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Photo: Earth Is A Tiny Speck In The Martian Night Sky

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Take a look at this picture of the landscape of Mars at dusk. If you look at a larger version of the image here, you'll find that a tiny pixel floating in the blackness in the center-left part of the image is Earth. You can even see the faint image of our moon loyally standing next to us.

The image was taken by the Mars Curiosity Rover and published by JPL today. In describing the image, NASA writes:

Researchers used the left eye camera of Curiosity's Mast Camera (Mastcam) to capture this scene about 80 minutes after sunset on the 529th Martian day, or sol, of the rover's work on Mars (Jan. 31, 2014). The image has been processed to remove effects of cosmic rays. A human observer with normal vision, if standing on Mars, could easily see Earth and the moon as two distinct, bright "evening stars."

We love pictures like this because it showcases the vastness of space and forces us to realize just how small we really are in the grand scheme of things. It also makes us incessantly quote Carl Sagan in our heads.

As an added bonus, here's an awesome panorama of the surface of Mars taken from the top of Mount Sharp:

Mars Panorama - Curiosity rover: Martian solar day 530 in world

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