Earth and Moon from Saturn

This true-color composite view of Earth and Moon from Saturn was captured by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft on 19th July, 2013. Cassini’s narrow-angle camera took the 3 raw images (in red, green, and blue visible light) used to create this photograph from approximately 898,410,414 miles (1,445,851,410 kilometers) away.

GIF version made by adding two additional frames of Earth shot by Cassini:

This true-color composite view of Earth and Moon from Saturn was captured by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft on 19th July, 2013. Cassini’s narrow-angle camera took the 9 raw images (in red, green, and blue visible light) used to create this animation from approximately 898,410,414 miles (1,445,851,410 kilometers) away.

Interestingly, this was the original Voyager “pale blue dot” photo envisioned by Carl Sagan, but was postponed due to NASA bureaucracy until Voyager 1 exited the Solar System:

“The Voyagers were guaranteed to work only until the Saturn encounter. I thought it might be a good idea, just after Saturn, to have them take one last glance homeward. From Saturn, I knew, the Earth would appear too small for Voyager to make out any detail. Our planet would be just a point of light, a lonely pixel, hardly distinguishable from the many other points of light Voyager could see, nearby planets and far-off suns. But precisely because of the obscurity of our world thus revealed, such a picture might be worth having.”

-Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot