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Look at this. In Saturn’s Shadow – the Pale Blue Dot (NASA Cassini Saturn Mission Images). This is one of the best space images I have ever seen. I hope you like it as much as I did. Yeah, I know it’s old, but somehow I missed this. Or maybe I forgot how awesome it was.

The interesting thing about this photo, as if Saturn in all it’s glory, photographed from a small man made spacecraft wasn’t enough, is that the Earth is visible. Of course, Earth is only a couple of pixels big and could just as well be a spec on the lens. But that’s not what it is… that’s us.

I always feel a little bit uncomfortable about these images because of how they are created. I get the feeling that the majority of people that see these images must think that the spacecraft has a sweet digital camera on board that can just snap shots like this… when in fact practically every image we see from NASA is a composite, color adjusted, photoshopped image. I don’t really care though.  I know that at the core of it all, this is the image that the data can and did produce.

Insert funny joke here, humanizing Saturn by noting it’s disdain for marriage due to a build-up of unnecessary rings.