The Mars perspective (dialup warning)

This is an image of Earth and the Moon, acquired at 5:20 a.m. MST on 3 October 2007, at a range of 142 million kilometers, which gives the HiRISE image a scale of 142 km/pixel and an Earth diameter of about 90 pixels and a Moon diameter of 24 pixels. The phase angle is 98 degrees, which means that less than half of the disks of the Earth and Moon have direct illumination. We could image Earth/Moon at full disk illumination only when they are on the opposite side of the sun from Mars, but then the range would be much greater and the image would show less detail.


Jupiter Viewed from Mars (PSP_002162_9030)
Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/releases/

The photo at the link titled "Jupiter Viewed From Mars" shows only Jupiter. It does however link to another photo, "Jupiter and its major satellites," which shows the distant dots of three of Jupiter's satellites.

This was very confusing at first. Please correctly identify the photo, and you might explain what the dots are and tell people to look for them.

Great photos! Thanks for the post!

I continue to be mindboggled by the fact that the U.S. is wasting a trillion dollars on war and more billions on "the war on drugs," and can't put a colony on the moon and explore the solar system.

According to http://costofwar.com/">costofwar.com, the cost of Bush's two wars is closing in on $1T, which would have funded NASA for fifty years. Or a 2X NASA for twenty-five years.

According to Harvard economist Jeffrey A. Miron, the War on (some) Drugs is costing us http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Drugs#Costs_to_Taxpayers">almost $80B a year, which could fund NASA four times over.