Tuesday, November 13, 2007

What a Wonderful World

Courtesy Kaguya, a Japanese lunar orbiter, here's a family portrait. My family, yours, everybody. The Full Earth.
Click on the image for a higher-res version. Images courtesy Universe Today.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wow.

For some reason that's much more striking than the Apollo 8 Earthrise we've all seen a billion times.

Part of it may be familiarity, but I think a lot of it is size -- the Earth is a much smaller part of this photo than of the other one, and thus seems much farther away. And the Pale Blue Dot, on the other hand, is too far -- you can't even tell it's Earth. But you can see the continents from here (including, by great appropriate coincidence, the African Rift Valley), and tell that it's *us* that are so small without taking it on faith.

And now, to quote Calvin, I'm going to go inside and turn on all the lights.