The Cassini spacecraft that has been orbiting Saturn for the past two years took this picture at a point in its orbit when Saturn perfectly blocked the Sun which lit the rings from behind. As great as the view of Saturn is, the part of the image that I like the most is the view of Earth. Earth can be seen just outside the brightest rings on the left side, slightly above center (you may have to click the image and look at the full-sized version to see it). I love how, from this distance, Earth looks so inconsequential. It looks so much like a blemish in the image that at least one published version of this photo had Earth airbrushed away entirely. Others views of Earth from space are great too:
(this one from Apollo 8 is one of NASA's most used images), but the tiny dot in the Saturn image gives us an even more accurate perspective.
Kind of puts us in our place. Our whole world amounts to damn near nothing.
1 comment:
Man, that's a spectacular image. I would not have known the speck was Earth (by a long shot) if you had not pointed it out. Amazing. And the rest of the photo looks so amazing that I have to fight a tendency to think it fake!
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