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Earth-Moon observations from Venus Express

25 November 2005

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Earth and Moon system at about 3.5Mkm as seen by VIRTIS-M visible channel in true color format. Angular separation is about 1.6deg Phase angle is 65deg which corresponds to 65% of disk illuminated by the Sun.

Credits: ESA/VIRTIS team

VIRTIS sees the Earth-Moon system

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This image, taken by the Venus Monitoring Camera during commissioning of the Venus Express instruments, shows Earth and Moon from 3.5 million kilometres away. The exposure time was set to obtain a signal from the Moon in all four channels simultaneously. For this reason Earth is overexposed.

The image is a composite of four images all showing Earth and the Moon but at different wavelengths: upper left, infrared; lower left, infrared; upper right, visible, and lower right ultraviolet. North is up.

Credits: ESA/MPS

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Just two weeks after launch the VIRTIS imaging spectrometer on ESA's Venus Express has been able to acquire its first remote-sensing data.

This image, taken on 23 November, as part of the checkout of the Venus Express instruments, shows Earth in the infrared (thermal) region at a wavelength of about 4μm as seen by VIRTIS-M. The disk now appears almost 'fully illuminated' with no difference from day and night regions since only the thermal radiance from the planet is seen. The Antarctica region, being colder, is seen weaker in radiance (bottom).

Credits: ESA/VIRTIS team

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Rosetta’s VIRTIS took a series of high-resolution images of our planet in visible and infrared light from a distance of 250 000 kilometres and with a resolution of 62 kilometres per pixel.

These images show Earth in real colours (left) and stretched false colours (right). The contrast between land, clouds and sea has been increased. South America is seen in green where, through the clouds, it is possible to distinguish (a) Argentina and (b) the Andes mountain chains. The sea is blue while the clouds have a reddish-yellowish tint.

Credits: ESA

Looking at Venus

ESApod: Venus Express

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