Awwww: Mars Rover Curiousity Took A Picture Of Earth

Since we sent it there, is it technically a selfie?

Probably a dumb question, where are the stars?

Because it was all filmed on a stage set, of course, just like the moon landings. It's all a big conspiracy!

/tinfoil hat

Red tin foil I presume, cunningly formed into a protective fez...

Indeed. Nobody suspects me of being one of the 'enlightened' ones.

nasa always makes it a point to photoshop them out because of that gaff with the moon all those years ago

You know how Venus is the first star to appear in our sky?

NASA JPL website says "...Earth, shining brighter than any star in the Martian night sky...", so I guess camera sensitivity is not high enough to pick up star light. Plus, looks like it's not yet completely dark (photo taken 80 minutes after sunset).

Thank you!

"From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any
particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that
dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love,
everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who
ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering,
thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines,
every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and
destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in
love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer,
every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar,"
every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our
species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the
rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in
glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction
of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of
one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of
some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they
are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our
imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged
position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.
Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our
obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come
from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbor life. There is
nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could
migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment,
the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is
a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no
better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant
image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to
deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale
blue dot, the only home we've ever known."

--Carl Sagan, "Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space", 1997 reprint, pp. xv–xvi