Picture of Earth from Jupier/Saturn

"RSKT" wrote in message ...
Hi
Just curious. I know the Voyager turned back and took a picture of our solar
system with some planets. That was quite a poor quality one. Recently, they
took one image of earth from mars which looked interesting.A nice blue
crescent. I wonder if I was on mars and has an LX200 10" or Nexstar 9.25,
would the view of earth be breathtaking? I also wonder if the probe around
Saturn ever turned back to take a picture of earth...
anyone knows?
thanks in advance

Earth from Mars would be fairly interesting. For one thing, the Moon
is visible from Mars without a telescope (so the "twin planet" evening
star would be pretty to anyone strolling around during early Martian
evening -- a brilliant blue planet and a faint white companion), and
through a decent small telescope one would see the Moon and Earth
showing matching phases (just as Venus does to us).

However, Earth would be fairly small in a Martian scope. The only time
it'd be close enough to show any significant surface features, it'd be
a thin crescent. (During Earth-Mars opposition, when we on Earth
train telescopes on Mars because it's the only time we can see it at a
decent apparent size, Earth would be in line with the Sun from Mars'
point of view, and furthermore would have its night side turned toward
Mars.)

From Saturn you'd see nothing of interest. Apart from the miniscule
separation between Earth and the Sun, Earth is just too small.
Consider: Earth is a little more than twice the diameter of Ganymede,
and Saturn is just about twice the distance from Earth as Jupiter.
Earth would appear as large, to a telescope on (let us say) Iapetus,
as Ganymede appears to a telescope on Earth.

In my 11" Celestron at highest magnification, I can barely tell
Ganymede is a disc rather than a point. I doubt Cassini has a much
better scope than mine. Cassini is too far away to see Earth.

eyelessgame