Cassini Takes Pictures of Earth from Saturn – JPL Scientists and others Wave and Smile

On Friday last week, whether you were smiling or not, someone took your picture. But don’t worry if you were having a bad hair day. From about 900 million miles away, it is unlikely that anyone will notice. The picture was taken as the NASA Cassini spacecraft, orbiting Saturn and its moons, turned its focus to take pictures of Earth.

To celebrate Cassini taking pictures of the Earth, people all around the globe, including scientists and engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory which controls the mission, gathered to wave at Saturn on July 19.

These pictures of the Earth from Saturn are actually part of a larger mosaic of the Saturn system that Cassini is taking while in Saturn’s shadow.

While the processing of the Earth image is expected to take a few days, and processing of the full Saturn system mosaic will likely take several weeks, scientists hope to use it learn more about the fainter rings encircling Saturn.

Just in case Cassini didn’t capture you at your best, not to worry. Coincidentally it turns out that on Saturday July 20, another series of pictures of the Earth were taken by the NASA MESSENGER spacecraft in orbit around Mercury.

It turns out that some parts of Earth were not illuminated in the Cassini images. These areas, which included all of Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia, will appear illuminated in the MESSENGER images.

For more details about the Cassini mission, and to view the full gallery of images taken by the probe since its launch over a decade ago, go online to http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/.