New awe inspiring images from Nasa’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) captured the unique view of Earth from the spacecraft’s vantage point in orbit around the moon!
The composite image shows Earth appear to rise over the lunar horizon from the viewpoint of the spacecraft, with the center of the Earth just off the coast of Liberia (at 4.04 degrees North, 12.44 degrees West). The large tan area in the upper right is the Sahara Desert, and just beyond is Saudi Arabia. The Atlantic and Pacific coasts of South America are visible to the left. ‚The image is simply stunning,‘ said Noah Petro, Deputy Project Scientist for LRO at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. ‚The image of the Earth evokes the famous ‚Blue Marble‘ image taken by Astronaut Harrison Schmitt during Apollo 17, 43 years ago, which also showed Africa prominently in the picture.‘ The Earth appears to rise over the lunar horizon from the viewpoint of the spacecraft, with the center of the Earth just off the coast of Liberia (at 4.04 degrees North, 12.44 degrees West).
The image was composed from a series of images taken Oct. 12, when LRO was about 83 miles (134 kilometers) above the moon’s farside crater Compton. Capturing an image of the Earth and moon with LRO’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) instrument is a complicated task. First the spacecraft must be rolled to the side (in this case 67 degrees), then the spacecraft slews with the direction of travel to maximize the width of the lunar horizon in LROC’s Narrow Angle Camera image. All this takes place while LRO is traveling faster than 3,580 miles per hour (over 1,600 meters per second) relative to the lunar surface below the spacecraft.
Since the spacecraft, Earth, and moon are all in motion, we had special processing was needed to create an image that represents the view of the Earth and moon at one particular time. From the Earth, the daily moonrise and moonset are always inspiring moments,‘ said Mark Robinson of Arizona State University #awe #earth#beautifulearth #nasa #universe#humanity#journey #travel #earthtweet by erascience