Log Astronomy: Happy Earth Day!

Sabtu, 22 April 2023

Happy Earth Day!

Celebrate our 'pale blue dot' by spending a day in nature or a night under the stars!

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Happy Earth Day

It's the perfect day to reflect on our 'pale blue dot'

Image credit: NASA/JPL

Today is Earth Day, which means we would, once again, like to mark the occasion by sharing the following reflection from Carl Sagan that appeared in his 1994 book "Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space". Sagan's words were inspired by this image from Voyager 1, in which our planet appears as a tiny point of light in one of the rays.

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"Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."

— Carl Sagan