That tiny little speck in that endless blackness is us. All of the human race living on this tiny rock fighting over who owns which piece of land and whose religion is most peaceful.<p>All the world leaders should be spent to space to understand how insignificant we are and how petty and insignificant our disagreements are.
> This image is part of a growing catalogue of "propeller" moons... Continued monitoring of these objects may lead to direct observations of the interaction between a disk of material and embedded moons. Such interactions help scientists understand fundamental principles of how solar systems formed from disks of matter.<p>I urgently need a refresher on astronomy so I can have an intelligent discussion about space with 6-year olds. So much has happened since last time I took it in high school.
Yep, that little dot in the sea of infinity is our little blue marble. No one have ever been more than a pixel (EDIT: a couple hundred pixels) distant from it, and soon even that achievement would fade from living memory.
> The spacecraft captured the view on April 12, 2017<p>That's the anniversary of the first human spaceflight, celebrated as Yuri's Night (and also, awesomely, my birthday):<p>> Yuri's Night is named for the first human to launch into space, Yuri Gagarin, who flew the Vostok 1 spaceship on April 12, 1961.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri%27s_Night" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri%27s_Night</a>
It's a bit trippy to look at that picture, and realize that literally everything I know exists in that one little spec. It's cosmically humbling.
This reminded me of "The Pale Blue Dot" <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pfwY2TNehw" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pfwY2TNehw</a>
I know Cassini isn't really the point of this particular image, but was reading over the weekend about all of its accomplishments. It is quite amazing how much that one program has achieved - and if we eventually find life on Enceladus it will be just one more.
Makes me think of <i>The Expanse</i> series (<a href="http://www.jamessacorey.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.jamessacorey.com/</a>). Hard sci-fi, no warp/ftl, no artificial gravity, etc; all takes place within the solar system.
Man, I don't get why everyone's saying that we're insignificant because of this photo.<p>As far as we know, we're the most exciting thing going on in this corner of the universe. There is probably no other place that has conscious beings in that photo. We are massively important, primarily because we can recognize our own importance.<p>This isn't to say it isn't good to be humble. It certainly can be. But we're pretty damn incredible.
This may be a silly question, but where are all of the stars? This image is amazing! I love that you can even see the moon. When I saw this I thought, if I can see the earth and its moon clearly from Saturn, then I should be able to see Saturn and her moons from Earth (then I remembered all of the stars, and how hard it would be to make that out in the night sky).
Beautiful picture. I also like this stoic meditation, it reminds me what is real <a href="https://philosophy-of-cbt.com/2011/08/13/the-view-from-above-stoic-meditation-script/" rel="nofollow">https://philosophy-of-cbt.com/2011/08/13/the-view-from-above...</a>
I don't understand exactly why all space pictures are black and white.<p>There are hi-res cameras that are smaller than a coin now available to consumers, so I can't even imagine what could be used by scientists.<p>Is it because they need to be transmitted back to earth, and 1 channel would be better than 4?
Nasa is showing a lot of imaginary photos through our history. They start to be a tad over pushing things and sometimes I wonder how much is just a photoshop works and make believe "facts"..