Earth and Moon as Seen from Mars

Earth and Moon as Seen from Mars




The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera would make a great backyard telescope for viewing Mars, and we can also use it at Mars to view other planets. This is an image of Earth and the moon, acquired on October 3, 2007, by the HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

At the time the image was taken, Earth was 142 million kilometers (88 million miles) from Mars, giving the HiRISE image a scale of 142 kilometers (88 miles) per pixel, an Earth diameter of about 90 pixels and a moon diameter of 24 pixels. The phase angle is 98 degrees, which means that less than half of the disk of the Earth and the disk of the moon have direct illumination. We could image Earth and moon at full disk illumination only when they are on the opposite side of the sun from Mars, but then the range would be much greater and the image would show less detail.

Copyright crimes and misdemeanours

Copyright crimes and misdemeanours

Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) that's on the table at this week's G8 meeting in Japan may have far-reaching consequences. If it becomes international law, anyone who offers copyrighted files over the internet or downloads them may be labelled a criminal and forcibly disconnected from the net.

ACTA aims to make it easier to penalise and prosecute people running websites or networks that aid and abet the sharing of copyrighted content, including music, movies, TV shows and books.

ACTA would make it illegal not just to share copyrighted material, but to operate websites that index the locations of such material that people can download. It would also outlaw systems like BitTorrent or Gnutella that help users find files on "peer-to-peer" (P2P) networks of computers.

If implemented this law will have far reaching effects on many blogs / websites