Voyager 1's stunning pic of Earth that prompted Carl Sagan to make an appeal for global conservation

Going through our everyday routines, it can become challenging to comprehend things on a bigger scale. While it is important to be occupied, it is also beneficial to take a moment and step back to reflect on our place in the cosmos. For Carl Sagan, a renowned astronomer, that is exactly what happened as he looked at a photograph of Earth, aptly named "Pale Blue Dot," taken from deep space by the Voyager 1 space probe. According to NASA, the photograph was taken when the probe was at a distance of 3.7 billion miles from the Sun on February 13, 1990.

The photograph left such a lasting impression on Sagan that he spoke extensively about it and named his book, "Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space," after it. Sagan's words are quite beautiful and thought-provoking. He begins by saying, "Look again at the dot. That's here. That's home. That's us." He then goes on about how the small dot contained everything that humans knew, including the people they loved, their creations and the ideas they had.

Sagan provides an elaborate emphasis on highlighting the various roles that humans have in society to emotions that we feel, to paint a beautiful picture of how it all existed on a "mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam." He remarks how Earth was the only planet known to have intelligent life, despite efforts that were made to look for others. Sagan highlights, "There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet."

He reminds everybody that, for the time being, Earth is all that humans have. Sagan reflects on his career as an astronomer, having humbled and taught him more than he thought it would. He wonderfully says, "There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world." He concludes by saying that the photograph emphasized why humans should be more kind to each other and the environment as it is the only home humans have known.

Sagan, being a prominent scientist, played many pivotal roles in the American space program in his time. He got to brief the Apollo astronauts before they embarked on their famous moon mission. He also worked on the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 missions, both of which involved sending probes to the outer solar system, as well as the Galileo mission to Jupiter. Sagan happened to be on the imaging team of the Voyager and felt that it was imperative to capture an image of Earth from so far away to prove how vulnerable we are.

In addition to the iconic image of Earth, Voyager 1 also took photos of Uranus, Saturn, Mars, the Sun and Jupiter. The images of Earth were taken 34 minutes before the spacecraft powered off its cameras forever as it went into deep space and mission planners decided that it would save energy by doing so. It currently holds the record for being the most distant human-made object ever.