Typically, we like to photograph things up close. The closer we can get, the more detail we can capture and the more interesting the subject becomes. But there are times when you have to step back from your subject in order to gain a little perspective. In the case of this real photograph captured by NASA, they decided to step way back, over 898 million miles back. Even though their subject, the earth, appears only as a small blue dot, the image is stunning as it shows the earth in the same frame as Saturn and its rings:
“This is only the third time ever that Earth has been imaged from the outer solar system” (click to see larger size)
The Cassini orbiter, the craft that took this image, was constructed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory which is a division of the California Institute of Technology and is in charge of the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. In this photo, the Cassini orbiter appears to be very close to Saturn. In reality, it is about 753,000 miles away. Just to give you an idea of how large Saturn truly is, each pixel in this image covers 43 miles of the planet’s surface. Now that’s a large planet.
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Even more interesting is why NASA would black out Saturn. Something they don’t want us to see perhaps?