{"date":"2024-11-23","explanation":"In an interplanetary first, on July 19, 2013 Earth was photographed on the same day from two other worlds of the Solar Syste m, innermost planet Mercury and ringed gas giant Saturn. Pictured on the left, E arth is the pale blue dot just below the rings of Saturn, as captured by the rob otic Cassini spacecraft then orbiting the outermost gas giant. On that same day people across planet Earth snapped many of their own pictures of Saturn. On the right, the Earth-Moon system is seen against the dark background of space as cap tured by the sunward MESSENGER spacecraft, then in Mercury orbit. MESSENGER took its image as part of a search for small natural satellites of Mercury, moons th at would be expected to be quite dim. In the MESSENGER image, the brighter Earth and Moon are both overexposed and shine brightly with reflected sunlight. Desti ned not to return to their home world, both Cassini and MESSENGER have since ret ired from their missions of Solar System exploration.","hdurl":"https:\/\/apod.n asa.gov\/apod\/image\/2411\/earth_cassinimessenger_1799.jpg","media_type":"image ","service_version":"v1","title":"Interplanetary Earth","url":"https:\/\/apod.na sa.gov\/apod\/image\/2411\/earth_cassinimessenger_1024c.jpg"}
