the same time, its color images can be superimposed on panchromatic ones, as a result of which we will get high-resolution color images.

Pluto in New Horizons panchromatic and multispectral images
(c) NASA/JHU APL/Southwest Research Institute

This method is often used when surveying the Earth. If you know about this, you can see a typical halo on some frames, which leaves a blurry color frame:

Composite image of the Earth from the WorldView-2 satellite
(c) Digital Globe

It was through such an overlay that the very impressive frame of the Earth over the Moon was created, which is given above as an example of overlaying different images:

(c) NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University

Additional processing

Often you have to resort to the tools of graphic editors when you need to clean up a frame before publishing. Ideas about the impeccability of space technology are not always justified, so debris on space cameras is a common thing. For example, the MAHLI camera on the Curiosity rover is simply crap, otherwise you can’t say:

Photo of Curiosity by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) in Sol 1401
(c) NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

A mote in the STEREO-B solar telescope gave rise to a separate myth about an alien space station constantly flying over north pole sun:

(c) NASA/GSFC/JHU APL

Even in space, charged particles are not uncommon, which leave their traces on the matrix in the form of separate dots or stripes. The longer the shutter speed, the more traces remain, “snow” appears on the frames, which does not look very presentable in the media, so they also try to clean it off (read: “photoshop”) before publication:

Therefore, we can say: yes, NASA photoshops images from space. ESA photoshop. Roscosmos photoshop. ISRO Photoshop. JAXA photoshops... Only the National Space Agency of Zambia doesn't photoshop. So if someone is not satisfied with the images of NASA, then you can always use their images of space without any sign of processing.

26 PHOTOS

1. Karst sculptures in the southeastern part of China. (Photo: Robert Simmon/NASA Earth Observatory/Landsat 8).
2. Volcano Bazman in the southeastern part of Iran. Until now, not a single eruption of this volcano has been documented in history, but volcanic gas constantly comes out of it. This is probably not an extinct, dormant volcano. The picture was taken from the International Space Station. (Photo: NASA/ISS Expedition 38).
3. And this is the Bering Sea during the phytoplankton bloom. According to scientists, water milky indicates that it is the blooming algae coccolithophores. (Photo: NASA/MODIS).
4. Lake Elton in Russia, near the border with Kazakhstan. He has very high level salinity and it is very shallow - on average, the depth is about half a meter. And the brown spot seen in the picture is the deepest part of the lake, where silt and sediment accumulate, coloring the water. (Photo: NASA).
5. Sunset on the Baltic Sea. The picture was taken on June 15, 2014 from the ISS. (Photo: NASA/ISS Expedition 40).
6. A layer of dust and sand over the Sahara desert, and cumulus clouds above it. (Photo: NASA/ISS Expedition 40).
7. Plankton bloom in Indian Ocean, 600 kilometers south of the coast of Australia. (Photo: Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon/NASA Earth Observatory).
8. Melted ice on top of a glacier in southeast Alaska. The picture was taken on July 16, 2014 from an ER-2 aircraft. (Photo: NASA).
9. The Okavango Delta in the Kalahari Desert in South Africa, illuminated by sunlight. The picture was taken on June 6, 2014 from the ISS. (Photo: NASA).
10. This is farmland in the Argentinean Pampa, and among them is a forest guitar. It was created in the late 70s by Pedro Martin Ureta, in honor of his late wife. It is planted with seven thousand trees - cypresses and eucalyptus. The picture was taken by the Terra satellite. (Photo: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS).
11. The Chiltepe Peninsula in western Nicaragua with the Apoeque volcanic complex. And the water around the peninsula is Lake Managua. In the middle of the peninsula is the Apoeke caldera [a vast, steep-walled cirque-shaped basin] with a lake 2.8 kilometers wide and 400 meters deep. The last eruption of the Apoeke volcano occurred about 2000 years ago. (Photo: NASA/ISS Expedition 38).
12. Cloudless sky over the Iberian Peninsula. In northern Spain, you can see the snow-capped Cantabrian Mountains. Below is the largest plateau in Europe - the Mesetes, to the east - the Pyrenees, and above them - the Central French Massif. The picture was taken on March 8, 2014. (Photo: Jeff Schmaltz/NASA GSFC).
13. Venetian lagoon. The red area on the right side of the picture is the Venetian roofs. Above them is Mestre, a district of Venice located on the mainland. (Photo: NASA/ISS Expedition 39).
14. There are 28 active glaciers on the Northern Patagonian Ice Plateau. The San Quentin Glacier is the largest of them, its beginning is visible on the left, flowing into the lake. (Photo: NASA/ISS).
15. Hurricane Edward was captured on September 16, 2014 from the ISS. And its "eye" has a diameter of about 30 kilometers. (Photo: NASA/ISS Expedition 41/Reid Wiseman).
16. Meanders (smooth bends of the channel) of the Colorado River in national park Canyonlands, Utah, USA. (Photo: Jesse Allen, Robert Simmon/NASA Earth Observatory/Landsat).
17. Forest fire in the area of Funny River, Alaska. (Photo: Jesse Allen/NASA Earth Observatory/Landsat 8).
18. Complex of volcanoes Ijen on the island of Java. FROM right side a caldera with an acid lake (pH 0.3) is visible. (Photo: Jesse Allen/NASA Earth Observatory/Landsat).
19. African sands blown straight into the Atlantic Ocean. Interestingly, these sands overcome the entire ocean to get to the North and South America, and the minerals they contain fertilize American forests. Every year, about 40 million tons of Saharan sands fall into the Amazon lowlands. (Photo: NASA/ISS Expedition 40).
20. Meanders of the Amazon River. (Photo: Jesse Alle/NASA Earth Observatory/Landsat).
21. Drought in southern Brazil. The photograph shows the dried-up Jaguari water reservoir, one of the five reservoirs that supply water to the state of São Paulo. (Photo: Jesse Allen/NASA Earth Observatory/Landsat).
22. Badyn-Jaran in China. The picture shows lakes among the highest dunes in the world (reaching a height of 500 meters). (Photo: NASA).
23. King Sound - a bay in Western Australia, where you can observe the largest ebb and flow in the world. (Photo: NASA/ISS Expedition 40).
24. This is Nishino-shima, a volcanic island belonging to Japan. Last November, as a result of the eruption of an underwater volcano, a new island appeared just 500 meters from it, which grew so fast that in a month both islands became one. The picture was taken on March 30, 2014. (Photo: Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon/NASA Earth Observatory/Landsat 8).
25. Murzuk (sandy desert) in Libya. The dark area in the image is the Tibesti volcanic mountains. The picture was taken from the ISS on November 26, 2014. (Photo: NASA/ISS Expedition 42).
26. This is us! This wonderful photo of our planet was taken by the Suomi NPP satellite on March 30, 2014. (Photo: Robert Simmon/NASA Earth Observatory).

Since ancient times, people have always wanted to look at our planet from above. The advent of aviation gave mankind the opportunity to rise beyond the clouds, and soon the rapid development of rocket technology made it possible to obtain photographs from truly cosmic heights. The first pictures from space (according to the FAI standards, according to which space begins at a height of 100 km above sea level) were made in 1946 using a captured FAU-2 rocket.

The first attempt to photograph the earth's surface from a satellite was made in 1959. Satellite Explorer-6 I took this amazing photo.

By the way, after the mission of Explorer-6 was completed, he still served the American Motherland, becoming a target for testing anti-satellite missiles.

Since then, satellite photography has developed at an incredible pace and now you can find a bunch of images of any part of the earth's surface for every taste. But the vast majority of these photos were taken from low earth orbit. What does the Earth look like from more distant distances?

Snapshot of the Apollos

The only people who could see the entire Earth (roughly speaking in one frame) were 24 people from the Apollo crews. We have a few classic shots as a legacy from this program.

Photo of the Earth's crescent over the surface of the Moon, taken by the crew Apollo 15.

Another Earthrise, this time over the so-called dark side of the Moon. Photo taken with Apollo 16.

Shots from moderate distances

In addition to the Apollos, a number of AMS photographed the Earth from a great distance. Here are the most famous of these pictures

Very famous photo Voyager 1 taken on September 18, 1977 from a distance of 11.66 million kilometers from Earth. As far as I know, this was the first image of the Earth and the Moon in one frame.

A similar picture taken by the device Galileo from a distance of 6.2 million kilometers in 1992

Photo taken on July 3, 2003 from the station Mars Express. The distance to Earth is 8 million kilometers.

Pictures from Martian orbit

Map of the location of Mars and planets at the time of shooting

And this is how the Earth looks already from the surface of the red planet. It is difficult to disagree with this inscription.

And here is another image of the Martian sky. The brighter point is Venus, the less bright one (pointed to by the arrows) is our home planet

Who cares, a very atmospheric photo of a sunset on Mars. It is somewhat reminiscent of a similar frame from a movie Stranger.

Pictures from the orbit of Saturn

in higher resolution

And here is the Earth in one of the pictures taken by the device mentioned at the beginning Cassini. The image itself is a composite image taken in September 2006. It was made up of 165 photographs taken in infrared and ultraviolet, which were then glued and processed to make the colors look like natural ones. In contrast to this mosaic, during the July 19 survey, the Earth and Saturn system will be filmed for the first time in so-called natural colors, that is, as they would be seen by the human eye. In addition, for the first time, the Earth and the Moon will fall into the lens of the Cassini camera with the highest resolution.

Family portrait "from inside" the solar system

In fact, our home planet .

Scheme of the location of the apparatus and planets at the time of shooting.

And finally, the father of all family portraits and ultra-long distance photographs is a mosaic of 60 photographs taken by the same Voyager 1 between February 14 and June 6, 1990. After the passage of Saturn in November 1980, the apparatus was generally inactive - it had no other celestial bodies to study, and about 25 years of flight remained before approaching the border of the heliopause.

"Take another look at this dot. This is here. This is our home. This is us. Everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you've ever heard of, all people who have ever lived lived their lives on Our many pleasures and pains, thousands of self-confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and gatherer, every hero and coward, every builder and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every couple in love, every mother and every father, every capable child, inventor and traveler, every ethics teacher, every deceitful politician, every "superstar", every "greatest leader", every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived here - on a mote suspended in a sunbeam.

Earth is so far the only known world capable of supporting life. We have nowhere else to go - at least in the near future. Stay - yes. Colonize - not yet. Like it or not, the Earth is our home now."