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(Image Source: NASA)
G5 students have been researching a lot about space: space probes, space telescopes, rovers, landing projects, our solar system, our galaxy, and so on. I’m always amazed that whenever I plan a unit based on space or space-related topics there is immediate (and long-lasting engagement.) However, students (and teachers) sometimes forget that Earth is a part of space. Which makes me think of that dot in the image. That pale blue dot in the middle of the vertical streak is Earth. This image was taken from Voyager I in 1990 at a distance about 6,000,000,000 kilometers from Earth, which–at that time–was beyond the orbit of Neptune. For some perspective, we are about 400,000 kilometers from the moon and about150,000,000 kilometers from the sun.
In his book Pale Blue Dot published in 1994, Carl Sagan wrote,
“From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it’s different. Consider again 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.”