This Photo of Earth Reminds Us How Small We Are

Earth and the moon are mere dots in this photo captured on Jan. 17, 2018, from a distance of 39.5 million miles (63.6 million kilometers) by NASA's OSIRIS-REx asteroid-sampling spacecraft.

(Image credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona/Lockheed Martin)

Here's a new perspective on your home planet, helpfully provided by a NASA asteroid-sampling probe.

Earth and the moon are two bright dots floating in an immense black void in the new view, which was captured by the space agency's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft on Jan. 17 from a distance of 39.5 million miles (63.6 million kilometers).

"Several constellations are also visible in the surrounding space," NASA officials wrote in a description of the image, which was released today (Feb. 14). "The bright cluster of stars in the upper left corner is the Pleiades in the Taurus constellation. Hamal, the brightest star in Aries, is located in the upper right corner of the image. The Earth-moon system is centered in the middle of five stars comprising the head of Cetus the Whale."

Mission scientists hope OSIRIS-REx teaches them more about the role that dark, primitive, carbon-rich asteroids such as Bennu may have played in seeding Earth with the building blocks of life long ago. The probe's observations should also prove useful to future asteroid miners, as well as folks studying the best ways to nudge potentially dangerous space rocks away from Earth, NASA officials have said.

Michael was a science writer for the Idaho National Laboratory and has been an intern at Wired.com, The Salinas Californian newspaper, and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. He has also worked as a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of Sydney, Australia, a bachelor's degree from the University of Arizona, and a graduate certificate in science writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz.