Yesterday morning we turned the MRO spacecraft around to see our point of origin – the Earth. We took a special calibration image of the Earth and Moon. HiRISE isn’t the first to take a picture of the Earth from Mars, but we’re hoping ours will be even more detailed. We expect the Earth to be about 90 pixels across its diameter, and the Moon about 24 pixels. So it won’t be a big beautiful clear image like you’re used to looking at from our weekly releases, but we should be able to resolve features like continents!

This diagram simulates of what the inner solar system would look like if it were being viewed from above right now. MRO is looking from Mars (orange) towards Earth (purple). You can see from this geometry that we’ll only see the sunlit part of the Earth and Moon as a crescent. They’ll look somewhat less than half full.

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This past summer the IAU met in Prague to decide the fate of Pluto, and also to give names to several craters on Mars. After more than two years after I submitted the request, a fresh and rayed Martian crater now officially bears the name Gratteri. Gratteri is the birthplace of my Father, my Grandfather and their forefathers going back as far as back as any Tornabene can remember. Gratteri is a small medieval town of only 1100 people, but once was a more heavily populated duchy that ruled the Madonie region from the coast to the mountain tops. Unbenownst to me at the time I submitted my suggestion to the IAU, was the etymology of the name. By a staggering coincidence, the name Gratteri is derived from the Greek word ‘krater‘ meaning a basin or bowl to mix wine and water (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krater), which in the English language has come to signify a quasi-circular pit formed by an explosion (volcanic or hypervelocity impact). I was floored to say the least! Not only did I come to study these features on Earth, Mars and other bodies as my lifelong passion, but it was also the name of the town of my ancestral origins!

Well, soon I will be in Italy for the MRO PSG in Rome and then for the Terrestrial Analogues meeting in Trento. After these two meetings, I will be taking three days off to go down to Sicily for a long overdue break. My parents await me in Gratteri, and it will be so nice to meet them there for my second visit. I am particularly excited as I will be bringing a HiRISE image of the Martian Gratteri crater to present to the Mayor and townsfolk. In addition to a poster print out of the HiRISE image taken during our first cycle, I will be bringing an annotated version that I made and would like to share with you here. I used Google Earth to find Gratteri and acquired the satellite image along with the proper scale so that I could superimpose it on the HiRISE image. Gratteri is the cluster of buildings on the right with the cutout being approximately 2.5 km in width. The Martian crater Gratteri is almost 7 km in diameter. I was once again reminded, and immediately humbled, by the shear scale of this crater that I claim to know so much about! I’m amazed how big this rather small Martian crater is in relation to our terrestrial stomping grounds.

Well, I best be off. I still have so much packing to do! Not to mention, I haven’t even finished my talk yet…

Ciao miei Amici! Ci vediamo dopo!