Pale Blue Dot

Nasa's Voyager 1 is the farthest manmade object ever sent from Earth. Launched in 1977, it is now 11 billion miles away and has entered the 'magnetic highway'- the point at which it leaves our solar system. Shame Sir Patrick Moore (RIP) will not be around to discover what lies beyond.

In 1990, Voyager turned around to look back towards us, and took a photo of the Earth, a shot where our planet is so small it appears as a Pale Blue Dot. (Have a look below, that's not dust on your screen in that light brown sun beam)

This became the title of a bestselling book by Carl Sagan, and this stunning animation uses his words.

Pale Blue Dot from ORDER on Vimeo.

How many light years is 11 billion miles? Only 0.00187122571. In September, Nasa discovered a tiny galaxy 13.2 billion light years away. Blimey.

Earth At Night - The Black Marble

An animation of cloud free photographs taken by a satellite on Earth's dark side, knitted together to reveal our globe radiating its fragile light into the darkness of space.

Found on io9.com