If life existed on Mercury, this is what it would see at night

Deatails of that image of earth:

Date Acquired: May 6, 2010
Image Mission Elapsed Time (MET): 181616382
Instrument: Wide Angle Camera (WAC) of the Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS)
WAC Filter: 2 (clear filter)
Field of View: The WAC has a 10.5° field of view

Of Interest: In the lower left portion of this image, the Earth can be seen, as well as the much smaller Moon to Earth's right. When MESSENGER took this image, a distance of 183 million kilometers (114 million miles) separated the spacecraft and Earth. To provide context for this distance, the average separation between the Earth and the Sun is about 150 million kilometers (93 million miles). Though it is a beautiful, thought-provoking picture, viewing our planet from far away was not the main reason that the mission team planned the collection of this image. Instead, this image was acquired as part of MESSENGER's campaign to search for vulcanoids, small rocky objects that have been postulated to exist in orbits between Mercury and the Sun. Though no vulcanoids have yet been detected, the MESSENGER spacecraft is in a unique position to look for smaller and fainter vulcanoids than has ever before been possible. MESSENGER's vulcanoid searches occur near perihelion passages, when the spacecraft's orbit brings it closest to the Sun. Today is another such perihelion, and MESSENGER is taking a new set of images to search for tiny asteroids lurking close to the Sun.

Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
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Source
 
KNiVES said:
I never knew the moon was that big when compared to the Earth, nor that close either! Unless it's an optical illusion of some sort?

Edit: Yeah it must be, just looked it up. Basically in the shot above, it would appear that the moon is closer to the camera than the Earth, by quite some distance.
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It's thought that the Earth and our moon formed when the young Earth was hit by a Mars-sized protoplanet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_impact_hypothesis Says the collision took between a month and a century!
 
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Wow, wish i knew more about Science, especially about space etc.

So those colourful things on the second picture are what?
 
Question!

If the universe is something like 15billion light years across, and the hubble can see something like 4billion light years, Why can we not just build a much bigger hubble and see to the edge of the universe, huh?
 
jwest said:
Question!

If the universe is something like 15billion light years across, and the hubble can see something like 4billion light years, Why can we not just build a much bigger hubble and see to the edge of the universe, huh?
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Just a (drunken) thought, but maybe the light from 15bn years ago hasn't reached us yet like. Which begs the question, why?
 
Wow astounding pic....really puts things into perspective. Just imagine...everything..EVERYTHING you ever know is on that dot...

Puts war into a new light huh...thats all we got but here we are still slaugthering one another...im sure them UFOs were just probes checking us out and then reporting back that we were losers...dont bother.
 
jwest said:
Question!

If the universe is something like 15billion light years across, and the hubble can see something like 4billion light years, Why can we not just build a much bigger hubble and see to the edge of the universe, huh?
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There isn't really an edge like a brick wall, as the "edge" is moving out (into nothingness!) at the speed of light. The edge simply looks pitch black. More interesting is measuring what's called the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR). This is measuring microwaves, and tells us that the big bang is probably the best model. Better explained here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_background_radiation

If spotting planets is your thing, the GAIA mission is where it's at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_mission
http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/area/index.cfm?fareaid=26
http://www.esa.int/esaSC/120377_index_0_m.html

It should have angular resolution of micro-arcseconds. Which is like spotting a hair from 1000km away!
 
scorza said:
Just a (drunken) thought, but maybe the light from 15bn years ago hasn't reached us yet like. Which begs the question, why?
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Rate of Universe expansion being faster than the rate at which light travels perhaps? Or perhaps towards the edge of our known universe a much much larger body with mass greater than anything we know today (black holes) is bending space and light (and time) causing such dilations?

Who knows!

There have been various debates and theories thrown around as to why (among other questions too) but it's just one of those things to rack your brains over I guess :p

In our lifetime anyway!
 
If life existed on Mercury, wouldn't it look like this at night?

alienk.gif
 
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