Earth

This grainy featureless photograph may not look much at first, but I think it has a very real claim to be one of the most revealing and genuinely awesome pictures ever taken. Somewhere amongst the brown band in the centre of the picture is a single pale blue pixel. That pixel is here, it’s planet Earth. In 1990 as the Voyager 1 probe passed Saturn on its way into the outer reaches of the solar system, the late great Carl Sagan who had been an advisor to the NASA voyager mission, requested that the probe turn its camera back and take a last photograph of Earth against the vastness of space. This is that photograph.







Six years later as Voyager 1 had passed the planets and Kuyper belt Carl Sagan recorded these words reflecting on the importance of the photograph that he called the pale blue dot. The poignancy of what he said all the greater as Sagan knew he was gravely ill A few months later as Voyager 1 left the solar system Carl Sagan died. Many times since I have thought how the world still needs Carl Sagan’s insight and wisdom. But this photograph and what he says have left an extraordianry legacy, we will never think of planet Earth the same again.

Venus

The London Sky may never be clearer than tonight. A bright day a south west wind and a volcano in Iceland combined to clear the sky of contrails and clouds. A perfect mauve punctuated by just two bright white worlds a crescent moon and between it and the horizon Venus.

Mercury

It is said that Copernicus, the father of astronomy, never saw it. Mercury is indeed an illusive planet orbiting so close to the sun it is caught in its radiance. And then it follows it below the horizon before we can catch a glimpse. But yesterday evening it was there, floating above the panorama of the London skyline to the side of the brilliance of Venus; there, for just a few fleeting minutes in the dusk before clouds blew in from the west and closed the veil. For that brief instant you could almost sense our Earth’s place amongst the inner worlds of the solar system. A privileged moment.