We’ve seen it hundreds of times on TV and in the movies: an entire planet shrinking away from the camera, swallowed up by the darkness of space in a matter of seconds as the Enterprise warps out of orbit or the Millenium Falcon races away from pursuing TIE fighters. Ever wonder what it would really look like to watch our homeworld slide into the distance behind us? Then check out this movie, which is composed of several hundred images taken by the spacecraft Messenger during a “gravity assist manuever” that will slingshot the unmanned probe toward Mercury. The photos were made over the course of 24 hours, so we get to see a complete rotation of the planet during the film. This makes Earth look something like a toy top spinning at an unnatural, crazy speed, but it is a beautiful sight nonetheless. I was especially fascinated by the golden sun-highlight in the upper quadrant; that’s something no special-effects guy has ever thought to add to his shot, at least not to my knowledge.
I still believe and hope that someday a human being will see this view with their own eyes instead of through a trick of technology…
This is so cool. I really like the look of the sun reflection, too.
That is really breathtaking. I agree that the sun effect is startling. It really conveys the impression of the earth rotating around the sun, something that our eyes don’t usually register.
I get a similar, startled feeling when I see films from the ISS or the shuttle that clearly show the landforms below as three-dimensional, rising up in relief from the surface. I think we’ve been trained by the movies to expect a planet seen from space to look like a smooth, painted ball (because, of course, that’s how they’ve always looked in the movies) and to be reminded that our world is an actual object with dimension and complex systems, and which is dynamically interacting with other objects… well, it is, as you say, breathtaking…