carl sagan day

"I went to the librarian and asked for a book about stars... And the answer was stunning. It was that the Sun was a star but really close. The stars were suns, but so far away they were just little points of light... The scale of the universe suddenly opened up to me. It was a kind of religious experience. There was a magnificence to it, a grandeur, a scale which has never left me. Never ever left me." - Carl Sagan 

Today marks the second annual Carl Sagan Day! If you don't know who he is, well then that just sucks for you...

In short, he was an amazing astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, a major promoter of SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), and author of one of my favorite books which was then turned into one of my favorite films.

In 1990 when the Voyager 1 spacecraft completed its primary mission and was set to leave the Solar System, Carl Sagan was the one who requested that the camera on the spacecraft be turned around to photograph Earth across an expanse of space measuring over 3 and a half billion miles. The above image is the result and is titled "Pale Blue Dot." It illustrates both our insignificance and significance.

This is why I love Carl Sagan; he seems to have been both scientist as well as artist. 

Source: Wikipedia