Just one small dot on the landscape: The spectacular images of Earth taken from Saturn, 900 million miles away

Photos taken from Saturn by Nasa's Cassini spacecraft show Earth as a tiny pale blue dot

The images have been transmitted from 898 million miles away on the outer edge of our solar system


Earth appears as an insignificant-looking pale blue dot below Saturn's majestic rings in a breathtaking new image from the Cassini spacecraft.

The picture was captured on July 19 by the probe's wide-angle camera from a distance of 900 million miles.

Magnifying the image five times reveals not only the Earth but also the moon, a fainter smudge to the right of the planet.

The images were taken by the Cassini spacecraft, which has been orbiting the ringed giant since its arrival in the Saturn system in 2004, and astronomer Carolyn Porco, who oversees the Cassini imaging team at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado said: 'The whole event underscores for me our 'coming of age' as planetary explorers.'



A tiny spot: Planet Earth can been seen as just a miniscule star from this enhanced shot of Saturn taken by the NASA spacecraft Cassini nearly 900million miles away

Magnified: An Argentine physicist blew up the images of the Earth to show our planet and the moon as they might look from a telescope from Saturn

This shows the first image of Earth captured from the outer solar system taken by NASA's Voyager 1 in 1990, titled 'Pale Blue Dot'

After the event, she tweeted: 'WASN'T IT FABULOUS?! I thought of all of you and all the people around the globe thinking the same thoughts I was. Felt SO connected to everyone.



The Earth has only been pictured in images from outer space on two other occasions. The first was in 1990, when Voyager 1 captured an image from 3.7 billion miles away. The second occasion was when Cassini took a photo in 2006 from 926 million miles away.

NASA took the image on July 19 because Saturn was backlit by the Sun and Earth was included in the picture.

Linda Spilker, Cassini spacecraft lead scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California said: 'We can't see individual continents or people in this portrait of Earth, but this pale blue dot is a succinct summary of who we were on July 19.'

Cassini snapped the picture on Friday, the same day NASA's Mercury-orbiting MESSENGER probe imaged Earth as well.



In that picture, Earth and the moon take up less than a pixel, but appear large because they are overexposed.

'That images of our planet have been acquired on a single day from two distant solar system outposts reminds us of this nation's stunning technical accomplishments in planetary exploration,' said MESSENGER lead scientist Sean Solomon, with Columbia University in New York.

The raw images of Earth that arrived back home from Saturn on Saturday were raw and not easy for the average layman to decipher. The images showed both wide and narrow-angle views and different shots were taken with different color filters, additionally, Cassini moved slightly in between shots.

Usually, spacecraft in the far reaches of the solar system don't look back toward Earth to avoid damaging their instruments by direct sunlight. Last week, the sun was temporarily blocked relative to Cassini's line of sight, allowing the U.S. space agency to take the picture.



Say cheese! Thousands of people posed for Cassini's pictures - though the gesture was obviously just symbolic The blue dot of Earth as seen from Saturn appearing as a bright smudge with the fainter moon to its right. The picture was captured from a distance of 898 million miles by Nasa's Cassini spacecraft

Val Klavans, an image processor and social-media leader for the 'In Saturn's Rings' film project, produced an unofficial color image composite of the raw data that was sent back.



Guillermo Abramson, a physicist at Argentina's Bariloche Atomic Center, tweeted a zoomed-in shot of Earth - as seen from nearly 900million miles away.



Thousands of Earthlings looked up at Saturn and waved at 2.30pm Pacific time on Friday to participate in the symbolic #DayEarthSmiled and #WaveatSaturn campaigns at the time Cassini was shooting the pictures.



Photo bomb: Earth will appear in the image NASA is trying to capture of Saturn

Star gazing: Saturn could be seen from London's night sky at the time the images were taken from Cassini

Photos show staffers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, participating. Costumed sci-fi fans at Comic Con in San Diego - including a few Storm Troopers from Star Wars - also posed for the pictures.



The main purpose of the photograph is to study any changes in Saturn's rings, after an 2006 image showed possible changes.



' A previous mosaic of the Saturn system Cassini made in 2006 revealed that the dusty E ring, which is fed by the water-ice plume of the moon Enceladus, had unexpectedly large variations in brightness and color around its orbit,' Cassini scientist Linda Spilker said.