Viking
07-20-2008, 00:06
Nope, not a reposting of the classic Voyager 1 picture (http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA00450), but rather a new movie from the Deep Impact spacecraft that is currrently in its extended mission phase.
The video (http://epoxi.umd.edu/4gallery/Earth-Moon_vid.shtml) was recorded to get an idea as of what an Earth like extrasolar planet might look like through a telescope. A corresponding press release can be found here (http://epoxi.umd.edu/7press/news/20080717.shtml).
The Earth has a rather large apparent size in the video, so note that:
"To image Earth in a similar fashion, an alien civilization would need technology far beyond what Earthlings can even dream of building," said Sara Seager, a planetary theorist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass., and a co-investigator on EPOXI. "Nevertheless, planet-characterizing space telescopes under study by NASA would be able to observe an Earth twin as a single point of light -- a point whose total brightness changes with time as different land masses and oceans rotate in and out of view. The video will help us connect a varying point of planetary light with underlying oceans, continents, and clouds -- and finding oceans on extrasolar planets means identifying potentially habitable worlds." said Seager.
The video (http://epoxi.umd.edu/4gallery/Earth-Moon_vid.shtml) was recorded to get an idea as of what an Earth like extrasolar planet might look like through a telescope. A corresponding press release can be found here (http://epoxi.umd.edu/7press/news/20080717.shtml).
The Earth has a rather large apparent size in the video, so note that:
"To image Earth in a similar fashion, an alien civilization would need technology far beyond what Earthlings can even dream of building," said Sara Seager, a planetary theorist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass., and a co-investigator on EPOXI. "Nevertheless, planet-characterizing space telescopes under study by NASA would be able to observe an Earth twin as a single point of light -- a point whose total brightness changes with time as different land masses and oceans rotate in and out of view. The video will help us connect a varying point of planetary light with underlying oceans, continents, and clouds -- and finding oceans on extrasolar planets means identifying potentially habitable worlds." said Seager.