Carl Sagan’s epic homily, Pale Blue Dot, is intensely personal, and fills me with such quickened emotion and erupts in tears every time I hear it.
However, this isn’t the image that inspired Sagan’s thoughts.
Wikipedia of course has a page on the image, and Carl Sagan’s legacy. The Earth is just a faint, faint dot:
It is in the lower right quadrant. Most images shown greatly enhance the image to make the Earth more discernible.
NASA’s Sky Image Lab has a page dedicated to this image.
These are great images, and great accomplishments.
However, it is Carl’s words that are most compelling, putting such an image into context, and really, really driving home the point:
It is
Up to us.
All of us.
Together.
The full quote:
Audio version:
A new view back from Cassini
Recently, the Cassini space probe has also
imaged Earth from
out near Saturn.