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Earth and Moon From an Alien's Perspective

krygny writes "NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft (whose extended mission is called EPOXI) has created a video of the moon transiting Earth as seen from 31 million miles away. Scientists are using the video to develop techniques to study alien worlds. 'Our video shows some specific features that are important for observations of Earth-like planets orbiting other stars,' said Drake Deming of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center... 'A "sun glint'" can be seen in the movie, caused by light reflected from Earth's oceans, and similar glints to be observed from extrasolar planets could indicate alien oceans. Also, we used infrared light instead of the normal red light to make the color composite images, and that makes the land masses much more visible.'" Here are links to the two videos, one red-green-blue and the other infrared-green-blue.

6 of 150 comments (clear)

  1. Cool, but then again.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    That's cool but then again, I'm a sucker for any movie I'm actually in.

  2. Hey.. by elemnt14 · · Score: 5, Funny

    ..I can see my house from there!

  3. Mostly... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...harmless

  4. That's no moon... by oodaloop · · Score: 5, Funny

    Whoops, reached my limit for "That's no moon" comments in a single day. No no, don't get up. I'll show myself out.

    --
    Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
  5. Because real reality isn't real enough... by 14erCleaner · · Score: 4, Funny
    From TFA:

    Also, we used infrared light instead of the normal red light to make the color composite images, and that makes the land masses much more visible.

    Sigh...everything's gotta be special effects these days...

    --
    Have you read my blog lately?
  6. Re:*.MOV - WTF? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Could you please upload it to youtube? I don't have mplayer installed on my machine.