Thursday, April 9, 2015

The Pale Blue Dot And Other 'Selfies' Of Earth

Twenty-five years ago a set of images were taken that provided a unique view of Earth. As the Voyager 1 spacecraft went beyond the orbit of Pluto on February 14, 1990, it took one last look at Earth. Three exposures, each one in a different filter, contained a very small and faint Earth.
Despite Voyager 1 being more than 3.7 billion miles from Earth, the three exposures ranged only between 0.48 and 0.72 seconds in duration. But the data took five and a half hours, traveling at the speed of light, to span the distance between the spacecraft and Earth.

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