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Curiosity's view of Earth, which is like Mars' evening star... It's the brightest spot in the night sky, and you can even see our Moon!


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Description:

This view of the twilight sky and Martian horizon taken by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover includes Earth as the brightest point of light in the night sky. Earth is a little left of center in the image, and our moon is just below Earth. Two annotated versions of the image are also available.

Researchers used the left eye camera of Curiosity's Mast Camera (Mastcam) to capture this scene about 80 minutes after sunset on the 529th Martian day, or sol, of the rover's work on Mars (Jan. 31, 2014). The image has been processed to remove effects of cosmic rays.

A human observer with normal vision, if standing on Mars, could easily see Earth and the moon as two distinct, bright "evening stars."

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, manages the Mars Science Laboratory Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL designed and built the project's Curiosity rover. Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, built and operates the rover's Mastcam.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/TAMU

And here's the (kind of) unannotated version:

curiosity view of earth and moon mars evening star Imgur

Source:

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/images/?ImageID=5970

This should help put the distance in perspective.

Here's a good picture to scale.

earth moon scale from mars Imgur

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