ASTRONOMY PICTURE

OF THE DAY

AUGUST 24, 2013

Earth Waves at Saturn

EXPLANATION

This friendly photo collage is constructed from more than 1,400 images shared by denizens of planet Earth as part of the Cassini Mission’s July 19th Wave at Saturn event. The base picture of Earth corresponds to the view from the Saturn-orbiting Cassini spacecraft on that date, when its own cameras recorded images including planet Earth as a pale blue dot in the background. Of course, Saturn was 9.65 Astronomical Units away at the time, so it took light from all the waving Earth dwellers just over 80 minutes to travel there. Want to smile? Download and zoom in to the full-resolution (28MB jpg file) collage image available here.

Credit

NASA, JPL-Caltech, Cassini Project, Denizens of Earth