NASA’s Curiosity Rover Snaps First Images of Earth and Moon [PHOTOS]
By Ankita Mehta | February 7, 2014 9:45 PM EST
NASA, in its latest revelations, has said that the planet Earth and Moon appears like 'evening stars' from Mars's surface. NASA's Curiosity Rover on the red planet has captured the first images of Earth and Moon from the Martian land. The Curiosity Rover took the photos a week ago; however the agency released the photographs only on Friday night.
"Look Back in Wonder... My 1st picture of Earth from the surface of Mars," the tweet from Curiosity Rover's official Twitter handle read. The images were taken during Curiosity's 529th Martian day, which was on 31 January according to Earth's chronology. The photos were captured approximately 80 minutes after the sunset. At the time of taking pictures, the distance between Earth and the red planet was about 99 million miles (160 million kilometres).
"A human observer with normal vision, if standing on Mars, could easily see the earth and the moon as two distinct, bright 'evening stars,'" NASA said in a statement. "The image has been processed to remove effects of cosmic rays," the statement added.
The view of the nightfall sky and Martian skyline shows Earth as the brightest light, while moon, which is underneath Earth, is hardly visible.
However, this is not the first time the Earth has been captured from Mars surface. In 2004, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit captured Earth.
However, the most famous photo of Earth from space was snapped in 1990 by Voyager 1. The image "Pale Blue Dot" was taken from a distance of 6 billion kilometers. In that image the Earth appeared as one-pixel dot.
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