First video in history to capture the Moon orbiting Earth

According to NASA's Juno principal investigator Scott Bolton "if Captain Kirk of the USS Enterprise said, 'Take us home, Scotty,' this is what the crew would see." It's truly an incredible sequence—the first time ever that the Moon has been captured orbiting Earth.

Bolton describes the video: "In the movie, you ride aboard Juno as it approaches Earth and then soars off into the blackness of space. No previous view of our world has ever captured the heavenly waltz of Earth and moon."

The sequence was captured when Juno flew past Earth on October 9, 2013. In that pass, the ship accelerated to more than 8,800mph (7.3 kilometer per second), which put in en route to meet Jupiter on July 4, 2016. The scientists tested one of Juno's cameras, "optimized to track faint stars" by capturing this incredible view of the Earth and the Moon on their eternal dance.

As the designer of the star tracker—John Jørgensen of the Danish Technical University—put it: "Everything we humans are and everything we do is represented in that view."

Indeed. It may make you feel insignificant, but you should feel incredibly lucky to have materialized in this precious tiny planet of ours.

ORIGINAL: Sploid
Jesus Diaz on Sploid
Dec 10, 2013