The Pale Blue Dot is a name for a picture of the Earth, taken 6 billion miles away by the Voyager 1 spacecraft (VOYAGER MISSION FTW!!!), it was part of a series of pictures called the "Family Portrait" of the solar system. It had a picture of EVERY planet in the solar system (except Pluto, which was actually still a planet at the time). Here is the picture. The picture of the Earth is what caught the attention of most people. It was taken when Earth was right in the middle of a sunbeam, and it is an incredible sight. Here it is. Amazing. Carl Sagan (my absolute favorite person ever) later reflected on the picture (in turn, giving it it's name of "Pale Blue Dot") with this quote:
From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again 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.
That is the story of the name of the blog. Also one of the MANY reasons I LOVE Carl Sagan
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