Happy Earth Day!

To celebrate Earth Day, I offer a bit of cosmic perspective on our planet. 

Try to spot Earth in the image below. 

Image credit: JPL/NASA 

Click here for a larger image. Can you spot it? I promise it is there. This is an image of Saturn eclipsing the Sun – so you are seeing the night side of Saturn with the Sun shining through its rings. Earth, the Moon, Mars, Venus, and a bunch of Saturn’s moons are in the picture too. Don’t believe me?

Here is an annotated picture: 

Image credit: JPL/NASA

 Click here for a larger image.

The Cassini spacecraft took this wonderful, dazzling image on July 19, 2013. Earth is about a billion miles away in this picture. Learn all about this image and the objects pictured in it here.

Can you find Earth in the image below? This is the farthest away picture ever taken of Earth.

Image Credit: NASA

This image was taken in 1990 by Voyager 1, as it sped away from the solar system. It was about 3.7 billion miles away from Earth at this point. The Voyager team took this picture at the request of Carl Sagan, who wrote an inspiring book on the subject. 



Astronomers are searching for another Earth-like planet in our galaxy, but even if we find one (and we may have a good candidate!) it will take vast advances in technology to ever visit it, if space travel over these distances is ever possible.  Earth is the only planet we know of that can support human life. It is tiny, fragile, just a speck in the vastness emptiness of space. We need to take care of Planet Earth.