The Pale Blue Dot
Explanation:
On
Valentine's Day in 1990,
cruising four billion miles from the Sun, the
Voyager 1 spacecraft looked back one last time to make the first ever
Solar
System family portrait.
The portrait consists of the Sun and six planets in a
60 frame mosaic
made from a vantage point 32 degrees above the
ecliptic plane.
Planet Earth was captured within a single pixel in this single
frame.
It's the pale blue dot within the sunbeam just right of center in
this
reprocessed version of the now famous
view
from Voyager.
Astronomer Carl Sagan originated the idea of using
Voyager's camera to look back
toward
home
from a distant perspective.
Thirty years later, on this Valentine's day,
look
again at the pale blue dot.
Authors & editors:
Robert Nemiroff
(MTU) &
Jerry Bonnell
(USRA)
NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings,
and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris.
Specific
rights apply.
A service of:
LHEA at
NASA /
GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
