An early raw image of the Earth and moon, as seen from Saturn by Cassini spacecraft on July 19, 2013. Earth is the brighter dot; moon to lower left. Via NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI.
The pair of bright star-like features in the upper panel are not stars at all, but the Earth and Moon! MESSENGER was at a distance of 98 million kilometers (61 million miles) from Earth when this picture was taken. The computer-generated image in the lower left shows how the Earth appeared from Mercury at the time. Much of the Americas, all of Europe and Africa, the Middle East, and much of Asia were visible.
This image was taken on the same day that images with Earth in the scene were acquired by the Cassini spacecraft, as part of a mosaic of the backlit Saturn system (http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/waveatsaturn).
One day later in the search for satellites of Mercury, MESSENGER again took similar images of the Earth and Moon. The date of those images, July 20, was the 44th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the Moon. All six Apollo landing sites are illuminated in the MESSENGER images, although they cannot be resolved. Their locations are marked on the simulated image in the lower right panel.
A Terra é um palco muito pequeno em uma imensa arena cósmica!
Não há nenhum sinal de humanos nessa foto. Nem nossas modificações da superfície da Terra, nem nossas maquinas, nem nós mesmos. Desse ponto de vista, nossa obsessão com nacionalismo não aparece em evidencia. Nós somos muito pequenos. Na escala dos mundos, humanos são irrelevantes, uma fina película de vida num obscuro e solitário torrão de rocha e metal.(Carl Sagan)
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