So, when was the last time the solar system got together for a photo?
Cant remember?
Yeah, family get togethers can sometimes be like that…….Last one I remember for sure was in 1990…… At the request of Carl Sagan, NASA commanded the Voyager 1 spacecraft, having completed its primary mission and now leaving the solar system, to turn its camera around and to take a photograph of Earth and every one else.
Subsequently, the title of the photograph was used by Carl as the primary title of his 1994 book, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space. (Which I have read a few times, and sadly sold in Australia at a garage sale).
Here is the family shot from back then;
Thankfully, its also been on someones mind other than just ours…..
Back in November, they instructed the Mercury mission to turn around take a shot of of the family. The results were released late last week;
Sadly, Uranus and Neptune were just too small to be seen, so only their positions were marked, don’t bother looking, they aint there. (But isn’t that always the way when the family gets together, there is always someone mucking about hiding their face or what not).
All jokes aside, its pretty mad cool that these photos can be taken.
I hope that I don’t start taking them for granted.
I’m not going to wax all crazy about how everything that ever happens on this planet happens on that one pixel dot like Carl did…. As most of you know, unlike Carl, I believe that somewhat larger forces are at work, not just those on that dot.
Rather, I am just go to leave an incomplete thought here… I find it weird that our planet that we know so well looks odd when viewed from a different location, sort of like the traffic lights at the corner of Rancho California and Yenz look to me. Every now and then, I have a double take on them, they just don’t look like Australian lights at all……..