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THE PALE BLUE DOT

No subject in astronomy is more intriguing than the "pale blue dot" - the first solar system selfie. The immortal image is Planet Earth on February 14, 1990, taken by the Voyager 1 space probe from a distance of about 6 billion kilometers. (Can you see yourself waving?) Voyager 1 had completed its primary mission and as it left our solar system took one last photograph of Earth. Of the 640,000 individual pixels that compose each frame, Earth takes up 0.12 pixels, according to NASA. A Mote of Dust Suspended on a Sunbeam Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you've heard of, every human being who…
Bob Jones
August 26, 2015