Sunday, January 11, 2009

What an amazing picture!


In its Astronomy Picture Of The Day for January 11th, NASA has given us a photograph of Saturn, taken from behind the planet by the Cassini probe. The planet is silhouetted against the Sun, which is in eclipse on its far side.

To see the full picture, click here, then click on the picture to get a really large version, suitable for saving as wallpaper or a desktop background.

The fascinating thing to me was that our planet, Earth, is visible just inside one of the rings of Saturn, in the far distance. I've cropped out the planet and its rings, and circled Earth in yellow, in this picture below. Click the picture for a larger view.




It kinda puts our place in the cosmos into perspective, doesn't it?

Peter

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Spectacular!

Anonymous said...

Peter,

Thanks for the link! I was in space detox after the Hubble Advent Calendar. I have set that to my background.

Steve