On this day in 1990, Voyager 1 took the iconic Pale Blue Dot image, prompting Carl Sagan to write his famous Pale Blue Dot passage, heard here. The image used in this video is a version of the original photo reprocessed by NASA using modern image-processing software. | National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution

The "Pale Blue Dot" is a photograph of Earth taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft on February 14, 1990. Carl Sagan popularized the image, which shows Earth as a tiny speck from 3.7 billion miles away. The phrase, along with Sagan's reflection on the photo, serves as a reminder of our planet's fragility and the importance of humility, compassion, and global unity. The photograph was taken as part of NASA's "Family Portrait" series of images of the Solar System. Earth appears as a single pixel, a "pa