Curiosity's Progress

To Curiosity, Earth  looks like a  little dot in the Martian sky.   That's what we really are, our home the Earth is just a tiny little dot in the big scheme of things and yet we dare to think we control the Universe and the weather along with it. Sheesh !!!

Greg Botelho writing at CNN:
...Curiosity rover takes snapshot of Earth -- from 100 million miles away on Mars.
It's a dot in the sky.

The 2,000-pound rover Curiosity landed on Mars on August 6, 2012, and has been sending back fascinating images and data ever since. Curiosity recently began a trek toward Mount Sharp after spending more than six months in the "Glenelg" area. This image was taken on July 16, after the rover passed the 1 kilometer mark for the total distance covered since the start of the mission. It still has over 8 kilometers (5 miles) to cover before reaching Mount Sharp, which will take several months.

But not just any dot. For the Curiosity rover, it's home.
NASA tweeted a photo Thursday taken by Curiosity from the Mars surface six days earlier. The image shows a speck above the horizon that a pointer identifies as Earth.

"Look Back in Wonder," reads the accompanying text from the Curiosity Rover's official Twitter feed. "My 1st picture of Earth from the surface of Mars."

An illustration depicts the possible extent of an ancient lake inside Gale Crater, where the Mars rover Curiosity landed on the Red Planet in August 2012. The $2.5 billion NASA mission set out to explore Gale Crater, which was thought to have once hosted flowing water. Curiosity found evidence of clay formations, or "mudstone," in the crater's Yellowknife Bay, scientists said in 2013. This clay may have held the key ingredients for life billions of years ago. It means a lake must have existed in the area.

If it's possible for a 1-ton, roughly SUV-size vehicle to get homesick, it's had plenty of reason to shed a tear. The last time Curiosity was on Earth was November 26, 2011, when it set off aboard a NASA spacecraft from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Eight and a half months and some 352 million miles later, the rover landed safely on Mars with its 17 cameras and other assorted scientific instruments all intact. And almost as quickly, the Curiosity -- the centerpiece of a $2.6 billion project -- began transmitting images back to Earth.

This view of the twilight sky and Martian horizon, taken by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity, includes Earth as the brightest point of light in the night sky. Earth is a little left of center in the image, and our moon is just below Earth. A human observer with normal vision, if standing on Mars, could easily see Earth and the moon as two distinct, bright "evening stars."

But until now, none of those pictures actually showed Earth itself.
The one released by NASA, which was "processed to remove effects of cosmic rays," was taken about 80 minutes after Mars' sunset with what researchers call Curiosity's "left eye camera" on its "Mastcam." It show not just Earth but another dot that NASA says is our moon. (Earth was about 99 million miles away at that point, according to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Curiosity traveled a much longer distance to get to Mars because both planets are constantly in motion.)

Any Martian or Earthling who happened to be visiting wouldn't need such a special camera to see the same thing.
According to NASA, "A human observer with normal vision, if standing on Mars, could easily see Earth and the moon as two distinct, bright 'evening stars.'".........