Friday beautiful science

For the second week in a row, the Friday beautiful science comes from the Japanese moon orbiter Kaguya/Selene. They caught this beautiful photo of the earth rising over the horizon of the moon. Very pretty. They also have a short movie on their site that they've shown in HD on TV programs in Japan and Canada (hopefully soon here in the U.S. as well).

I confess, I'm a tiny bit disappointed with the Japanese Space Agency, however. Unlike NASA, they don't seem to release full resolution photos. Just these low to medium resolution jpegs, marked with the copyright. It's a pity, because I'm just nerd enough to print these types of photos, frame them and hang them in my house, and this photo is barely high enough resolution to make a decent sized print. I think NASA makes a great choice by distributing high resolution photos as a public relations tool to get folks excited about their work. JAXA should do the same.