<![CDATA[Looking for Life on Other Planets? Look in the Mirror - io9 Comments]]> <![CDATA[Looking for Life on Other Planets? Look in the Mirror - io9 Comments]]> <![CDATA[Looking for Life on Other Planets? Look in the Mirror]]> @Gyrus: I would think that it will take more than just a camera shot from a distance. It will take a similar sort of instruments on the probe, that we use here, so it would seem we would need to start from scratch, and then wait forever to gain the necessary distance. Possibly a computer simulation would be a good alternative while preparing the mission.

RAHfanboy

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Along with a few other nearly identical images, the shots are the only space-borne perspective that feature our pale blue dot from anything like a wide-angle view.

There have been plenty of observations of the Earth made by spacecraft with a "wide-angle view". It's quite common for probes heading for other planets (or asteroids or comets) to pass by the Earth once or twice for gravity boosts, and they often turn on their instruments during the flyby.

Some of the more spectacular examples:

Movies of the Earth and Moon rotating during the Galileo fl... (1990)

(Which produced a paper in Nature by Carl Sagan and others discussing which signatures of life were visible during the flyby.)

Images and movies taken by the Mercury-bound probe Messenger (2005)

Images of the Earth and Moon taken by the comet probe Rosetta (2007)

Peter_Erwin

]]> <![CDATA[Looking for Life on Other Planets? Look in the Mirror]]> You're missing the famous "Pale Blue Dot" photo, taken from Voyager 1 at a distance of 4 billion miles. [en.wikipedia.org]

Djehuty

]]> <![CDATA[Looking for Life on Other Planets? Look in the Mirror]]> It's a great idea, as a way to have baseline comparisons. Why has no one ever thought of this before?

Gyrus

]]> <![CDATA[Looking for Life on Other Planets? Look in the Mirror]]> Would it make sense to include a special sensor package on the next probe to the outer planets to do this comparison check Wolfe suggests. It could be calibrated to perceive Earth as if it a lot further away, in other words make it "myopic". If I look across the street without my glasses the quality of what I see is what someone with 20/20 vision sees at twice that distance. Obviously I'm not an engineer but this might work.

Grey_Area

]]> <![CDATA[Looking for Life on Other Planets? Look in the Mirror]]> Actually, the Japanese Moon Probe just recently took some really great Earth Rise shots: [www.msnbc.msn.com]

Belabras

]]> <![CDATA[Looking for Life on Other Planets? Look in the Mirror]]> Take a look at the lawman
Beating up the wrong guy.
Oh man!
Wonder if he'll ever know
He's in the best selling show.

Is there life on Mars?

strider_mt2k

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