NPR did a great story on the 20th anniversary of this photo, taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft in 1990. It almost didn't happen because there was fear of frying the cameras when they pointed back at the sun.
Carl Sagan urged NASA not let the opportunity pass, and they did not disappoint. Here's Sagan's take on the photo:
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.
Just a little perspective late on a Friday afternoon.
