Pale Blue Dot

Slide between them

The original laid over the live view at the same scale, as the viewer does when you press Both or Original. Drag across the picture, or use the arrow keys.

Original Live view

Where it was taken from

Voyager 1 was 6 billion km from the Earth at 04:48 UTC on 14 February 1990.

The live view puts the viewer's camera right there. The clock goes to that moment, everything switches to true scale, and the camera sits where the spacecraft was, its position from JPL Horizons, NASA's ephemeris service, for that moment [3]. The lens matches the published picture, 0.35° from top to bottom, and the camera is turned to the picture's own orientation, so the original lies over the view at the same scale.

Where the two differ

The bands are the camera's own glare, drawn in to match the original; switch them off to see the sky as it was. The Earth is drawn as a point carrying its share of the light, brightened to match the published picture.

Everything in the live view comes from the viewer's own maps and its own light, drawn at one instant. The geometry comes from the spacecraft's position, the lens and the picture's orientation, so where everything was, how big it looked and which way it was lit should all line up with the original.

The facts

• Voyager 1 took the Pale Blue Dot at 4:48 GMT on 14 February 1990, 34 minutes before its cameras were switched off for good. [1]
• It is part of the "Family Portrait of the Solar System", a series of 60 images, and combines frames taken through green, blue and violet filters. [1]
• The Earth was about 6 billion kilometres away and less than a pixel across. [1]
• The bands of light are sunlight scattered inside the camera, and the Earth happens to sit in one of them. [1]
• The name comes from Carl Sagan's 1994 book; Sagan pushed for the images to be taken. [1]
• Voyager 1 was about 32 degrees above the plane of the planets, and the Earth was a crescent only 0.12 pixel in size. [2]

Open it live

In the viewer the clock runs on from the moment at real pace, so you can watch the scene move the way it did after the shutter closed. Press Both or Original to lay the original over it, or drag to look around from where Voyager 1 was.

Open it live in 3D → All eight as a Mac screensaver

The other seven

All the famous photos, and how the views are made

Sources

1. NASA Photojournal: Pale Blue Dot Revisited
2. NASA Photojournal: Solar System Portrait Earth As Pale Blue Dot
3. NASA JPL: Horizons ephemeris system

Original picture: NASA/JPL-Caltech, from NASA Photojournal: Pale Blue Dot Revisited. JPL pictures may be used for any purpose without prior permission, with the credit line. JPL image use policy. The live view is ours, rendered by the Our Solar System viewer.