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Experts Pick: Top 10 Space Science Photos
By Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer
posted: 07:00 am ET
25 September 2001
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Pale Blue Dot
One of the most famous images ever taken from space could be considered a lousy
photograph even by the least skilled amateur who wrestles with today's unthinkably
complicated cameras.
CREDIT: NASA/JPL/VOYAGER |
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That is, if it weren't a picture of our planet. From more than 4 billion miles
away.
"Scientifically, it didn't teach us a single thing," Van der Woude says of
the Pale Blue Dot, snapped by Voyager 1 in 1991. "But historically, it's priceless."
Reflections of sunlight inside Voyager's camera created the gold-colored beams
that frame the planet, which is so faint it is barely visible. A mere pixel
of information on one of the world's early digital images.
"It was the very first time that our species was that far away from home and
could turn around and look back at our own neighborhood," Van der Woude said.
In his 1994 book titled Pale Blue Dot, Carl Sagan
employed the photograph as a metaphor for the insignificance of our world in
comparison to the cosmos. Sagan died in 1996. But Voyager 1, on which he advised
NASA, lives on. It is currently on
the verge of leaving our solar system and
becoming the first human object to enter interstellar space.
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"The
Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers
of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors, so that, in glory
and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of
a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one
corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some
other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are
to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined
self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in
the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light."
--
Carl Sagan
From "Pale
Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space," Random House, 1994
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