Friday 14 February 2020

rayleigh scattering

Thirty years ago on this day, having achieved its primary mission of rendezvous with the outer planet, Voyager I—before going into partial hibernation to preserve power and memory for the long, long journey ahead turned its aperture back towards the Sun to take a family portrait of the inner, rocky worlds, with the Earth, recipient of this love letter—some six billion kilometres distant appeared as only a tiny fleck, a tenth of a pixel, “a pale blue dot,” as programme architect Carl Sagan described it. Our home, and where everyone and everything that we’ve ever known, is that bluish-white speck in the centre of the rightmost brown band.