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Cassini spacecraft captures image of Earth from over a billion km away

Friday, 21 April 2017 11:25 PM [ Last Update: Friday, 21 April 2017 11:25 PM ]

NASA's Cassini spacecraft captured this view of planet Earth as a point of light between the icy rings of Saturn on April 12, 2017. (Photo by NASA)

The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has released a stunning picture of our tiny cosmic home and its nearest celestial neighbor, the Moon, taken from a hugely distant vantage point, which is reminiscent of a landmark similar image taken by Voyager 1 space probe some 27 years ago.

The US space agency on Thursday released a picture from the Earth and its barely visible natural satellite, captured by the Cassini spacecraft, when it was some 1.4 billion kilometers away from our planet on April 12.

"Although far too small to be visible in the image, the part of Earth facing Cassini at the time was the southern Atlantic Ocean," NASA said in a statement, adding that the picture showed the Earth as a point of light between Saturn's icy rings.

This cropped, zoomed-in version of the image makes it easier to see Earth's moon -- a smaller, fainter dot to the left of our planet's bright dot. (Photo by NASA)

Cassini was launched in 1997 as a joint project by NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Italian Space Agency (ASI) to study Saturn, the second largest planet of the Solar System, and its crowded family. It entered the Saturn's orbit in 2004 and since then has been studying the plant, its famous rings and a number of its moons, particularly Titan and Enceladus.

The space probe will eventually carry out a self-destruction maneuver by diving into the planet's atmosphere on September 15, when it will beam its last batch of pictures.

Back in 1990, when NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft was some six billion kilometers away from the Earth, it took a similar picture from our planet, barely seen as a pale blue dot through Saturn's rings.

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