What world is this? Surprise: it's ours. This snapshot of Earth was taken by the Japanese Akatsuki spacecraft as it headed from our planet to our sister world of Venus. The picture looks odd because it's taken in the infrared, which we're not used to seeing! One of the reasons I love this picture is that it looks an awful lot like the way planets were always shown in "Space:1999", a TV show I loved when I was a kid. Readers of a certain age will understand.

[There is no higher-res version of this, but you can read more about it on Emily Lakdawalla's blog post at The Planetary Society.]

Image credit: ISIS/JAXA