discoverynews:

Distant Earth: A History of ‘Pale Blue Dots’

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft may have done it, but it certainly wasn’t the first space mission to image Earth from deep space. So, let Discovery News’ space historian Amy Shira Teitel take you on a cosmic tour through the history of the “Pale Blue Dot" — a tiny pixel we call home. Browse the entire gallery

“From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any 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.” — Carl Sagan on Voyager 1’s famous “Pale Blue Dot,“ Cosmos