Snapshot: Rare photo of Earth taken from 1.44 billion kilometres away

In this rare image taken on July 19, 2013, the wide-angle camera on NASA's Cassini spacecraft has captured Saturn's rings and our planet Earth and its moon in the same frame. It is only one footprint in a mosaic of 33 footprints covering the entire Saturn ring system (including Saturn itself). At each footprint, images were taken in different spectral filters for a total of 323 images: some were taken for scientific purposes and some to produce a natural colour mosaic. This is the only wide-angle footprint that has the Earth-moon system in it.The dark side of Saturn, its bright limb, the main rings, the F ring, and the G and E rings are clearly seen; the limb of Saturn and the F ring are overexposed. The "breaks" in the brightness of Saturn's limb are due to the shadows of the rings on the globe of Saturn, preventing sunlight from shining through the atmosphere in those regions. The E and G rings have been brightened for better visibility.Earth, which is 898 million miles (1.44 billion kilometres) away in this image, appears as a blue dot at centre right; the moon can be seen as a fainter protrusion off its right side. The other bright dots nearby are stars.This is only the third time ever that Earth has been imaged from the outer solar system. The acquisition of this image, along with the accompanying composite narrow- and wide-angle image of Earth and the moon and the full mosaic from which both are taken, marked the first time that inhabitants of Earth knew in advance that their planet was being imaged.This view looks toward the unilluminated side of the rings from about 20 degrees below the ring plane.Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural colour view. The images were obtained with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on July 19, 2013 at a distance of approximately 753,000 miles (1.212 million kilometres) from Saturn, and approximately 898.414 million miles (1.445858 billion kilometres) from Earth. Image scale on Saturn is 43 miles (69 kilometres) per pixel; image scale on the Earth is 53,820 miles (86,620 kilometres) per pixel. The illuminated areas of neither Earth nor the Moon are resolved here. Consequently, the size of each "dot" is the same size that a point of light of comparable brightness would have in the wide-angle camera. (Source: NASA)