You Can Now PhotoBomb Spacecraft Images of Earth Not Once, But Twice This Weekend

SmileAtSaturn.png

You've hopefully heard about the chance to

have your picture taken this Friday

– along with the rest of humanity – by the Cassini spacecraft, currently about 1 billion km away as it orbits Saturn. But now another spacecraft has joined in on the fun.

Inspired in part by the Cassini team, scientists from the MESSENGER mission at Mercury realized their upcoming orbital parameters has Earth coincidentally in the crosshairs of its cameras as it takes images to search for natural satellites around Mercury on July 19 and 20. So we've got not one, but TWO spacecraft to smile at, pose for, and generally be on good behavior as they take pictures of planet Earth. Here's when you should be smiling and waving:

MESSENGER will be taking images at 11:49, 12:38, and 13:41 UTC (4:49 a.m., 5:38 a.m. and 6:41 a.m. PDT or 7:49 a.m., 8:38 a.m. and 9:41 a.m. EDT, or) on both days, July 19 and 20. Parts of Earth not illuminated in the Cassini images, including all of Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia, will appear illuminated in the MESSENGER images. MESSENGER's images also will take a few days to process prior to release, the team said.

The image taken from the Saturn system by NASA's Cassini spacecraft will occur between 21:27 and 21:47 UTC (2:27 and 2:42 PDT, 5:27 and 5:42 p.m. EDT) on Friday, July 19. Cassini will be nearly 900 million miles (nearly 1.5 billion kilometers) away from Earth. NASA is encouraging the public to look and wave in the direction of Saturn at the time of the portrait and share their pictures via the Internet.

[caption id="attachment_103574" align="aligncenter" width="580"]

The 'Wave at Saturn" event will be the first time Earthlings have had advance notice that their picture will be taken from interplanetary distances. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech[/caption]

If Saturn isn't in your field of view at the time, you can join in online to

take a look at Saturn with Gianluca Masi and the Virtual Telescope Project

from Italy.

Also, at the exact time the Cassini spacecraft is snapping pics of Earth, the

Slooh

Space Camera will be snapping images of Saturn - live and in true color - with live broadcast team. Their feed starts at 2:30 PM PDT / 5:30 PM EDT / 21:30 UTC with live views of Saturn from the Canary Islands.

We'll embed the feed here:

There are events associated with this

Wave at Saturn

event, and we'll repost the info from our

previous article:

For all our astrophotographer friends out there, in cooperation with Astronomers Without Borders, TDTES is sponsoring a

Saturn Mosaic project

, where you can submit an image you've taken of Saturn.

Urgency note

:

this has to be submitted by July 22, 2013.

Astronomers Without Borders is also sponsoring a special

Saturn Observing Program,

and they are encouraging people and organizations to either organize a special observing event for July 19 (

you can register it as an official event here

) or to attend an event near you.

You can find TDTES events here.

This can be a full-blown observing event with telescopes, or just an excuse to get together with friends to go out and look at Saturn in the night sky.

There are also two competitions -- one is to

submit photos that best represents Earth

(the image must be taken on July 19, 2013) and another is to

write an original song about this event.

The digital versions of the winning entries will be beamed to space at a later date.

Find more information at

The Day The Earth Smiled website

, and the

Astronomers Without Borders website.

NASA also has info about events for the #Wave at Saturn event, including charts on

where and when to look for Saturn in the night sky here.

NASA says these charts take into account the light travel time from Saturn.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com