Your picture will be taken tomorrow, so be sure to look up and smile and wave for the camera. The camera is on the Cassini Spacecraft, and it will be taking a picture of the Earth from the shadow of Saturn (because taking a picture of the Sun does bad things to unprotected cameras). This is a recreation of the original Pale Blue Dot event, when Voyager took a picture of Earth from beyond the orbit of Neptune. Take a peek at the last time Cassini took our picture in 2006 to get an idea of just how amazing an image this could be. The woman who headed the Voyager imaging team in 1990 and is on board the Cassini imaging team taking these photos, Carolyn Porco, wrote a great article about the event you should check out. About the only part of the project I am not in favor of is their Message to the Milky Way transmission on the anniversary of the event, using Earth’s strongest Radio Telescope as the transmitter. Why let the Berserker’s know we are here before we have to? Thanks to Richard Branson for the heads up on this one; while I got Carolyn’s tweet about it, Richards blog entry had lots of juicy details.
