Venus, Earth and Mars on November 18, 2020, as seen through NASA-ESA Solar Orbiter (SolO). This image was captured approximately 250.6 million km away. This is in contrast to our Earth’s distance from the Earth of about 93 million miles (150 million km). In this image, the sun is located to the right, outside the frame of the image. Image via ESA / NASA / NRL / Solar Orbiter / SolOHI.
What does the Earth look like in space? And … how far from Earth can we be and still see it with our own eyes?
To find the answer to these questions, let’s take an imaginary journey through the solar system. Spaceships exploring our solar system have given us wonderful views of the Earth. Keep reading and checking the photos on this page to see what the Earth looks like from various other places in our space neighborhood.
First, imagine that you are destroying yourself and that you are about 300 miles above the Earth’s surface. It is about the height of the orbit of the International Space Station (ISS). From the ISS window, the Earth’s surface is large. During the day, you can clearly see major landforms. At night, from Earth’s orbit, you see the lights of Earth’s cities.
Earth in broad daylight from the International Space Station in 2012. The Great Lakes of North America shine in the sun. Read more about this image.
Earth at night, from the ISS in 2012. Ireland is in the foreground, and the United Kingdom in the back and right. A bright sunrise is in the background. Greens and violets have a northern light along the rest of the horizon.
Let’s move away from, say, the distance of the moon’s orbit.
When we cross the moon – about 380,000 km away – the Earth looks like a shining ball in space. It is not terribly different from the way the moon shows us.
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The first images of the Earth from the moon came from the Apollo mission. Apollo 8 in 1968 was the first human spaceflight to leave Earth’s orbit. It was the first spacecraft to be captured and escaped from the gravitational field of another celestial body, in this case the moon.
It was the first journey in which humans visited another world and returned to return to Earth.
Earth seen from the moon by Apollo 8 astronauts in 1968. Image by NASA.
In the decades since Voyager began traveling abroad, exploration of the moon has become more common. The Kaguya robotic probe orbited Earth around the moon in 2007. Launched by Japan and officially named Selenological and Engineering Explorer (SELENE), Kaguya studied the origin and evolution of the moon. The frame below comes from Kaguya’s integrated HDTV camera.
Earth seen from the moon by Kaguya in 2007. Image by SELENE JAXA / NHK team.
Another image from Kaguya, which recorded images and photos from Earth. Remember that if you were on the moon, you would not see the Earth rising or falling. But spacecraft in orbit around the moon experience this scene. Image via JAXA.
Now let’s continue to move outward until we can see both the Earth and the moon together in space. The next image was stunning when it was first released. It shows an Earth and a crescent-shaped moon – the first of its kind ever taken by a spacecraft – on September 18, 1977.
This image of an Earth and crescent moon – the first of its kind ever made by a spacecraft – was recorded on September 18, 1977, by Voyager 1 at a distance of 7.25 million miles (11.66 million km). ) of soil. The moon is at the top of the image and beyond the Earth, as seen by Voyager. Image via NASA.
Since 1977, many robotic spacecraft have ventured out into our solar system. The mosaic below shows images of Earth and the Moon acquired by the multispectral imager on the Rendezvous Asteroid Near Earth (NEAR) spacecraft on January 23, 1998, 19 hours after the spacecraft oscillated from Earth on its way to asteroid 433 Eros. Images of both were taken from a radius of 400,000 miles (400,000 km), roughly the same as the distance between the two bodies.
Earth and moon seen by NEAR spacecraft in 1998.
Passing rapidly outside the system of Earth and the moon, you pass into the orbits of the planets Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. From all these worlds, the Earth looks like a star, which becomes weaker as you move away.
Earth and moon, as seen from Mars by NASA’s Curiosity rover on January 31, 2014. Read more about this image.
Larger view. | The earth seen behind Saturn’s rings. Do you see us in the lower right? Mars and Venus are on the top left. Image by the Cassini spacecraft, July 19, 2013.
This is the famous image known as Pale Blue Dot. It is a photograph of Earth taken on February 14, 1990 by the Voyager 1 spacecraft from a record distance of about 6 billion kilometers (3.7 billion miles). The ground is a bluish-white spot about halfway across the brown band on the right.
The images above are from Saturn, the sixth planet orbiting the sun. I have never seen any image of the Earth in Uranus or Neptune or any other body beyond the orbit of Saturn. Only five spacecraft on Earth – the two Voyager spacecraft, the two pioneers and the New Horizons spacecraft, which passed Pluto in 2015 – have ever ventured so far. These boats were not designed to look back at the Earth and, as far as I know, did not capture images of the Earth from distances beyond Saturn.
But theoretically now, could the Earth be seen from a distance beyond Saturn?
Speaking only in terms of Earth shine, the answer is yes. Our world does not become too weak to see with the naked eye far from the orbit of Neptune, about 14 billion km from home. Now consider Pluto’s orbit. It is extremely elliptical, ranging from just 4.4 billion km to 2.7 billion miles to over 7.3 billion km of sun. Pluto is at a limited distance at which – if we consider only the brightness, there are no other factors – we should be able to see the Earth only with the naked eye.
But there It is another factor. As you emerge from Earth, our world appears closer and closer to the bright sun. As you move away, the brightness of the sun begins to overwhelm the view of the Earth. From Pluto – even if it were Earth luminous enough to see – you probably couldn’t see it in the sunshine.
So this is the answer to the question of how far you might be from Earth and yet see it with your own eyes. Although no one knows for sure because no one has tried it (and because human vision varies from person to person), the Earth would become impossible to see with the eye somewhere beyond Saturn’s orbit.
Now let’s change the game. Let’s say we could use tools and not just the eye alone. Suppose a bold astronautastronomers he went to Pluto. Suppose they took all the tools they needed to see the Earth in the sunshine. Could he use telescopes, hidden disks, and other techniques to take a look at the Earth? May be!
But it still wouldn’t be easy.
Read more: Wikipedia has a long writing on extraterrestrial skies
Conclusion: What does the Earth look like in space? How far in space could you see the Earth with the naked eye? Considering no more brightness, the answer is about 9 billion miles (14 billion km) away, about the distance between Neptune or Pluto. In practice, however, seeing it from a distance would be a challenge, because the brightness of the sun would overwhelm the view of the Earth.
