Greatest Photo Ever Taken

[faith]

On February 14, 1990, Voyager 1, a space probe that's been travelling away from Earth since 1977, took a photograph that you can see below. At that point, the probe travelled for 13 years at a distance of 6 billion kilometres away from Earth. 

 

“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam."

- Carl Sagan

 

[Evilwave Heddy]

6 billion kilometers away and it hasn't hit a single thing in its entire 13 year journey.  It's saddening me how empty space is. /:

[faith]

Don't be sad Evil,

It's just that everything is so far apart from each other, but space is not all empty. However, space is pretty big.

Look at the image below:

 

This is the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter in our Solar System. In reality, those rocks aren't that close to each other. On average, they are 1 million km apart. That distance is equivalent to 25 times around the Earth. 

And this image:

 

We're all so used to seeing this image. It's engrained in our heads since childhood. And nobody ever tells us how WRONG the picture above is. In reality, the moon is actually there:

 

So things are just REALLY, REALLY far apart. All though I don't think that really makes you feel any better. It just shows how lonely the universe is.  

 

[Loreena]

How big the universe, and we are like insignificant specks of matter. But the universe looks mystical, majestic, powerful, silent and mysterious.

It feels like there is a God in it, even though it may or not be true, but its vastness and enormity makes me feel like there is a God residing in it.

 

Edited April 30, 2017 by Loreena

[jse]

Here's an update on the greatest photo ever taken:

 

And the very latest:

                                           NASA Image Shows Earth Between the Rings of Saturn