Mouseion · Collection II · Source file held locally

Pale Blue Dot Revisited

NASA/JPL-Caltech; Voyager 1 imagery, reprocessed by Kevin M. Gill

Supports study of astronomical scale, scientific image processing and the distinction between observation and interpretation.

A question to carry into the reading

Which features come from the observed scene, the instrument and later image processing?

Locate Earth, then read the caption's account of the 1990 capture and 2020 processing.

Further reading: MA-OPEN-022

These are curatorial comparisons, not evidence supporting a scientific claim.

Reading and source

Enlarged, reprocessed false-colour composite, not an unaltered raw sensor file. Its emotional or philosophical meaning is interpretation rather than a measured result.

Earth appears as a tiny bright point within a broad shaft of scattered sunlight in Voyager 1’s distant view.
NASA/JPL-Caltech. Pale Blue Dot Revisited, 2020 reprocessing of the Voyager 1 observation from 1990. False-colour processing; see the source caption.

Download the unchanged source file

Read at the original source

Edition, source and reuse

Edition: PIA23645, 2020 reprocessing of the 14 February 1990 Voyager observation; full JPEG

Rights: NASA educational/informational media use and JPL image-use terms, with NASA/JPL-Caltech credit and no endorsement. No logo, recording or Carl Sagan prose acquired.

Rights/source reference 1 · Rights/source reference 2

Pale Blue Dot Revisited — NASA/JPL-Caltech; Voyager 1 imagery, reprocessed by Kevin M. Gill. PIA23645, 2020 reprocessing of the 14 February 1990 Voyager observation; full JPEG. Source: https://science.nasa.gov/photojournal/pale-blue-dot-revisited/. Selected source bytes unchanged; HCR description and reading question are separate.

Review scope: Official caption, image ID, date and credit checked; downloaded JPEG visually inspected.