The last few months, even years on our own planet, things are extremely tense. International conflicts, terrorism, the looming threat of global warming, the cryptocurrency boom, in which many (please note, not all, but many) I see another Tulip fever, a bubble that would burst, but somehow never breaks… But when I see such photos, as that will lower for a moment to realize how petty are the problems of humanity.
The photo was taken by the spacecraft OSIRIS-Rex space Agency NASA on 17 January 2018. At the time of shooting of the American interplanetary station moving away from us at a speed of about 8.5 kilometers per second, and captured the earth and the moon from a distance of 63.6 million kilometers.
The image of our native Land is represented by a large bright dot in the center. Next to it is the point smaller is the Moon. But if you look at the photo more closely, it is possible to note much more interesting details, located in the background.
“The photograph shows several constellations. A bright cluster of stars in the upper left corner is the Pleiades, the diffuse star cluster in the constellation Taurus. In the upper right corner you can see the constellation of Aries and its alpha (the brightest star) Khamal”, — explains in a press release NASA.
“The system Earth — Moon is located at the photos in the center of the five stars of the constellation of the whale.”
This is not the first interesting photos that we have awarded the camera of the OSIRIS-REx since its launch on 8 September 2016. In October 2017 the probe captures Earth and moon from a closer distance (about 400,000 kilometers). In addition, previously, the unit allowed us to obtain a composite color image of the Earth from a distance of 170,000 kilometers.
Recall that the main goal of OSIRIS-Rex is an asteroid Bennu. It is expected that in August of this year he finally gets it, and then proceed to set before him the task – to take rock samples from the surface of an asteroid (incidentally photographed all around) and bring them on the Ground somewhere by September 2023.
#photo | the Earth and Moon from a distance of 63.6 million kilometers
Nikolai Khizhnyak