The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), recently has brought out some stunning composite pictures of Earth and its Moon, which are captured by one of its Mars rovers. The pictures are representing the stunning views of our Mother Planet and it’s Moon from the Red Planet, and also revealing the continent-size features of Earth and the comparative mass of the moon. The images were clicked on taken by the promising Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter of NASA on Nov. 20, 2016.
The Mars Rover clicked the pictures by using its onboard High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera and NASA, by combining it with two separate exposures has published on Friday for public access. The image is a mishmash of two distinct exposures taken on 20th November 2016. NASA has moderately adjusted both exposures in order to make both elements look similarly as bright; otherwise, the Earth might have looked too bright in comparison to the dim vividness of its Moon. As the moon is much darker than Earth and would hardly visible at the high-scale visibility of earth, the merging of two views was obligatory, said an official of NASA.
By combining both exposures, NASA perfectly represented the ideal positions and masses of the two extraterrestrial bodies compared with each other. The joint view demonstrates the accurate dimensions and positions of both Earth and its Moon. The High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took the images in three wavelength bands like infrared, red, and blue-green. A said by NASA’s official, when the component pictures were clicked in November; the Red Planet was located around 205 million kilometers or 127 million miles from the position of Earth.
According to NASA, at the time when the Mars orbiter clicked the picture, Earth and Moon seems nearer than they really are. In the released picture, the perceptions were made when the Moon was straight behind the Earth and it is clearly visible from the point of view of the Red Planet. The distance between the Earth and Moon is around 230,000 miles (370,000 km), which is nearly 30 times more than the diameter of Earth.
In the released image, the views of the seas and continents are clearly perceptible. Moreover, the reddish object found close to the center of Earth is Australia, while the clusters spotted at the top left corner of the image are few bits of Southeast Asia. The bright dot at the base of the picture is Antarctica, while other dazzling spots are clouds.