Pale Blue Dot: Earth from Voyager 1
Voyager 1 looked back in 1990 and recorded Earth as less than a pixel. The familiar version shown here is a 2020 reprocessing of those data.
2026-09-24 · NASA/JPL
The final photo sequence
On 14 February 1990 Voyager 1 took images for a family portrait of the Solar System. From roughly six billion kilometres away, Earth occupied less than one pixel in the original data. The cameras were switched off soon afterwards to conserve power.
Why Earth sits in a bright band
Voyager photographed toward the inner Solar System. The bright streaks are sunlight scattered inside the camera optics; they are not beams lighting Earth in space. Earth itself is the tiny point in one of those streaks.
1990 data, 2020 processing
The displayed version was produced in 2020 from the original observations. Kevin M. Gill used newer processing methods with input from two original image planners. The later year marks a new rendering, not a new Voyager photograph.