Quote: It Is Up To Us -- Sagan
Mar 9, 2014Carl 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:
![the pale blue dot [png]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/73/Pale_Blue_Dot.png)
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.
original
On July 19, 2013, in an event celebrated the world over, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft slipped into Saturn’s shadow and turned to image the planet, seven of its moons, its inner rings – and, in the background, our home planet, Earth.
With the sun’s powerful and potentially damaging rays eclipsed by Saturn itself, Cassini’s onboard cameras were able to take advantage of this unique viewing geometry. They acquired a panoramic mosaic of the Saturn system that allows scientists to see details in the rings and throughout the system as they are backlit by the sun. This mosaic is special as it marks the third time our home planet was imaged from the outer solar system; the second time it was imaged by Cassini from Saturn’s orbit; and the first time ever that inhabitants of Earth were made aware in advance that their photo would be taken from such a great distance.
With both Cassini’s wide-angle and narrow-angle cameras aimed at Saturn, Cassini was able to capture 323 images in just over four hours. This final mosaic uses 141 of those wide-angle images. Images taken using the red, green and blue spectral filters of the wide-angle camera were combined and mosaicked together to create this natural-color view. A brightened version with contrast and color enhanced (Figure 1), a version with just the planets annotated (Figure 2), and an annotated version (Figure 3) are shown above.
This image spans about 404,880 miles (651,591 kilometers) across.
planets annotated
Just the planets annotated
annotate Earth and Moon
The full image, with Earth and Moon annotated.
zoomed in, with annotation
A tigher view with Earth and Moon annotated.
really zoomed in
A really tight view with Earth and Moon annotated.