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Far Out Photo: Earth As 'Evening Star' Over Mars

Seeing a new photo taken by NASA's Curiosity rover of Earth in the night sky over Mars sent us through The Two-Way's back pages in search of other images of home taken from space.

Earth, the tiny bright spot above the Mars horizon, is so hard to see that it helps to also look at the version of the photo in which NASA has embedded a handy pointer. But perhaps Earth being just a tiny spot puts in perspective what it's like to be 99 million miles away.

According to NASA, "a human observer with normal vision, if standing on Mars, could easily see Earth and the moon as two distinct, bright 'evening stars.' "

We'll put the new image and NASA's helpful illustrations in a gallery with other famous shots of Earth from far away.

Related Earth-from-far-away posts:

-- On Anniversary Of Apollo 8, How The 'Earthrise' Photo Was Made.

-- 'Blue Marble 2012': NASA's 'Most Amazing' High Def Image Of Earth So Far

-- An Alien View Of Earth (the "pale blue dot" photo).

-- LOOK: Cassini's Version Of 'The Pale Blue Dot'.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.