Earth and Moon

The Earth and Moon are rarely photographed together. One of most spectacular times this occurred was about 30 years ago when the Jupiter-bound Galileo spacecraft zoomed past our home planetary system. Then, robotic Galileo watched from about 15-times the Earth-Moon separation as our only natural satellite glided past our home world. The featured video combines 52 historic color-enhanced images . Although our Moon may appear small next to the Earth , no other planet in our Solar System has a satellite so comparable in size . The Sun , far off to the right, illuminated about half of each sphere, and shows the spinning Earth's white clouds , blue oceans , and tan continents.