Veiw of Earth - From Mars

[Fernbay]

This is an image released by NASA for the 40th anniversary of

It certainly helps put things into perspective

[dungbeetle46]

Oh cool, I can see my house.

[lee]

how could you not think there is life on other planets.....somewhere out there!!!!

[oyama]

well thats money well spent

[trash]

It's actually quite easy to see the morning and afternoon starts at the moment.
I think it's mercury is the evening star at the moment and Venus is the morning star.

On Mars, there are three evening/morning stars, Mercury, Venus and Earth, which would look a like on Mars, a lot like what venus does for us on earth.

Just for another comparison, Jupiter would be the second next brightest object in the mars sky after earth and venus and the moon Phobos. Deimos is much smaller and higher and appears as another bright star.
Jupiter at it's nearest would appear about 1/20th the size as the moon does on earth.

Phobos is in such a low fast orbit, it orbits faster than Mars rotates. This means that about twice a day, Phobos rises in the West and sets in the East.
It's so low that it can't be seen from the poles of Mars.

Unlike our moon which is gaining speed and altitude and will one day escape Earth's gravity, Phobos is being tidally pulled in to Mars. Eventually it will get low enough that Mars' gravity will tear it apart before it reaches the thin atmosphere, and become a planetary ring system like Saturn (but made of rock rather than ice)

[Andy Chee]

That picture could be anything!

I like the "Pale Blue Dot" myself (to put into perspective our insignificance) but for something more believable, Apollo 8's "Earthrise" fits the bill.

[Gerbertron]

I could have lent them a colour digital camera

[gordon_s1942]

While I aint that much up on general science, but as Mars has almost no atmosphere and looking into Space, I would be very suprised to see any 'colour'.
Where I am hasnt a lot of interferring light pollution and the only 'Colour' at night to the naked eye is Mars which shows to me as a 'pinkish/Orange' tone depending on how clean the atmosphere is.
The rest of the 'stars' just appear silvery white against the black of space.
If Mars reflects a ruddy glow because of the soil, I would expect the Earth to be in the purplish spectrum.

[Onefella]

Jupiter at it's nearest would appear about 1/20th the size as the moon does on earth.

Which is still pretty bloody big. Now that, I would like to see.

Nice to know Earth is still "line of sight" from Mars. Just in case your nav system fails on your way home. Just head for the little bluish speck.

[intelliGEORGE]

Talking about specks, hows this for comparison.



[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjsaJ7Ao1H0]YouTube - Star Scale from Mercury to W Cephei[/ame]

[bigfella08]

[porkop]

well thats money well spent

better than spending it on a war!

[BillyGoat]

better than spending it on a war!

Yes but War makes more Money.

[porkop]

Yes but War makes more Money.

space travel has boughts us many technoligical advances as well.

I for one was happy to see the image of earth from mars posted above, made me home sick ......

[Arbiter]

So it would be fair to say that UV A+B screen lotions of around SPF 50 wouldn't be of much use when catching a few rays from VV Cephei A.

[intelliGEORGE]

VV Cephei is 575,000 times more luminous than the sun, so I would say you need a Sun Block with an SPF of 17250000+