In my humble opinion, this is a beautiful picture!
Nice photo. Shame it is not larger.
Which would be a more correct caption for this image. “Earth and the Moon as seen from Mars,” or “Earth and Luna as seen from Mars?” I note the page takes care to call The Sun “Sol.”
WOW! I’d like to know what the angle of view relative to the orbit of the moon around Earth is, I suppose I can figure it out from the date given. But shazzam! That is the first “sidelong” view of the Earth and moon together that I’ve ever seen. I think it helps put the gravitational effect that the two bodies have on each other in some sort of graspable perspective. Fantastic.
Of course, like **Paul in Saudi ** I’d love to see higher resolution, but zooming in on the Earth I can still discern the outline of South America and the east coast of N. America. Pretty amazing. Thanks rbroome!
Also, check out the link on the page to the Selene videos of the earth rising and setting over the lunar landscape. They almost look fake, but are amazing. Wonder what I was doing right then? Probably sleeping, or surfing this place.
Is that real? How come the Earth looks so big and detailed? Why doesn’t Mars look that big when seen from Earth?
Because the image was taken through what amounts to a telescope. If you stood on the surface of Mars and looked at the Earth, it would appear as small, bluish dot a bit larger than Mars looks from Earth.
Telescope :smack: I should have thought of that. Thanks.
Because Mars is half the size of earth? This shot was taken from orbit (no atmosphere in the way)?
You do realize, this was shot using a telescope?
Also, here’s an image of mars taken from earth (with a telescope).
Could you point us to the link? I’m having trouble finding it.
Moving thread from IMHO to MPSIMS.
Ahh, that’s odd, they must have changed the link. Anyway, I found it buried:
http://wms.selene.jaxa.jp/index_e.html
Specifically Earthrise and Earthset.
Also, this is pretty kickass too.
Just a quick thanks, rbroome. That picture is now on my hard drive. 
There’s a larger view linked on that page.
Seehere .
Was there a TV show called “Big Blue Marble”?
Every time I see a picture of the wearth, I get a song in my head that goes “… the big blue marble, in spaaAAAAAACE!”
Cool pics!
The larger pic is now my wallpaper.
The proportions and distance seem off. Is the Moon a lot closer than Earth?
Wow. I just realized through WIKI that the moon is about 30x the earth’s diameter in distance from the earth.
For some reason you always picture it being closer.
Thanks for the earworm! [/sarcasm]
…,wanders off, singing, “The Earth’s a big blue marble when you see it from out there…”
And here it is. Now I’ll be singing it all day. Sigh.
I forgot to add: Cool pics!
If the Moon were closer to the camera’s vantage point it could only be by about 240,000 miles maximum. Not much difference in proportion over 88 million miles!
I too thought for some reason that the moon was closer.
I think it will soon fly off into space. Sorry everyone.