The Pale Blue Dot (by Carl Sagan),
The Pale Blue Dot The Pale Blue Dot was the name given to a photograph taken by the Voyager 1 space probe on 14th February 1990. 6 billion kilometres from earth. In 1994 Carl Sagan presented the image to a public lecture at Cornell University and reflected on a deeper meaning behind the idea of the pale blue dot. "The spacecraft was a long way from home. I thought it would be a good idea, just after Saturn, to have them take one last glance homeward. From Saturn, the Earth would appear too small for Voyager to make out any detail. Our planet would be just a point of light, a lonely pixel hardly distinguishable from the other points of light Voyager would see: nearby planets, far off suns. But precisely because of the obscurity of our world thus revealed, such a picture might be worth having. So, here they are: a mosaic of squares laid down on top of the planets in a background smattering of more distant stars. Because of the reflection of su...