14th February 1990: Voyager 1 creates the Pale Blue Dot photograph of Earth

Hello and welcome to the history capsule of February 14,

1990

pale

blue

dot the farthest

photograph

ever taken of Earth was created by the Voyager 1 space probe Voyager 1 was launched in September 1977 to study the outer solar system, including performing flybys of Jupiter, Saturn and its moons having completed the mission for which it had been created in November 1980, the spacecraft was allowed to continue its flight and leave the solar system. Carl Sagan, the astronomer and author, was a member of the Voyager imaging team and suggested that Voyager 1 should take one last

photograph

of Earth before the cameras were disabled to allow their power to be used for flight into space. interstellar.

NASA scientists were concerned that a photograph in which the Earth would be relatively close to the Sun could permanently damage Voyager's scientific imaging subsystem. Consequently, they postponed turning the cameras until February 14,

1990

, at which time the spacecraft was approximately 6 billion kilometers from Earth, known as the family portrait image series. Voyager 1 transmitted 60 frames to Earth, where NASA stitched them together to create a mosaic of the solar system; three of the images, each taken with a different color filter, were combined to produce the image of the

pale

blue

dot on the that the small dot on Earth occupies less than one pixel of the 640 thousand pixels that make up the rest of the solar system. barely visible frame within the immensity of space Sagan reflected on the pale blue dot in a public lecture at Cornell University and then wrote about it in his book which took its name from the image look again at that dot that is here that is home that's us we met everyone you love everyone you know everyone you've heard of every human being who ever lived their lives you you