by jove . . .

The Pale Blue Dot never fails to bring tears to my eyes, and over the course of my life I've always been fascinated and moved by photos from outer space.

My earliest memory of extraterrestrial photography was a set of glossy photos that Voyager took of Jupiter, (on its way out of the solar system to V'gerland, natch.) The photos were given to my great grandparents, when they opened a checking account at a long-forgotten local bank in Northridge, specifically to provide their great grandchildren with the packet of photos.

So with that bit of backstory, you may understand why I was pretty damn excited to look at this little-yet-magnificent picture of Jupiter, taken by the Cassini:

It's not a great picture of Jupiter, but that's not the point. The point is that the photograph was taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, which is currently orbiting Saturn, approximately 1.8 billion km from Jupiter. A similar picture of Earth would only light up a single pixel in Cassini's camera.

I love it. It's like humans can look at that picture and say, "Hey! Look what we did!"

(via Netscape)

Comments

[MsSFH]

Wow. . .

I can't decide if being a member of the species who captured that image makes me feel really big or really small.

Either way, wow.

As usual, your knack for the cool makes everyone's day a bit better!

Happy writing.

[otus]

In a similar vein, saw this link on boingboing today, some new sun photos & videos - the videos are really something.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/solar-b/index.html

[Kurt Hunt]

Nerd. :)

[Freeman]

Wil,

I have always been facinated by space exploration. I guess that is why I love Star Trek. What really excites me today is that we are planning to return to the moon. And we are going to use an updated version of the old Apollo technology, including earth touchdown by parachute. I was hoping for a manned mission to Mars in my lifetime but it looks like that may not happen. "We came in peace for all mankind."

Freeman :)

[rmd]

one of my earliest memories is of watching the astronauts walking on the moon. i'd come home from kindergarten and my mother said "watch the men walking on the moon" and there they were, in grainy black and white fabulousness.

[Rachel]

Brings back memories of JPL's "Jupiter Watch" series of 5 minute updates, back in the, what, late 70s? Early 80s? Very cool.

[solarflare]

Hey Wil,
been reading your blog for just a month now (love it by the way), first time commenting. I thought you might be interested in this:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060927.html

It's an image of the Earth taken by Cassini from Saturn. When I first saw it, I was stunned. Our planet is so tiny and - although it is just a pale patch on the image - beautiful.

[Grimmstail]

Evening semi-ritual for me and my daughter: turn on the computer and go to the APOD webpage. She always wants pictures of planets while I am more into the nebulae and galaxies and such, but we manage.

[susebabes]

Awesome photo. I can't even remember what planet the pic was from but ages ago, you posted a pic of the sunset over [insert planet name here] and i showed it to my 7 year old nephew who insisted I was a liar and proceeded to draw me a picture of what martians really looked like - with exploding rocket ships and everything.
Also, I'm still really bummed for Pluto - he's all shouting to the universe "hey you guys! What does someone have to do around here to be called a damn planet, eh?" (the 'eh' because he's Canadian, obviously).

[Nadia]

That was lovely. I love following the links around in space image captions. It leads you to so much more.

[Kristy]

Wow.....! Thanks for sharing. I feel tiny, but in an awed way. "Look what we did" sums it up very well!

[Christopholi]

I was actually just looking around on the Hubble image repository yesterday. The images of the countless galaxies in one frame or the beautiful and unfathomably large nebulae simply boggle my mind. Just the fact that the distance from camera to subject is 1.8 billion kilometers is almost too hard to fathom. Thanks for the post!

[malken19]

Wow, I know exactly how you feel. There are several stories I remember. For me it was Voyager 2 going by Uranus and Neptune. It still amazes me where the Voyagers and the Pioneers are. It is hard to comprehend at the sheer distance they have went.

The other event that stands out in the idea of discovery is that of Dr. Robert Ballard discoverying the Titanic. From as long I remember I had a fascination with that ship. I remember being that young and knowing where I was when it was discovered. It proved to me that if you have a dream, with enough willpower it can be accomplished.

-John

[wolfger]

I'm kind of amazed you didn't blog at all about the SpaceX Falcon 1 launch and live webcast of same. It was stunning to watch, live, as the first stage fell back down to that... uhm... rather large blue dot.

[tits mcgee]

I assume you saw this, too?