View Australia … from Mars!

If you’re looking for a new PowerPoint background, desktop or screen-saver image, NASA always has something to impress.

The latest from NASA and JPL is an image of Earth and the Moon, from Mars.   The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) needed calibration and pointing it ‘home’ allows that.

The brown blob, centre right, on our planet is Australia. The white area at the bottom is Antarctica, of course.

It’s fuzzy but pretty amazing for a photo from 205,000,000 km (127 million miles).

The large amount of black space seems to invite PowerPoint users to drop in a text box.  Maybe the title of a presentation or witty remark?

The image comes in a variety of dimensions.

Fullscreen (Earth only) JPG:

• 800 x 600
• 1024 x 768
• 1280 x 1024
• 1600 x 1200

Widescreen (Earth and Moon, as above) JPG:

• 1280 x 800
• 1440 x 900
• 1920 x 1200

Or you can get the high-resolution version:

• TIFF:tif (0.21 MB)
• JPG:jpg (0.01 MB)

Details at NASA/JPL.