All materials are from APOD website. The first picture was published by APOD just the day before 2007 Thanksgiving. It’s taken by Japanese moon-orbiting spacecraft. At the same time, Chinese counterpart hasn’t issued any picture. I’m eager to see that. [singlepic=120,300,300,,left]Explanation: What does the Earth look like from the Moon? A new version of this space age perspective was captured by the robotic Kaguya spacecraft currently in orbit around Earth’s Moon. Launched two months ago by Japan, the scientific mission of the Selenological and Engineering Explorer (SELENE), nicknamed Kaguya, is to study the origin and evolution of the Moon. Last month Kaguya reached lunar orbit and starting transmitting data and images. This frame is from Kaguya’s onboard HDTV camera. An astronaut standing on the lunar surface would never actually see the Earth rise, since the Moon always keeps the same side toward the Earth. This Earthrise as well as the famous Earthrise captured 40 years ago by the crew of Apollo 8, only occurs for observers in lunar orbit. This one is the “famous Earthrise captured 40 years ago” published by APOD on 2005 Christmas. [singlepic=118,300,300,,left]Explanation: In December of 1968, the Apollo 8 crew flew from the Earth to the Moon and back again. Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders were launched atop a Saturn V rocket on December 21, circled the Moon ten times in their command module, and returned to Earth on December 27. The Apollo 8 mission’s impressive list of firsts includes: the first humans to journey to the Earth’s Moon, the first manned flight using the Saturn V, and the first to photograph the Earth from deep space. As the Apollo 8 command module rounded the farside of the Moon, the crew could look toward the lunar horizon and see the Earth appear to rise, due to their spacecraft’s orbital motion. The famous picture that resulted, of a distant blue Earth above the Moon’s limb, was a marvelous gift to the world. This last one is the “blue Earth” presented by APOD on 2003 Earth’s day.
[singlepic=119,300,300,,right] Explanation: This reconstructed digital portrait of our planet is reminiscent of the Apollo-era pictures of the “big blue marble” Earth from space. To create it, researchers at Goddard Space Flight Center’s Laboratory for Atmospheres combined data from a Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES), the Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS), and the Polar Orbiting Environmental Satellites (POES) with a USGS elevation model of Earth’s topography. Stunningly detailed, the planet’s western hemisphere is cast so that heavy vegetation is green and sparse vegetation is yellow, while the heights of mountains and depths of valleys have been exaggerated by 50 times to make vertical relief visible. Hurricane Linda is the dramatic storm off North America’s west coast. And what about the Moon? The lunar image was reconstructed from GOES data and artistically rescaled for this visualization.