Last Friday, the Cassini spacecraft was able to take a picture of the Earth from the spacecraft’s orbit around Saturn. This morning, I posted a black-and-white portion of this larger view taken by Cassini‘s wide-angle camera. Here’s the entire image. Click it to embiggen. Go ahead. It’s worth it. You can use your back button to return.

The dark side of Saturn, its bright limb, the main rings, the F ring, and the G and E rings are visible. The limb of Saturn and the F ring are overexposed. The “breaks” in the brightness of Saturn’s limb are shadows of the rings The E and G rings have been brightened through post processing for better visibility.

Earth, which is 1.44 billion km away in this image, is that blue dot indicated by the arrow. In the full-size image the Moon can be seen as a fainter protrusion off its right side. The other bright dots are stars

This is only the third time that Earth has been photographed from the outer solar system.

Image Credit: NASA