New Images of Earth from Cassini at Saturn

We reported on June 18th that NASA had planned to take images of Earth from Cassini as it orbits Saturn, well here are the pictures. NASA’s Cassini spacecraft took the images of Earth from its perch nearly 900 million miles (1.5 billion kilometers) away. As a bonus there are also pictures of Earth and its Moon. It was the first time Cassini’s highest-resolution camera captured Earth and its moon as two distinct objects.

“We can’t see individual continents or people in this portrait of Earth, but this pale blue dot is a succinct summary of who we were on July 19,” said Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist, at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “Cassini’s picture reminds us how tiny our home planet is in the vastness of space, and also testifies to the ingenuity of the citizens of this tiny planet to send a robotic spacecraft so far away from home to study Saturn and take a look-back photo of Earth.”