CICLOPS: Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for OPerationS
Solar System Portrait - Earth as 'Pale Blue Dot'

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.

The Voyager Project is managed for NASA by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Acquired: February 1990 		  Solar System Portrait - Earth as 'Pale Blue Dot'
PIA 00452

Full Size 453x614:
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Alliance Member Comments
sustayne (Nov 12, 2013 at 10:55 AM):
No wonder we feel so alone.