Facts about Pale Blue Dot
- 07
Concerns about pointing Voyager 1's fragile camera close to the sun delayed approval of the imaging request for several years before NASA finally authorized it.
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Sixty individual frames formed the Family Portrait mosaic captured that day, together depicting six planets including Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.
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A book titled Pale Blue Dot, authored by Carl Sagan and published in 1994, expanded on the photograph's philosophical themes about humanity's place in the cosmos.
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In the Pale Blue Dot image, Earth occupies less than a single pixel and is visible partly due to scattered sunlight in the camera's optics.
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Voyager 1 was approximately 6 billion kilometers from Earth when it captured the Pale Blue Dot image at NASA's request.
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Carl Sagan wrote a celebrated reflection inspired by Pale Blue Dot, describing Earth as a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
- 01
The famous photograph was taken by Voyager 1 on February 14, 1990, showing Earth as a tiny speck less than a pixel wide.