Does rather serve to remind us of our place in the scheme of things.
This stunning image was taken by the Cassini-Huygens probe. Many of the images taken by NASA are available for download from the DVIDS website, which is where this one was found. (But also do visit the Ciclops website.)
The title of the photograph is:
A View of Earth from Saturn
Although the Earth Observatory typically reserves ”Image of the Day” space for publishing data and images acquired by Earth-observing satellites, we are sometimes so enthralled by the spectacular images acquired by spacecraft observing other parts of the solar system that we want to share these ‘otherworldy’ views with our visitors. And if you are looking for remotely sensed images of the Earth, this view is the most remotely sensed image we have ever published!
This beautiful image of Saturn and its rings looks more like an artist’s creation than a real image, but in fact, the image is a composite (layered image) made from 165 images taken by the wide-angle camera on the Cassini spacecraft over nearly three hours on September 15, 2006.
Scientists created the color in the image by digitally compositing ultraviolet, infrared, and clear-filter images and then adjusting the final image to resemble natural color. (A clear filter is one that allows in all the wavelengths of light the sensor is capable of detecting.) The bottom image [the one above. Ed.] is a closeup view of the upper left quadrant of the rings, through which Earth is visible in the far, far distance.
On this day, Saturn interceded between the Sun and Cassini, shielding Cassini from the Sun’s glare. As the spacecraft lingered in Saturn’s shadow, it viewed the planet’s rings as never before, revealing previously unknown faint rings and even glimpsing its home world. Seen from more than a billion kilometers (almost a billion miles) away, through the ice and dust particles of Saturn’s rings, Earth appears as a tiny, bright dot to the left and slightly behind Saturn.
Although it might appear that Earth is located within Saturn’s outermost rings, that positioning is just an illusion created by the enormous distance between Cassini and Earth. When Cassini took this image, the spacecraft was looking back at Saturn from a distance of about 2.2.million kilometers (about 1.3 million miles). The Sun was millions of additional miles beyond, hidden behind Saturn. On September 15, Earth’s orbit had brought our home planet to a location slightly behind and to the left of the Sun from Cassini’s perspective. The Website of the Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations (CICLOPS) provides more detailed information about this image. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Italian Space Agency.
Trying to find that faint image of Planet Earth in the above photograph is a challenge, even for those with much younger eyes than mine.
However, with a little bit of jiggery-pokery I was able to crop and enlarge the photograph, see below:
Planet Earth is in the ’10 o’clock’ position in the photograph, about half-way from the centre of the enlarged segment towards the top-left corner of the picture, just outside the outer white ring.
That’s us. All that we have ever been. All that we ever will be. Just that small white dot.
Learning from Dogs 
Reminds me of the Total Perspective Vortex in Douglas Adams’ “Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy.”
“When you are put into the Vortex you are given just one momentary glimpse of the entire unimaginable infinity of creation, and somewhere in it a tiny little mark, a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot, which says, “You are here.””
“In an infinite universe, the one thing sentient life cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion.”
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Thanks for that wonderful trip down memory lane, Echo. Douglas Adams was a comic genius.
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Indeed 🙂 I had the privilege of finding Adams while working with the guys at the science department many years ago.. which just added a lustre to it all, realising the science, if twisted, was at least theoretically plausible.
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Just add to Martin’s comment in thanking Echo for that lovely memory.
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Note to editor: The bottom image (i.e. the close up) in the original piece is the bottom image here also. Both are amazing.
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Beautiful image, reminder that the universe is beautiful at the macro and the micro level.
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Thanks Alex.
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Sadly, I know quite a few people, living on that little dot, who think they are the centre of it all.
Worse, though, they will never see it any other way.
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Maurice, it is somehow even worse than that. Although the word ‘worse’ misses the mark for what I’m feeling. Not only will they never see it any other way, they will fight to their last breath defending their right to be at the centre of it all. None so blind as those who choose not to see.
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Harvard’s Howard Gardner caused something of a splash in the education/psychology world around 20 years ago when he started writing on ‘multiple intelligences.’ Two of them come to bear here: Interpersonal Intelligence–the ability to relate to others; in effect to ‘work a room’ and Intrapersonal Intelligence–the ability for self examination. It seems to me that for many of these people those two abilities are rather messed up.
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Nice reference. Howard Gardner’s website is here. There is much material on Gardner’s work. Seems like a great blog post idea!
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Stunning, stunning image Paul. Agree with Maurice above and you – when people have interests to defend there is no shifting them. Hope you have a great week ahead, Paul 🙂
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Ruth, thank you for those kind words. You, too, have a gentle and peaceful week.
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Though he’s referring to a different view of the selfsame dot, Carl Sagan’s words are especially fitting here:
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Oh Mr. P. Wow! Despite me previously having listened to those inspiring words of Carl Sagan, I had forgotten about them. They are so, so fitting to where we all are on this fragile rock in space. Thank you. Paul
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The greater the black, the more important the spark.
OK, let me explain. The greater the blackness of space eternal, the more important the spark of intelligence rebellious. So all this immense, intelligence deprived space, makes it all more important to think right. If any difference can be made, from there it will come. The rest is just pathos, and ants going about.
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Hi Paul (and Jean)!
Very simply put, I love that “small white dot” in never ending space….
Merci…
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Hope you will enjoy the post coming out tomorrow (Tuesday). There’s a connection with this one. Paul (and Jean says ‘hi’.)
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