'Of all the millions of images taken of the worlds in our solar system since the beginning of the space age, those that reach deeper into the human heart than any other, are those of our own home, as it might be seen in the skies of other worlds: small, alone in the blackness of never-ending space and awash in the blue of its blue, blue oceans.'
Those are the words of Carolyn Porco, the Cassini Imaging Team Leader.
Last Friday, while orbiting Saturn, the Cassini spacecraft turned its camera lens on earth from almost a billion miles away. NASA has released the images, which show Saturn and its rings, and also the Earth in the (very far) distance. The original ‘raw’ images taken by the spacecraft are grayscale, but astronomy enthusiast Valerie Klavans has converted some of them and added color.