The earth from a distance

[Coxhere]

Here is a photograph (less than a pixel) of the earth, a tiny blue-green dot midway in the righthand, vertical, reddish-pinkish band, taken from Voyager I, launched from earth on September 5, 1977. This February 14, 1990 photo was taken from the edge of our solar system and prior to Voyager I’s movement beyond the Kuiper Belt, Heliosphere, and Oort Cloud into Interstellar Space. This photograph shows us just how important our lives are when seen from afar. . . .

 

[Coxhere]

Here is a photograph (less than a pixel) of the earth, a tiny blue-green dot midway in the righthand, vertical, reddish-pinkish band, taken from Voyager I, launched from earth on September 5, 1977. This February 14, 1990 photo was taken from the edge of our solar system and prior to Voyager I’s movement beyond the Kuiper Belt, Heliosphere, and Oort Cloud into Interstellar Space. This photograph shows us just how important our lives are when seen from afar. . . .

This photo of the earth was taken over 35 years ago. If a photo were taken of the earth today from Voyager I, I imagine that we'd not be able to see the earth at all.

 

[SusanLR]

I saw this. Always getting astronomy and astrophysics in my newsfeeds.
I was in University when Star Trek the motion picture was made depicting Voyager aka V-ger coming back looking for its creator. Great movie. Love all things Star Trek.

Rather puts things into perspective compared to infinite universe, doesn't it?

 

[JayCee]

post Vanished again? Excellent point of veiw to have on the difficult days.TY for sharing.

 

[Mary Terry]

I saw this. Always getting astronomy and astrophysics in my newsfeeds.
I was in University when Star Trek the motion picture was made depicting Voyager aka V-ger coming back looking for its creator. Great movie. Love all things Star Trek.

Rather puts things into perspective compared to infinite universe, doesn't it?

I immediately thought of the old Star Trek show about V-ger, too!

 

[Coxhere]

I saw this. Always getting astronomy and astrophysics in my newsfeeds.
I was in University when Star Trek the motion picture was made depicting Voyager aka V-ger coming back looking for its creator. Great movie. Love all things Star Trek.

Rather puts things into perspective compared to infinite universe, doesn't it?

Yes, SusanLR, earth as less than a pixel puts things earthly into perspective!

 

[Coxhere]

post Vanished again? Excellent point of veiw to have on the difficult days.TY for sharing.

JayCee, seeing a less-than-a-pixel-earth can make difficult days seem less difficult. Yes. I have a memory that I've never forgotten. I was a young soldier. I was on a late night flight from New York City to a duty station in Turkey. Just as the sun was coming up, I looked out and saw the coast of Europe. Flying at 500 mph, we were quickly across France. It made me think of all the kings, barons, lords, and dictators who'd fought, won battles, were defeated, and died for such a relatively small piece of the earth when thinking of the earth's entirety. I thought that experience was also an excellent point of view to show just how small I was and am.

 

[Outdated]

I was on a late night flight from New York City to a duty station in Turkey.

I was on a night time flight from Darwin to Adelaide many years ago. The flight departed 1:40 late due to a bird strike and a bit of emergency safety checking of the engines. Then only 30 minutes into the flight I looked out the window and realised that I could see car and truck headlights on the Stuart Highway below.

That made me pretty nervous, planes don't normally fly anywhere near that low. Then the pilot made an announcement, his radar found a jet stream headed in the right direction at 23,000 feet and he was using it to make up lost time. We arrived in Adelaide 20 minutes early. What is normally a 4 hour flight took only 2 hours and probably saved his company a fortune in fuel too.

 

[Nervous Rex]

Fun note about Voyager1: In late 2026, Voyager 1 will reach the distance of 1 light day away from Earth.

 

[Nervous Rex]

This photo of the earth was taken over 35 years ago. If a photo were taken of the earth today from Voyager I, I imagine that we'd not be able to see the earth at all.

I bet you're right. Voyager 1 was 3.7 billion miles from Earth when that famous "Pale Blue Dot" image was taken and the earth was 0.12 pixels large in that image.

Voyager 1 is now 15.5 billion miles from Earth, so it would take up approximately 0.006 pixels.

 

[Ken]

That Pale Blue Dot.

Carl Sagan said, "Voyager 1 was about 6.4 billion kilometers (4 billion miles) away, and approximately 32 degrees above the ecliptic plane, when it captured this portrait of our world. Caught in the center of scattered light rays (a result of taking the picture so close to the Sun), Earth appears as a tiny point of light, a crescent only 0.12 pixel in size.
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.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."

Pure beautiful poetry.

 

[Coxhere]

I was on a night time flight from Darwin to Adelaide many years ago. The flight departed 1:40 late due to a bird strike and a bit of emergency safety checking of the engines. Then only 30 minutes into the flight I looked out the window and realised that I could see car and truck headlights on the Stuart Highway below.

That made me pretty nervous, planes don't normally fly anywhere near that low. Then the pilot made an announcement, his radar found a jet stream headed in the right direction at 23,000 feet and he was using it to make up lost time. We arrived in Adelaide 20 minutes early. What is normally a 4 hour flight took only 2 hours and probably saved his company a fortune in fuel too.

Outdated, your comment about flying in the jet stream makes me think of a couple of instances when I flew from Okinawa back to California. Both times, pilots found jet streams that got us to California before we left! On one such trip, we landed in California a couple or so hours before scheduled time but my mother and sister, who came to the airbase to get me, had a leisurely breakfast someplace while I sat in the waiting room of the airbase until the scheduled arrival time. Then they showed up!

Oh and another memory of that trip home. I'd been on the island for two years where the vehicular traffic speed limit was 30 mph max. My sister got us onto the freeway and started doing 70 mph, moving from one lane to another as she was used to always doing. I was scared out of my wits!

 

[Coxhere]

That Pale Blue Dot.

Carl Sagan said, "Voyager 1 was about 6.4 billion kilometers (4 billion miles) away, and approximately 32 degrees above the ecliptic plane, when it captured this portrait of our world. Caught in the center of scattered light rays (a result of taking the picture so close to the Sun), Earth appears as a tiny point of light, a crescent only 0.12 pixel in size.
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.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."

Pure beautiful poetry.

Your quote of Sagan here, Ken, is absolutely heart-stopping. What a way to stop all of us in our tracks! What a way for us to re-think and re-perceive who we are and what we are doing. Sagan was (and is) correct. It is you and I- - - -us- - - -who will or will not get us out of the mess which we have caused and in which we find ourselves.

 

[Outdated]

..who will or will not get us out of the mess which we have caused and in which we find ourselves.

Ourselves or it won't happen.

There's still a lot of deniers in the world but then there's still a Flat Earth Society too. You can break your country's laws but you can't break the laws of physics. Infinite growth inside a finite space simply isn't possible.

 

[Coxhere]

Ourselves or it won't happen.

There's still a lot of deniers in the world but then there's still a Flat Earth Society too. You can break your country's laws but you can't break the laws of physics. Infinite growth inside a finite space simply isn't possible.

Were you already aware that ancient Hebrews envisioned the world as a flat disc floating on water, with a solid dome (heaven) above and an underworld below? And Hindu cosmology said that the world was suspended on the feet of elephants. Of the two, I like the Hindu concept better.

 

[Outdated]

Were you already aware that....

Most of the world thought that the world was flat and that if you sailed too far out to sea you could fall off the edge of the world. That was thousands of years ago of course. Christianity taught that we were the centre of the universe and everything revolved around us.

Over a thousand years ago now many astronomers started realising that the earth was a ball and it was the earth that was spinning around the sun, not vice versa. But if they tried to publish any of this information the church would imprison torture and kill them because such notions went against the word of God. Science was blasphemy.

 

[Coxhere]

Most of the world thought that the world was flat and that if you sailed too far out to sea you could fall off the edge of the world. That was thousands of years ago of course. Christianity taught that we were the centre of the universe and everything revolved around us.

Over a thousand years ago now many astronomers started realising that the earth was a ball and it was the earth that was spinning around the sun, not vice versa. But if they tried to publish any of this information the church would imprison torture and kill them because such notions went against the word of God. Science was blasphemy.

Those at the top of institutional religion knew they'd lose CONTROL if they didn't "take care of" those who disagreed with them.

 

[Outdated]

Those at the top of institutional religion knew they'd lose CONTROL if they didn't "take care of" those who disagreed with them.

They started out like that at the very beginning, the early papacy attacked and destroyed every library in the known world including the Great Library Of Alexandria, and they also killed anyone who was even suspected of having knowledge of what was in those books and scrolls.

This was known as The Great Burning, and that was what ushered in the Dark Ages, a period of almost no written history. In one book of their scriptures this is also referred to as The 1000 Years of Darkness.

It's a standard pattern repeated many times throughout history. Destroy all independent educational institutions because when you have absolute control over what people know then you have absolute control over every aspect of their lives.

 

[Coxhere]

They started out like that at the very beginning, the early papacy attacked and destroyed every library in the known world including the Great Library Of Alexandria, and they also killed anyone who was even suspected of having knowledge of what was in those books and scrolls.

This was known as The Great Burning, and that was what ushered in the Dark Ages, a period of almost no written history. In one book of their scriptures this is also referred to as The 1000 Years of Darkness.

It's a standard pattern repeated many times throughout history. Destroy all independent educational institutions because when you have absolute control over what people know then you have absolute control over every aspect of their lives.

I knew that the Great Library of Alexandria, Egypt was completely destroyed. I learned that in elementary school. However, I didn't know it was destroyed by Christians. I searched and saw that the library was actually set on fire on three different occasions, the worst being by the Christians (Google Search).

 

[Outdated]

However, I didn't know it was destroyed by Christians.

It's a very easy way to deceive people and give them wrong impressions - to lie by ommission.

"Oopsie, sorry but I forgot to mention that bit."