The Pale Blue Dot is a photograph of planet Earth taken in 1990 by the Voyager 1 spacecraft from a record distance of about 6 billion kilometers (3.7 billion miles) from Earth, as part of the solar system Family Portrait series of images. In the photograph, Earth is shown as a tiny dot (0.12 pixel in size) against the vastness of space. The Voyager 1 spacecraft, which had completed its primary mission and was leaving the Solar System, was commanded by NASA to turn its camera around and to take a photograph of Earth across a great expanse of space, at the request of Carl Sagan.
Subsequently, the title of the photograph was used by Sagan as the main title of his 1994 book, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space.
Read more about Pale Blue Dot: Background, Photograph, Effects of Polarization and Scattering of Light, Distance, Camera, Reflections By Sagan
Famous quotes containing the words pale and/or blue:
“To that high Capital, where kingly Death
Keeps his pale court in beauty and decay,
He came.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
“While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.”
—Li Po (701–762)