Earth as seen from Mars

Remember the opening sequence from the original "War of the Worlds?" How the Martians looked at the Earth, coveted it, and decided to attack? Well, now for the first time we can see what they would have seen.

Embedded above is an image of the Earth and the moon, acquired October 3, 2007, by the HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

"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... On the Earth image we can make out the west coast outline of South America at lower right, although the clouds are the dominant features..."

We really do have a Blue Planet - and I should think any alien within viewing distance will take note of that fact...