{"id":211935,"date":"2013-07-23T03:16:00","date_gmt":"2013-07-23T07:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"4c43c0f67f1ecfa99dc86e38b71ff0b6"},"modified":"2013-07-23T03:16:00","modified_gmt":"2013-07-23T07:16:00","slug":"cassini%e2%80%99s-pale-blue-dot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=211935","title":{"rendered":"Cassini\u2019s Pale Blue Dot"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\nIn this rare image taken on 19 July, the wide-angle camera on the international Cassini spacecraft has captured Saturn\u2019s rings and our planet Earth and Moon in the same frame.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe dark side of Saturn, its bright limb, the main rings, the F ring, and the G and E rings are clearly seen; the limb of Saturn and the F ring are overexposed. The \u2018breaks\u2019 in the brightness of Saturn\u2019s limb are due to the shadows of the rings on the globe of Saturn, preventing sunlight from shining through the atmosphere in those regions. The E and G rings have been brightened for better visibility.\n<\/p>\n

\nEarth, 1.44 billion km away in this image, appears as a blue dot at centre right; the Moon can be seen as a fainter protrusion off its right side. The other bright dots nearby are stars.\n<\/p>\n

\nThis is only the third time ever that Earth has been imaged from the outer Solar System. The first image was taken by NASA\u2019s Voyager-1 in 1990 and famously titled \u201cPale Blue Dot\u201d. In 2006, Cassini imaged Earth in the stunning and unique mosaic of Saturn called \u201cIn Saturn’s Shadow \u2013 The Pale Blue Dot\u201d.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe new images marked the first time that inhabitants of Earth knew in advance that their planet was being imaged. That opportunity allowed people around the world to join together in social events to celebrate the occasion.\n<\/p>\n

\nThis view looks towards the unilluminated side of the rings from about 20\u00ba below the ring plane.\n<\/p>\n

\nImages taken using red, green and blue filters were combined to create this natural colour view. The images were obtained with Cassini\u2019s wide-angle camera on 19 July at a distance of 1.212 million km from Saturn, and 1445.858 million km from Earth. The illuminated areas of both Earth and the Moon are unresolved here. Consequently, the size of each \u2018dot\u2019 is the same size that a point of light of comparable brightness would have in the wide-angle camera.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe Cassini\u2013Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA and Italy\u2019s ASI space agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA\u2019s Science Mission Directorate, Washington, DC. The Cassini orbiter and its two cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations centre is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\nIn this rare image taken on 19 July, the wide-angle camera on the international Cassini spacecraft has captured Saturn\u2019s rings and our planet Earth and Moon in the same frame.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe dark side of Saturn, its bright limb, the main rings, the F ring, and the G and E rings are clearly seen; the limb of Saturn and the F ring are overexposed. The \u2018breaks\u2019 in the brightness of Saturn\u2019s limb are due to the shadows of the rings on the globe of Saturn, preventing sunlight from shining through the atmosphere in those regions. The E and G rings have been brightened for better visibility.\n<\/p>\n

\nEarth, 1.44 billion km away in this image, appears as a blue dot at centre right; the Moon can be seen as a fainter protrusion off its right side. The other bright dots nearby are stars.\n<\/p>\n

\nThis is only the third time ever that Earth has been imaged from the outer Solar System. The first image was taken by NASA\u2019s Voyager-1 in 1990 and famously titled \u201cPale Blue Dot\u201d. In 2006, Cassini imaged Earth in the stunning and unique mosaic of Saturn called \u201cIn Saturn’s Shadow \u2013 The Pale Blue Dot\u201d.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe new images marked the first time that inhabitants of Earth knew in advance that their planet was being imaged. That opportunity allowed people around the world to join together in social events to celebrate the occasion.\n<\/p>\n

\nThis view looks towards the unilluminated side of the rings from about 20\u00ba below the ring plane.\n<\/p>\n

\nImages taken using red, green and blue filters were combined to create this natural colour view. The images were obtained with Cassini\u2019s wide-angle camera on 19 July at a distance of 1.212 million km from Saturn, and 1445.858 million km from Earth. The illuminated areas of both Earth and the Moon are unresolved here. Consequently, the size of each \u2018dot\u2019 is the same size that a point of light of comparable brightness would have in the wide-angle camera.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe Cassini\u2013Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA and Italy\u2019s ASI space agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA\u2019s Science Mission Directorate, Washington, DC. The Cassini orbiter and its two cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations centre is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":615444,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-211935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-multimedia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=211935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/615444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=211935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=211935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=211935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}