Mark your calendars now for July 19th. That is when we will have our planetary photo taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft that is in orbit around Saturn.
As seen in the simulated view below Earth (and us) will be visible next to the rings of Saturn - our "pale blue dot" will easily be visible.
There have been several times when our planet has been photographed from space - the most famous in my opinion was the Apollo 8 "Earthrise" photo that showed our world to all of us from another world for the first time - and it was on Christmas as well http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_102.html
There was also the famous 1996 "Pale Blue Dot" pic that the late Carl Sagan talked NASA into taking using one of the Voyager 1 cameras before it was turned off. The origianl pic also included other planets in our solar system for the first ever solar sytem planetary family portarait. http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA00452
Cassini has photographed Earth before but this time the pic will be in natural color using the highest resolution camera. The image will be small but is it us at 800 million-plus miles away! When the pic is taken it will be daylight for the U.S. so I will not be able to get a pic to coincide with the 5:27 p.m. EDT snapshot. Darn, that would have been way cool to do.
Read More About It:
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/18jun_bluedot/
Sky Guy in VA
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