Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

The titular image of Earth as a "pale blue dot," taken by Voyager 1 in 1990, serves as a guide for reading the book and a way to frame our thinking about Earth and the solar system. It is a powerful symbol of humanity as a small group of fragile organisms who exist only because of miraculous circumstances and will continue to exist only if they work together for a common goal: the preservation of their world and the further discovery of others. Sagan compares the human experience looking at the “pale blue dot” photograph to an infant seeing themselves in a mirror for the first time. For Sagan, Voyager 1’s photograph elicits a new level of recognition, the moment when we can finally understand humanity in the context of the universe and realize just how insignificant we are in comparison to the endless stretches of space and time (3). It has been taken up by others for similar reasons—for instance, by Al Gore at the end of his documentary An Inconvenient Truth—and has inspired other images, such as NASA’s 2013 Cassini portrait.