The figure
above is a composite of two separate images shown together for comparison.
The image on top (outlined one) is a copy of the scaled Earth-Moon
model used for the Madison Planet Stroll. For this image, I
separately scaled the Earth and the Moon to proper size and then placed
them on a white background at their proper scaled separation (approximately 10 cm for the tour). Very recently, and long after I had
produced this fabricated image, I was directed to a real photographic image
(bottom one on the black background of space) of the Earth and Moon
that was taken by NASA's Odyssey probe in April of 2001 as it was traveling
to Mars. I adjusted the scale of this real image so that the separation
between the Earth and Moon was the same as the separation in the fabricated
image above it. If we now zoom in on both Earths and Moons as shown below,
we can see that the fabricated and real images virtually match each
other in size. In fact, if the model images appear somewhat larger than
the Odyssey images, it is because I have included a thin dark border around
the model images in order to better see them when they are printed for the tour on a white background.
Credit for the Odyssey
image: NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory/Arizona State University
EXTRA: So, on the scale of the Madison Planet Stroll, where was the Odyssey probe located when it took the picture shown above? Well, the information that accompanied this photograph reported that the probe was 3,563,735 km away from the Earth when this picture was taken. Therefore, on the scale of our tour, the probe would have only been 0.89 meters away from the model Earth-Moon. It still had a LONG way to go until it reached its destination.