For its "Astronomy Picture of the Day," NASA is featuring a time-lapse video of what Earth looked like from the Messenger spacecraft as it left its home planet in August of 2005 for its mission to Mercury, our solar system's innermost planet:
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"Earth can be seen rotating in , as it recedes into the distance. The sunlit half of Earth is that background . The is now in orbit around and has recently concluded the first . On occasion, has continued to at its home world. MESSENGER is one of the few things created on the that has left and will — at the end of its mission MESSENGER will be crashed into ."
The time-lapse video was made by stitching 358 frames taken over a 24-hour period.
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