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I read that as meaning "Pale blue dot" in the sense that Carl Sagan wasn't a professional astronomer or a NASA employee, he just said "Hey, wouldn't it be cool
by sbierwagen 4y ago
I read that as meaning "Pale blue dot" in the sense that Carl Sagan wasn't a professional astronomer or a NASA employee, he just said "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if you tried taking a photo of Earth from the Pioneer probe" and they did it.
- ISL 4y agoSagan was a professional astronomer in Cornell's astronomy department, but his rationale for making the pale-blue-dot image was less as a scientific endeavor and more as a way to tell us more about ourselves. Incidentally, there was a lot more to that imaging campaign -- Voyager captured a "Family Portrait" of our solar system as its last imaging hurrah: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Portrait_(Voyager) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Portrait_(Voyager)