In an interplanetary first, on July 19, 2013 Earth was photographed on the same day from two other worlds of the Solar System, innermost planet Mercury and ringed gas giant Saturn.
Pictured
on the left, Earth is the
pale blue dot
just below the rings of Saturn, as captured by the robotic
Cassini spacecraft
then orbiting the
outermost
gas giant.
On that same day people across
planet Earth snapped many
of their
own pictures of Saturn.
On the right, the
Earth-Moon system
is seen against the dark background of space as captured by the sunward
MESSENGER
spacecraft,
then in Mercury orbit.
MESSENGER took its image as part of a search for
small natural satellites of Mercury, moons that would be
expected to be quite dim.
In the
MESSENGER image,
the brighter Earth and Moon are both overexposed and
shine brightly with reflected sunlight.
Destined not to return to their home world, both
Cassini
and
MESSENGER
have since retired from their missions of Solar System exploration.
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