The US space agency NASA has released an extraordinary new movie of Earth and the Moon moving through space together. The images that make up the sequence were acquired by the Jupiter-bound Juno satellite when it passed by Earth in October. Earth is observed spinning on its axis with the Moon passing behind and heading off to the right.
Juno’s chief scientist Scott Bolton says, “Humans can see Earth and the Moon in motion, doing their cosmic dance. And I think it puts everything into perspective.” He further explained, “You may remember that some years ago Carl Sagan took a picture he called the Pale Blue Dot, and made a lot of important points about the fact that everything we know is on this little dot. I think our movie does the same thing but with a moving image rather than just a still one.” The movie is available on YouTube.