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Pale Blue Dot

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A photograph taken by Voyager 1 on 14 February 1990, from about six billion kilometres, in which the Earth occupies less than a single pixel. It was one frame of about sixty making a family portrait of the solar system — the only such portrait ever taken from outside it — and it was the last thing the cameras did before they were switched off to save power and because there was nothing left within range to photograph. The streaks of light crossing the frame are scattered sunlight in the optics, not a compositional device: the Sun was very close to the Earth in the field of view, which is exactly why the picture had been considered risky. The image has no scientific content. Its influence has been entirely on how the mission is understood.

A node is not a place. Drawing it on a map would assert something about the world that no stored fact supports.

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Evidence · 1
Timeline

No dated observations are stored for this object. Atlas shows what was observed and when — it does not infer a history.

Connections · 1
Assembled narrative · 1

Assembled from 41 blocks · 1 evidence · 61 related

  1. Story
  2. A photograph taken by Voyager 1 on 14 February 1990, from about six billion kilometres, in which the Earth occupies less than a single pixel. It was one frame of about sixty making a family portrait of the solar system — the only such portrait ever taken from outside it — and it was the last thing the cameras did before they were switched off to save power and because there was nothing left within range to photograph. The streaks of light crossing the frame are scattered sunlight in the optics, not a compositional device: the Sun was very close to the Earth in the field of view, which is exactly why the picture had been considered risky. The image has no scientific content. Its influence has been entirely on how the mission is understood.
  3. Knowledge
  4. Voyager 1
  5. Pale Blue Dot
  6. Connections
  7. Carl Sagan
  8. Voyager 1
  9. Voyager 1 photographs the solar system from outside it
  10. The Grand Tour alignment
  11. Voyager 2
  12. Multi-Hundred-Watt radioisotope thermoelectric generator
  13. Titan
  14. NASA Deep Space Network
  15. Gravity assist
  16. Jet Propulsion Laboratory
  17. Launch Complex 41, Cape Canaveral
  18. Jupiter
  19. Saturn
  20. Titan
  21. Voyager high-gain antenna
  22. Plasma Wave Subsystem (PWS)
  23. Titan IIIE-Centaur
  24. Edward C. Stone
  25. The Voyager Golden Record
  26. Carl Sagan
  27. Pale Blue Dot
  28. The full Grand Tour is cancelled and rebuilt as a two-spacecraft mission
  29. Voyager 1 launches
  30. Voyager 1 closest approach to Jupiter
  31. Active volcanism found on Io
  32. Voyager 1 passes Saturn and Titan, and leaves the plane of the planets
  33. Voyager 1 photographs the solar system from outside it
  34. Voyager 1 crosses the termination shock at about 94 AU
  35. Voyager 1 crosses the heliopause at 121.6 AU
  36. The 2012 crossing is confirmed from plasma oscillations
  37. Voyager 1's cosmic ray subsystem is switched off
  38. Voyager 1's low-energy charged particle instrument due for shutdown
  39. Voyager 1 reaches one light-day from Earth
  40. Evidence
  41. Sagan's account of the 14 February 1990 family-portrait observation, of his advocacy for taking it and of what the resulting image of Earth as a sub-pixel point signifies. V55 verification basis: NOT CONSULTED IN THIS RUN. The book is cited as the origin of the name and of the argument; no passage is quoted and no page reference is given, because none was checked.
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Observed changes · 0

No public Signals are attached to this object. Signals show what changed and when it was observed — never a direction or a rank.

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/atlas?object=IMAGE_PALE_BLUE_DOT&experience=IMAGE_PALE_BLUE_DOT