A lot of images were taken on July 24, 1969 but a couple were strangely more meaningful. It was a set by Michael Collins from the command module, Aquarius. The image below is one of them.
The search for this image started a couple of weeks ago when I was having a drink with an old friend who made a comment about the image and a quote he saw attached to it. When he was talking I remembered Carl Sagan’s famous Pale Blue Dot quote and brought it up.
The image itself isn’t that remarkable. It was, probably, taken as a set of images to show the lunar lander’s health – the image itself is AS11-44-6643, not a good name but that’s what it should be called. It’s more powerful if you’re aware of the Carl Sagan quote about the Pale Blue Dot and it hits home.
The full quote is at the bottom. However, I’m just going to talk about a couple of words. These being “… every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. …“. That’s, almost, true. I would like to add to that line “Except one, Michael Collins” 😀 Sometimes it’s not what’s in a photo but what isn’t that makes it more striking.
Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
