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PIA10121: Galapagos Islands Image
NASA's Mercury-bound MESSENGER spacecraft captured several stunning images of Earth during a gravity assist swingby of its home planet on Aug. 2, 2005.
 Target Name:  Earth
 Is a satellite of:  Sol (our sun)
 Mission:  MESSENGER 
 Spacecraft:  MESSENGER
 Instrument:  MDIS - Wide Angle 
 Product Size:  4500 x 2238 pixels (w x h) 
 Produced By:  Johns Hopkins University/APL 
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA10121.tif (30.21 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA10121.jpg (771.1 kB)  

Click on the image above to download a moderately sized image in JPEG format (possibly reduced in size from original)

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Galapagos Islands Image

The Mercury-bound MESSENGER spacecraft captured several stunning images of Earth during a gravity assist swingby of its home planet on Aug. 2, 2005. One picture, snapped when MESSENGER was 34,692 miles (55,831 kilometers) above Earth, shows the Galapagos Islands as tiny specks peeking through an opening in clouds of the brightly lit dayside of the planet. The line dividing day and night cuts a swath through South America, with night about to fall on the western half of the continent. The large bright spot to the west of South America is the Sun's light scattering off ocean waves.

These images are from MESSENGER, a NASA Discovery mission to conduct the first orbital study of the innermost planet, Mercury. For information regarding the use of images, see the MESSENGER image use policy.

Image Credit:
NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

Image Addition Date:
2005-08-02