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Photo courtesy of
NASA.
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to travel to the
outer region of the
solar system and take a look back at the distant
Earth? Although we have made tremendous strides in space technology
and exploration, we still haven't reached the point where we humans
can hop in a space ship and venture many millions of miles to
explore our solar system in person. We have indeed been to the
moon
- and it won't be too long before we go to
Mars, but those neighbors
are extremely close to us in the astronomical sense.
It will be quite a while before we'll have the capability to send
human explorers the
vast distances required to reach the outer
planets, but we have dispatched unmanned vehicles to their neck of
the woods on several occasions. Perhaps the most amazing of these
robotic space travelers is Cassini, which reached the giant
gaseous planet
Saturn in
2004. After successfully going into orbit around the
planet, Cassini began sending back a series of spectacular photos
the likes of which had never been seen before. And one of them is
the "Picture Of The Day"...
Cassini recently drifted "behind" Saturn creating a view where the
giant planet eclipsed the distant sun. It remained in that location
for some 12 hours taking pictures of Saturn's rings, moons and other
items of interest. For me, one of the most interesting things about
the photo above is that you can actually see the earth! It appears
as a tiny blue dot located to the left of Saturn between the bright
series of rings and the first solo ring.
Ordinarily, the sun is so bright that it would be impossible to see
any of the "rocky" planets from a distance of a billion+
miles from the sun, but when the sun is blocked from view by the gas
giant Saturn, the impossible becomes possible. Just imagine - if you
had hitched a ride aboard Cassini, you would be able to see your
home planet - faint as it may be - from the better part of a billion
miles away!
Picture Of The Day Homepage
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