Seth over at The Thinking Atheist has created a new visual translations of Cal Sagan’s famous words.
The Pale Blue Dot is a photograph of our home planet Earth taken in 1990 by the Voyager 1 spacecraft from a record distance of about 6 billion kilometers (3.7 billion miles). Earth is seen as a tiny dot (0.12 pixel in size) against the vastness of space. The Voyager 1 spacecraft, which had completed its primary mission and was leaving the Solar System, was directed by NASA to turn its camera around and to take a photograph of Earth across a great expanse of space, at the request of Carl Sagan.
Subsequently, the title of the photograph was used by Sagan as the main title of his 1994 book, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Sagan was not just a scientist, but also crafted what can be best described as poetry that communicated the wonder of discovery in a very powerful way. In that respect he was truly a pioneer.
Seth’s initial attempt used a new narrator, but after receiving dozens of requests for Carl Sagan’s original voice-over, he revised the edit. You can now check it out below – Sagan himself doing the voice-over is still the best choice.
If you would like to read some of what Carl wrote, then I’d highly recommend, “The Demon Haunted World” as the best place to start
Truly awesome, and still very moving. What a tragic loss Carl Sagan was, and what a legacy he left behind. I’m watching my way through the DVD set of Cosmos just now. Just fantastic.
………….simply brilliant! that’s why saw it twice!