03/02/2026
THE PALE BLUE DOT.
14TH FEBRUARY, 1990.
Voyager 1 was launched on 5th September, 1977 at 3.56pm EAT. It's main mission was to study Jupiter and Saturn, and then would be sent on an infinite ♾️ journey outside the Solar System. It was not meant to meet any other celestial body in the Solar System.
On the Valentines Day of 14th February, 1990, Astronomer Carl Sagan requested that the cameras of Voyager 1 be turned towards the Sun for one last time.
Voyager 1 then captured a very faint image of the Earth as a tiny speck, with a beam of light from the Sun scattered across. The image was named as THE PALE BLUE DOT.
Here is how Carl Sagan said about the image:
"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam."
