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June 24, 2012 at 7:51 AM Leave a comment
This is the most distant image of Earth ever taken:
“Pale Blue Dot” is the name of THIS famous Voyager 1 photograph of Earth, and the title of a book by Carl Sagan inspired by the photo. On February 14, 1990, NASA commanded the Voyager 1 spacecraft, having completed its primary mission, to turn around to photograph the planets it had visited. NASA ultimately compiled 60 images from this unique event into a mosaic of the Solar System. One image Voyager returned was of Earth, 4 billion miles distant, showing up as a “pale blue dot” in the grainy photo. Britt describes the distance as “more than 4 billion miles”. The picture was taken using a narrow-angle camera at 32º above the ecliptic, and created using blue, green, and violet filters. Narrow-angle cameras, as opposed to wide-angle cameras, are equipped to photograph specific details in an area of interest. In addition, only 0.12 pixels represents Earth in the photo.
Kind of puts into perspective how petty our squabbles are.
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