Transit of the Moon Across the Earth From Space

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NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft has made a movie of the moon passing in front of the Earth from the probe's vantage point millions of miles away.

Astronomers plan to use the video to develop techniques to look for Earth-like worlds in other solar systems.

"Making a video of Earth from so far away helps the search for other life-bearing planets in the universe by giving insights into how a distant, Earth-like alien world would appear to us," said Michael A'Hearn of the University of Maryland and the principal investigator for the Deep Impact extended mission.

Deep Impact, which sent an impactor into comet Tempel 1 on July 4, 2005, is currently 31 million miles away from Earth on its way to a flyby of comet Hartley 2 on Nov. 4, 2010.

During its cruise to Hartley 2, Deep Impact will be searching for extrasolar planets.

Deep Impact took several images of the Earth during a full planetary rotation; these images have been combined into a color video. During the video, the moon enters the frame as it orbits the Earth and then is shown transiting, or passing in front of, the Earth.

While other spacecraft, including Voyager 1 and Galileo, have imaged Earth and the moon from space, Deep Impact is the first to show a transit of Earth with enough detail to see large craters on the moon and oceans and continents on Earth.