Finding Comfort in the ‘Pale Blue Dot’
The spacecraft that captured the famous, fuzzy photo grows weaker each year, but the image still soothes
By Marina Koren
Thirty years ago, a spacecraft, bound for the edges of the solar system, turned back toward Earth and took a picture.
The image, shown below, came to be known as “Pale Blue Dot.” It was captured on February 14, 1990, by Voyager 1, a robotic explorer built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The spacecraft had flown past Jupiter and Saturn and sent beautiful close-ups and exciting scientific data back to Earth. After Saturn, the spacecraft was destined to spend its remaining years in deep space. There would be nothing but darkness, punctuated occasionally by the twinkle of distant stars. There was no reason to keep Voyager’s cameras on for that, and NASA wanted to conserve the spacecraft’s power. So, before turning the cameras off, NASA engineers directed Voyager to take one last look at home.
In the photo, three dusky beams of color — sunlight light scattered by the cameras — cut at an angle against the charcoal darkness of space. Inside one of the beams, near its middle, is a faint speck of light blue. From 3.7 billion miles away, you’d have to squint to see us.
