After exploring the outer solar system, Carl Sagan asked NASA to have the Voyager 1 spacecraft turn its camera around and take an image of earth. It did so, at a distance of 3.7 billion miles (6 billion kilometers) from the Sun. The February 14, 1990 image was dubbed “The Pale Blue Dot“.
That’s all you could see in the vastness of space. One tiny pixel of light. But within that one pixel, that one dot, was literally all that we know, and all that we have.
It’s profound to think about the seemingly huge earth absolutely dwarfed by the enormity of space. For us, it’s a clear wake up call, to protect what we have, to keep this tiny treasure alive and healthy.
Carl Sagan, writing about that pale blue dot.
“From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it’s different. Consider again that dot. That’s here. That’s home.
That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.
The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. “
This diagram shows where Voyager 1 was when it snapped that grainy yet iconic image.