Pale Blue Dot

In 1977 NASA launched a spacecraft called Voyager 1 to study the outer Solar System. Carl Sagan,an american scientist of astronomy somehow managed to convince NASA to have Voyager 1 take a selfie when it is about to leave the outer Solar System and enter interstellar space. That day occurred in Feb 1990, some 13 years after the spacecraft was launched. Voyager 1 turned around to take a selfie that captured a phenomenal view of the solar system and that’s how the term Pale Blue Dot was coined by Carl Sagan. What’s the pale blue dot?

In the magnificent image, there is a tiny dot amongst the vastness of the space that represents our planet Earth. The image in the post is the best I could find online but there are likely better images available. The first time I saw the image, I was just amazed by the vastness of the universe. I thought, in the grand scheme of existence, how tiny we are? Many times I find myself caught up in the issues of life, things not going the way I want them to go, people not being the way i expect them to be. That’s when I sometimes reflect on pale blue dot and it works like magic for me. I look up into the sky and imagine how at every moment our planet is both revolving and rotating. I visualize our solar system and how it’s part of one galaxy and there are billions of galaxies! It just blows my mind.

Life is too short, it’s not worth getting caught up in the problems of life. Just like our planet and the universe, we must keep moving forward.

P.S. Carl Sagan wrote a book called “Pale Blue Dot” and I took inspiration from that title for this post. You can check some of his videos on youtube, I found them incredible. Avoid binge watching though 🙂