With Valentine’s Day near, take a moment to give a love letter to our home planet, Earth.

Feb. 14 is the anniversary of the famous “Pale Blue Dot” image, taken by NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft in 1990.

Encouraged by the vision of Carl Sagan, Voyager 1 turned its cameras toward Earth to create a family photo of planets. Venus, Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune were captured in 60 frames 34 minutes before Voyager 1 powered off its cameras for good.

That moment, at 3.7 billion miles away, Sagan’s vision became a reality.

Earth, seen “as a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam,” was recognized by a University of Arizona scientist, Candice Hansen-Koharcheck. She helped design the camera that captured the speck, about a pixel in size, and was the first to document that the “Pale Blue Dot” was us.

“Consider again that dot,” Sagan wrote. “That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love. 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.”

On the anniversary of Voyager’s photo of Earth, a picture taken because Sagan thought it would be a cool idea and NASA agreed, we celebrate the home that sustains us in the vastness of space.

First Published: February 11, 2025, 10:30 a.m.