Wave to Saturn Today!

Your picture will be taken today by the Cassini spacecraft! Earth's inhabitants have been asked to collectively smile & wave to Saturn at the moment the photo will be taken. The Cassini spacecraft is 898 million miles away right now- orbiting Saturn. I love this graphic showing how tiny we are compared to the gas giants, you can fit 763 planet Earths into Saturn!

Saturn is FAR AWAY. To give you a sense of the distance to Saturn, if you were to fly on a jet traveling at 600 mph without stopping- you would arrive on Saturn in 152 YEARS. A rocket traveling at 17,500 mph can get you there faster - 5 years. 

The Cassini spacecraft was launched in 1997

& today (because of an eclipse of the sun- no blinding of the camera will occur)  it will be able to photograph Saturn's ring system and capture a Pale Blue Dot in the distance. That is us!

 So at the following times, make sure to go outside & wave in the direction of Saturn (Where is Saturn?)
               US Time Zones:

EDT: 5:27-5:42 pm 

CDT: 4:27-4:42 pm 

MDT: 3:27-3:42 pm 

PDT: 2:27-2:42 pm

Carolyn Porco, head of the Cassini mission's imaging team, is orchestrating this & she refers to it as "a global moment of cosmic self-awareness".
As she so eloquently puts it:

"My sincere wish is that people the world over stop what they're doing at the time the Earth picture is taken, to revel in the sheer wonder of simply being alive on a pale blue dot of a planet, and to appreciate the ever-widening perspective of ourselves and our world that we have gained from our interplanetary explorations. We are dreamers, thinkers, and explorers, inhabiting one achingly beautiful planet, yearning for the sublime, and capable of the magnificent. Let's celebrate that, and make this one day a day the whole Earth smiles in unison."

Smile for the camera!

Here is the photo!