Due to the lapse in federal government funding, NASA is not updating this website.

Suggested Searches

 
1 Min Read

Solar System Portrait – Earth as ‘Pale Blue Dot’

A dark, nearly black background with faint streaks of sunlight forming diagonal beams. In one of these beams, near the right side of the image, a minuscule, barely visible pale blue dot — Earth — stands out, appearing fragile and isolated against the vast emptiness of space. Taken on Feb. 14, 1990, by NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft from 3.7 billion miles (6 billion kilometers) away, this iconic photograph underscores the profound vastness of the cosmos and Earth's tiny presence within it.
This narrow-angle color image of Earth, dubbed “Pale Blue Dot,” is a part of the first ever “family portrait” of the solar system, taken by Voyager 1. A minuscule, barely visible pale blue dot — Earth — stands out, appearing fragile and isolated against the vast emptiness of space. The image inspired the title of scientist Carl Sagan’s book, “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space,” in which he wrote: “Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us.” The spacecraft acquired a total of 60 frames for a mosaic of the solar system from a distance of more than 4 billion miles from Earth and about 32 degrees above the ecliptic. From Voyager’s great distance Earth is a mere point of light, less than the size of a picture element even in the narrow-angle camera. Earth was a crescent only 0.12 pixels in size. Coincidentally, Earth lies right in the center of one of the scattered light rays resulting from taking the image so close to the Sun. This blown-up image of Earth was taken through three color filters — violet, blue and green — and recombined to produce the color image. The background features in the image are artifacts resulting from the magnification.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Image Addition Date:
Target:
Is a satellite of:
Mission(s):
Spacecraft(s):
Instrument(s):
Dataset:

Downloads

Pale Blue Dot (1990)

JPEG (29.48 KB)

Pale Blue Dot (1990)

TIFF (681.61 KB)

Description

This narrow-angle color image of the Earth, dubbed 'Pale Blue Dot', is a part of the first ever 'portrait' of the solar system taken by Voyager 1. The spacecraft acquired a total of 60 frames for a mosaic of the solar system from a distance of more than 4 billion miles from Earth and about 32 degrees above the ecliptic. From Voyager's great distance Earth is a mere point of light, less than the size of a picture element even in the narrow-angle camera. Earth was a crescent only 0.12 pixel in size. Coincidentally, Earth lies right in the center of one of the scattered light rays resulting from taking the image so close to the sun. This blown-up image of the Earth was taken through three color filters -- violet, blue and green -- and recombined to produce the color image. The background features in the image are artifacts resulting from the magnification.

Keep Exploring

Discover More Topics From Photojournal

Photojournal

Search Photojournal

Photojournal’s Latest Content

Feedback