The Earth and Moon Captured Together by Chinese Spacecraft Camera

Check out this amazing photograph of our planet with the Moon hovering in the background. It was published today by China’s State Administration of Science, and was captured by the country’s Chang’e 5-T1 spacecraft that did a flyby of the moon late last month.

A description on the page states that the image was captured yesterday by the spacecraft’s service module as it orbited Earth at a distance of about 336,000 miles from Earth and 572,000 miles from the Moon. By comparison, the “Blue Marble” photo captured by Apollo 17 was shot at a distance of about 28,000 miles.

The same spacecraft also captured this similar photo during its flyby of the moon. In this second shot, the Moon is in the foreground while the Earth hovers in the back:

An interesting thing about this photo is that it shows the side of the Moon that’s hidden from observers on Earth.

You can find larger versions of these two photographs here and here.

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Image credits: Photographs by the Chinese National Space Administration