Here's What Earth Looks Like When You're Heading to the Sun

[Judi Lynn]

By Meghan Bartels, Space.com Senior Writer | October 24, 2018 05:31pm ET

NASA's Parker Solar Probe will never return to Earth — but it can still look back on where it came from.

On Sept. 25, the sole camera aboard that spacecraft, which launched on Aug. 12, captured a photo of Earth shining brightly in a field of stars. That camera is called WISPR (Wide-field Imager for Solar Probe) and is actually on board to allow the spacecraft to photograph the structure of the sun's upper atmosphere, the corona, as the spacecraft approaches — becoming the cosmic equivalent of a dashcam.

Earth is the bright spot near the center of the right-hand image. (The bow-shaped brightness below is just an artifact of how imaging technology designed to work inside the sun's atmosphere responds to an individual, particularly bright spot, according to a NASA statement.)

But there's another secret hidden in the image. The scientists behind the mission zoomed in on Earth and spotted a strange bulge on the right side of the planet in the image. But Earth isn't really misshapen: That lump happens to be the edge of the moon, visible from behind our planet.

More:
https://www.space.com/42246-parker-solar-probe-photo-of-earth.html

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

1. Not sure I can tell exactly what within each picture is the Earth.

Can you help me out here?

For context, my son is in a PhD program in astronomy at George Mason University in Fairfax VA. His area of research is exoplanets, but trust me, I call him up an an almost daily basis to ask him astronomy related questions. Incredibly enough, I have never once heard him roll his eyes at me. He is amazingly patient at answering my many repetitive questions. I guess I now have another set of questions to ask him.

Hooray for astronomy!

[LakeSuperiorView]

2. The caption explains it.

Ignore the left picture. The brightest thing in the right picture is the Earth.

[ret5hd]

3. He puts his eye microphone on mute...but you knew that didn't you?

[SCantiGOP]

4. Cool, an Earth selfie