Earth Poster – Version G – The Pale Blue Dot

Close up orbital view of ridges on Earth.
August 20, 2018
CreditNASA
Language
  • english

Version G of the Earth installment of our solar system poster series.

The posters are best printed on 11x17 paper. Several download options are available in the column on the right.

Back of Earth Poster includes size and orbit diagram.
Optional back with a brief summary and orbit diagram.

Details

Earth—our home planet— is the third planet from the Sun, and the only place we know of so far that’s inhabited by living things.

While Earth is only the fifth largest planet in the solar system, it is the only world in our solar system with abundant liquid water on the surface. Just slightly larger than nearby Venus, Earth is the biggest of the four planets closest to the Sun, all of which are made of mostly rock and metal.

This image of Earth is part of a family portrait of our solar system taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft from about 3.8 billion miles (6.4 billion kilometers) away. The image inspired the title of scientist Carl Sagan's 1994 book, "Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space,” in which he wrote: "Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That’s us.”

Explore Earth in depth at https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/earth

The image was processed by JPL engineer and image processing enthusiast Kevin M. Gill with input from two of the image's original planners, Candy Hansen and William Kosmann.