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PIA23899: Curiosity Rover Finds Earth and Venus in the Martian Sky
Two images of the night sky were combined to show Earth and Venus as seen by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover on June 5, 2020. The planets appear as pinpoints of light owing to a combination of distance and dust in the air.
 Target Name:  Mars
 Is a satellite of:  Sol (our sun)
 Mission:  Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) 
 Spacecraft:  Curiosity
 Instrument:  Mastcam 
 Product Size:  760 x 1140 pixels (w x h) 
 Produced By:  JPL 
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA23899.tif (934.1 kB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA23899.jpg (22.8 kB)  

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Two images of the night sky were combined to show Earth and Venus as seen by the Mast Camera aboard NASA's Curiosity Mars rover on June 5, 2020, the 2,784th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. Both planets appear as mere pinpoints of light owing to a combination of distance and dust in the air; they would normally look like bright stars.

A feature called Tower Butte is just visible at the bottom of the image, part of the clay-bearing region that Curiosity has been exploring since early 2019.

More information about Curiosity is online at http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/SSI

Image Addition Date:
2020-06-15