NASA / JPL via AP

Though there's at least one person flashing the Vulcan "Live Long and Prosper" hand signal, if you look closely at this image of Saturn, the creatures you'll see waving are not extra-terrestrials but Earthlings. That's because when the Cassini orbiter positioned itself to take a picture of the Earth, thousands of people heeded NASA's call to wave back. The image is a collage of about 1,600 photographs submitted by members of the public as part of NASA's "Wave at Saturn" campaign. On July 19, Cassini maneuvered into a location to take a picture of the Saturn system backlit by the sun. Blocking out the sun's rays also allowed Cassini the rare opportunity to take a picture of Earth, which would normally require looking almost directly at the sun and risk damaging the cameras' sensitive detectors. In the backlit picture of Saturn used as the base for this mosaic, released earlier this month, the Earth is visible as a tiny speck when viewed at full-resolution.

NASA / JPL via AP A detail view of the collage.

NASA / JPL via AP

NASA released the collage of the Earth, above, in August. Read more about it here:

Thousands of Earthlings waving at Saturn

See the original image used as the base for the Saturn mosaic:

Planets galore! Saturn probe's big pic finally unveiled