The Pale Blue Dot represents one of the most famous photos of our Earth, a dot lost in the darkness! Here is the historical photo
The Pale Blue Dot is a photograph of planet Earth taken in 1990 by the probe when it was six billion kilometers away, beyond the orbit of Neptune. The idea to turn the probe’s camera and take a photo of the Earth from the edge of the solar system came from astronomer and science communicator Carl Sagan. Below, here is the photo: the Earth (the blue dot about halfway down the brown band on the right) seen from 6 billion kilometers it appears like a small dot in the darkness of deep space. The light bands are a photographic artifact:
The beautiful words of the late Sagan
“Look at that dot again. It’s here. It’s home. It’s us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you have ever heard of, every human being who has ever existed, lived their life. The sum total of our joys and sorrows, thousands of presumptuous religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and gatherer, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and subject, every young couple in love, every mother and father , hopeful son, inventor and explorer, every morality preacher, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme commander,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species has lived there on a speck of dust suspended within a beam of sun. The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood shed by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary lords of a fraction of a point.
Think of the endless cruelties imparted by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel to the barely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager to kill each other, how fervent their hatreds. Our affectations, our imaginary self-esteem, the illusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are called into question by this point of pale light. Our planet is a solitary speck in the great, enveloping cosmic darkness. In our darkness, in all this vastness, there is no indication that help can come from anywhere else to save us from ourselves. Earth is the only known world that can host life. There is nowhere else, at least in the foreseeable future, where our species can migrate. Visiting, yes. Living, not yet. Like it or not, for now the Earth is where we play our cards. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human vanities than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it highlights our responsibility to look after each other more kindly, and to preserve and protect the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known“.
