New Earthrise

NASA / GSFC / ASU

On February 1, 2014, as Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter approached the north pole, it rotated to catch a view of Earth rising above 180-kilometer Rozhdestvenskiy crater. Twelve such Earthrises happen each day for the spacecraft, which is in a polar orbit around the Moon. (NASA caption)

More information here.

Mike
(Thanks to Sam Grover)

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Bill Wheeler: "There we are. What a wonderful photograph!"

Aashish Sharma: "I think I want a print of that hanging on my wall, because I can't stop looking at it!  :-) "

Comments

[Soeren Engelbrecht]

in reference to your recent Street Photography: Wrong! post, I am certain that a lot of people would claim that this is a terribly composed picture with way too much negative space :-)

[Benjamin Marks]

Now _that_ is just an amazing perspective on our small blue planet. Vicki Goldberg wrote once about the power of photographs -- that is, of specific single images -- to permanently alter our view of ourselves and the world. One of the images she cited was the first image of our planet hovering in the inky, hostile, black of space. I think the published picture, is evocative of that first-shock-to-the-consciousness -- in some ways the diminished size of our blue sphere makes the point more powerfully.

[Steve Ducharme]

Shaming "landscape" photographers everywhere! :)

[Daniel Stevenson]

That blue marble is still such a beautiful sight out in the cold and grey of space.

It is a good thing that machines don't feel. If I was on that orbiter around the moon, or even on the moon itself, I am afraid it wouldn't take too many Earthrises before I was depressed enough to shoot myself, or whatever the Lunar equivalent is.

[ctein]

Dear Daniel,

In that vein, this is the saddest comic ever:

http://xkcd.com/695/

pax / Ctein

[David Bennett]

Is that a letter 'V' I can see written on the Earth? Or maybe it's the Twitter logo - can't see clearly enough.

No, I think it's a 'V' - maybe a maker's hallmark.

[Mus Aziz]

Wow!

[Richard]

Now THAT'S a print I'd buy.

[bill emory]

hey Mike- is this a little about the power of Photoshop? Isn't the moon more reflective than earth? Here, if we are to notice the blue marble, has moon has been stomped down a couple of stops?

[David Dyer-Bennet]

I wonder what resolution the original has? This kind of NASA stuff is public domain, and these days they tend to release raw files on the web site.

Hmmm; the original is a series of 10k-pixel images combined, and the color in the Earth in that composite is artificial. I don't think I've found the full-res version to see how big it is, but the overall web site is http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/main/