A tiny dot: this is what our planet looks like from six billion kilometers away

On February 14, 1990, the Voyager 1 spacecraft took a photo of Earth. It is an iconic photo of a tiny dot.

Voyager 1 was launched on September 5, 1977 and arrived at Jupiter a year and a half later. In 1980, the spacecraft flew past Saturn. Ten years ago, Voyager 1 took the first photos outside the solar system, namely a family portrait that also shows off the Earth. Or well, show off… The Earth looks like a tiny dot at a distance of six billion years and is no bigger than one pixel. Seas and continents are therefore not recognizable in this photo. We have merged into a ‘Pale Blue Spot’, as the photo is (rightly) called.

The photo is world famous because it shows how small the Earth is. At the same time, the universe is enormously vast. A distance of six billion kilometers seems far, but it is nothing in our Milky Way – and certainly in the universe. In 1994, Carl Sagan published the book ‘Pale Blue Dot’, in which he writes: “Look at that dot again. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you’ve ever heard of, every human being who has ever existed, has lived their life. (..) For me, it underlines our responsibility to treat each other more kindly and to preserve and cherish the light blue dot, the only home we have ever known.”

After taking these photos, Voyager 1’s camera was permanently turned off. In 2012, the spacecraft became the first space probe to reach interstellar space. This makes Voyager 1 the first man-made object outside the solar system. Voyager 1 has a speed of 61,198 kilometers per hour, which is about one twenty-thousandth the speed of light. So in 20,000 years, Voyager 1 will be about one light-year away from us. The spacecraft travels at high speed towards the constellation of the Snake Bearer. In about half a million years the stars GJ 678 and GJ 686 are visited about thirty light-years from Earth.

Now you may be wondering: when will the next ‘Pale Blue Dot’ recording be released? As previously indicated, Voyager 1’s camera no longer works, so we have to wait for the next space probe to look back at Earth. Perhaps New Horizons? The camera is at least powerful enough.