To paraphrase Douglas Adams, if mankind were truly able to appreciate its tiny and utterly irrelevant place within the infinite reaches of the never-ending cosmos, we’d go completely mad. Or, as I prefer to think, we’d just be a hell of a lot nicer to everyone else on the planet once our sense of self-importance was challenged by the cold vacuum of space.
This morning’s images from NASA’s Curiosity rover, the little robot collector which is currently wandering around the Martian wilderness, aren’t exactly a Total Perspective Vortex, but they do show the Earth and Moon from a very unusual angle. Earth, apparently, is the brightest star in the Martian night. There’s a zoomed in section in the shot below lest you miss it.
According to NASA, the image was taken about an hour and a half after sunset on day 529 of the Rover’s mission on Mars. That tiny dot you call home is 160 000 000km from the camera. Remember to wave next time. (Images – NASA)
