This stunning picture is the first image of Earth ever taken from another planet that shows our home as a planetary disc, with the Moon in the distance.
Captured by Nasa’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter as the spacecraft orbited the Red Planet, both the Earth and the Moon appear as crescents, engulfed in the vast darkness of space. Our planet is captured in a ‘half-Earth’ phase, while the image also shows the Earth-facing hemisphere of the Moon.
Because the Earth and the Moon are closer to the Sun than Mars, they exhibit phases, just as the Moon, Venus, and Mercury do when viewed from Earth.