On Valentine’s Day, 1990, 3.7 billion miles away from the sun,
the Voyager 1 spacecraft took a photograph of Earth.
The picture, known as Pale Blue Dot, depicts our planet as a
nearly indiscernible speck roughly the size of a pixel.
Launched on September 5, 1977, Voyagers 1 and 2 were
charged with exploring the outer reaches of our solar
system.
It passed by Jupiter in March of 1979 and Saturn the following
year. The gaps between the outer planets are so vast that it
was another decade before it passed by Neptune and arrived
at the spot where it was to take a series of images of the
planets, known as the "Family Portrait" of our solar system.




