NASA's Cassini spacecraft captured this view of planet Earth as a point of light between the icy rings of Saturn on April 12, 2017. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
A new image from NASA's Cassini spacecraft shows planet Earth as a point of light between the icy rings of Saturn.
The spacecraft captured the view on April 12, 2017, at 10:41 p.m. PDT (1:41 a.m. EDT on April 13). Cassini was 870 million miles (1.4 billion kilometers) away from Earth when the image was taken. Although far too small to be visible in the image, the part of Earth facing Cassini at the time was the southern Atlantic Ocean.
Earth's moon is also visible nearby in a cropped, zoomed-in version of the image.
This cropped, zoomed-in version of the image makes it easier to see Earth's moon -- a smaller, fainter dot to the left of our planet's bright dot. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
