Curiosity Rover sees Earth and Moon from Mars

[**override**]

The Curiosity rover on Mars captured imagery of the brightest object in its evening twilight sky, our own Earth and moon, on January 31, 2014. The rover has been at Dingo Gap, inside the Gale Crater, on Mars this week. It captured these images on Sol 529, that is, the rover’s 529th day on Mars. Just think … everything we know is within that little dot, seen as a “star” from the planet just next door.

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Accept third party cookies

​

 

[RedFirecracker]

Up there with the 'Pale Blue Dot' image that Cassini took.

 

[danforth]

Makes you realize, despite all the self generated bluster, how trivial we really are!

 

[RedFirecracker]

The image that makes certainly me have a 'woah, man' moment is the one taken from the surface of the moon of Earth. A version of it has been captioned along the lines of 'Every living being that there has ever been, apart from three, are contained in this picture', or something like that. As you say, makes you feel a very small cog.

 

[mrssc]

There was an interesting documentary on BBC Four a few days ago about Solar Winds and how it can literally take 14mins for the suns flare to kick off and wipe out the planets GPS systems and power grids. That's just a "minor" flare too, god forbid a larger flare. It kind of makes you appreciate how powerful the solar system is and how powerless we actually are in many ways.
The pictures these missions are showing us though, its kind of surreal to think that we are part of that shot.