From the Earth, we can see seven planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. They look fabulous when observed through telescopes like phases of Mercury and Venus, ice capped Mars, mighty Jupiter with its four satellites, beautiful Saturn with its magnificent rings, blue worlds of Uranus and Neptune. Now you may ask the question how our Earth looks from the distance space? Is anybody has seen the Earth from the remote space? Yes, there is one, who looked at the Earth from the remote space. It is MESSENGER a satellite on mission to study the Mercury. Above image taken by the satellite on 6 May 2010. In the lower left portion of this image the Earth can be seen, as well as the much smaller Moon to Earth's right. MESSENGER took this image from 183 million kilometers. To provide context for this distance, the average separation between Earth and the Sun is about 150 million kilometers.
This image was acquired as part of MESSENGER's campaign to search for Vulcanoids, small rocky objects that have been hypothesized to exist in orbits between Sun and Mercury. The MESSENGER spacecraft is in unique position to look for smaller and fainter Vulcanoids than has ever before been possible. Vulcunoids are named after the hypothetical planet Vulcan which was proposed to exists between Mercury and Sun by the 19th century astronomers to attempt explanation in peculiarities of Mercury's orbit. No such planet was ever found.
MESSENGER is a unique mission of NASA to study the Mercury planet after Marinar-10. It was launched on 3 August 2004 from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The name comes from 'MErcury Surface, Space Environment, GEochemistry and Ranging' highlighting the project broad range of scientific goals and it is perfect to study Roman mythological messenger of the gods.
AMOL KATE
:image credits to NASA/John Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institute of Washington
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