Earth from Saturn


It's not often that some event comes along to really show humanity its true place in the universe, but two NASA spacecraft have just managed just that.

I'm talking, of course, about the spectacular NASA photos of Earth as it appeared from Saturn —nearly 900 million miles away (1.4 billion kilometers) —as well as a photo of our planet as it appeared from Mercury, nearly 61 million miles (98 million km) distant. NASA took the photos Friday (July 19) using the Cassini spacecraft around Saturn and the Messenger spacecraft around Mercury as part of a global campaign to show the world how the solar system views our planet Earth. The space agency even worked to coordinate campaigns to involve space fans by having them wave at Saturn. The images, by far, are amazing. Earth and its moon stand out as bright pinpricks of light in Messenger's view from Mercury, while our planet is a pale, fuzzy dot nestled between Saturn's rings in the Cassini view.

From my perspective, the images accomplish two things: First, it seems like a technological marvel of orbital mechanics and photography to be able to coordinate two different spacecraft in orbit around two different planets (and controlled by different science teams) to photograph yet a third planet in between them.  What's more, this is not the first time Cassini and Messenger have snapped photos of Earth from their respective planets. Cassini has done it a couple of times, and Messenger took a portrait of the solar system from Mercury in 2011. Second, the photos clearly do what they were intended to do— show the world exactly where Earth stands in the universe. You, and everyone you know and have ever known, live on a tiny island of a planet  in the vast sea of the universe. As the "Star Trek" warp drive inventor Zephram Cochrane explained when he first saw Earth from deep space, "It's so small." And that is where we live, on a small world —a "pale blue dot," as famed astronomer Carl Sagan once put it. This is our home, this island Earth.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Chelyabinsk Meteor And 2012 DA14

Image
On February 15, 2013, an asteroid entered the Earth’s atmosphere over the southern Ural region of Russia and exploded. The event was witnessed by thousands of people and became the largest known airburst since the 1908 Tunguska event. The blast produced a light brighter than the Sun, and the shock wave was felt by people all over the area. The energy of the explosion was equivalent to 20-30 of the atomic bombs used at Hiroshima. The asteroid was not detected by the authorities before the airburst, and the event surprised many people. It wounded 1,500 and damaged over 7,000 buildings. The meteor was caught on tape by multiple sources, which shows a giant fireball in the sky - followed by an enormous explosion of light. It was reported that the meteor made the ground hot, and the city smelled like gunpowder after the explosion. The event was an extremely rare occurrence and the only time in history that a meteor has been known to cause human injury.
Read more

Charity Destroys Lives

Image
By its very definition, charity is selfless. Whether it’s dropping a few pennies in a collection box or shipping our old T-shirts off to Africa, a spot of charity is a quick and easy way to net some karma. At least it would be if it didn’t usually harm the very people we’re trying to help. Take our practice of sending old clothes to Africa. Objectively, it makes sense: People living on under a dollar a day probably don’t have much of a clothing budget, so why not redistribute the stuff we’re not using? In fact, it makes so much sense that millions of us pack and ship off our novelty Christmas jumpers every year - resulting in the complete collapse of the African textile industry. Think about it: If you flood a market with free goods, you’ll bankrupt the traders and manufacturers trying to sell them. And that’s exactly what’s happened here. Across the continent, whole communities have lost their livelihoods in exchange for your old Slayer T-shirts.
Read more

The Amazing Cooltone Mini Fridge And Sounds Cool

Image
The Cooltone Mini Fridge provides an interesting combination of popular dorm room items into one “cool” package. This refrigerator has a 22 liter capacity which is enough to hold 20 standard beverage cans and keep them cold, but there’s much, much more. The Cooltone gets its name from the multiple music-playing features included in this unlikely combination. On the top of the fridge is a standard top loading CD player and and AM/FM radio which both play music out of the integrated speakers built into the sides of the Cooltone. Users can also connect stereo headphones or connect external speakers to further enhance their extra-cool music. The fridge/stereo also has a standard 3.5mm input jack where you can connect an auxiliary MP3 player to sound through the speakers for the rest of us who no longer have any CD’s.
Read more