First HD Image of the Earth from 236,000 Miles Away

If you ever wondered what our planet looked like in hi-def from a quarter of a million miles away, now you know. Thanks to an HDTV camera with 1920 x 1080 resolution onboard the lunar explorer Kaguya (but you can call her Serene), images of the Earth rising and setting on November 7 were beamed back to JAXA’s Usuda space station (JAXA is Japan’s space agency). The southern hemisphere is toppermost, so that is an upside-down Australia you can see, but that’s just normal for those of us who are British. Oh, and we know that 286 lines of Flash vid doesn’t constitute “HD,” but this is the best we can deliver. (There’s no sound on the vid, either, but that’s because it’s in space.) [Jaxa]