Earth of course. We couldn’t be much closer if we tried. And you thought it was going to be Venus, Mars or Mercury.
A lovely view of Earth, with a Moon shadow in the north. (Not to be confused with Moon Shadow by Cat Stevens).
Our planet is very interesting to say the least. Luckily for us, we know almost as much about our planet as we do about the other planets in the Solar system. In fact, in some respects we don’t know as much about our planet as we do others.
Why is that you ask?
Most of the planet is covered in water. It really seems like a lot of water until you put it into perspective.
(1) All water (sphere over western U.S., 860 miles in diameter)
(2) Fresh liquid water in the ground, lakes, swamps, and rivers (sphere over Kentucky, 169.5 miles in diameter), and
(3) Fresh-water lakes and rivers (sphere over Georgia, 34.9 miles in diameter).
Credit: Howard Perlman, USGS; globe illustration by Jack Cook, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (©); Adam Nieman.
The picture above from the USGS shows how much water of various kinds are one our planet. It doesn’t look like much now, does it? But, it does make the planet very nice to live on.
An image of Lake Eerie in North America.
The beautifully blue and green Mergui Archipelago, Myanmar.
The pale yellow streaks are ridges of sand that make up Erg Iguidi in Algeria. Some of the dunes surpass 500 meters, nearly 1/3 of a mile, in both width and height.
An angry planet sometimes, this is an image of Typhoon Bopha covering a lot of the earth as it heads toward landfall in the Philippines in 2012.
The Dasht-e Kavir, or Great Salt Desert, in Iran. The most uninhabited area of the planet (that we know of).
Natural selection at its best. Please review the Darwin Awards for a complete list.
Today, we took a look down on our planet, but take the opportunity every once and a while to look up into the night sky. There are some pretty amazing things up there as well.
– Ex astris, scientia –
I am and avid amateur astronomer and intellectual property attorney. As a former Chief Petty Officer in the U.S. Navy, I am a proud member of the Armed Service Committee of the Los Angeles County Bar Association working to aid all active duty and veterans in our communities. Connect with me on Google +
Norman