Astronomy domine, or, “Hello”

I adore this picture.

If you want a photographic critique, I suppose I could say the exaggerated colors make it look like a really cool scene from an anime, but that’s not it. Besides, how do I make a proper critique of an image shot from 1.3 million miles away from its object? By a robot? Flying through outer space? A billion miles from home?

But speaking of home, if you look just inside the G ring to the left of Saturn, you might see a tiny dot.

That’s Earth. Home. Us. From nearly a billion miles away.

How can I not adore this picture?

Describing another image from the same observation, NASA notes that these are the first color images of Earth taken from the outer solar system since Voyager 1 sent pictures from beyond Neptune.

Good show. Much admiration for the Cassini Imaging Team, and many thanks to NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day.

High resolution versions in JPG and TIFF formats are available from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory at California Institute of Technology.

Hello. ‘Tis us.

That’s so freakin’ cool.