Thirty years ago, on February 14, 1990, some 6 billion kilometers from the Sun, Voyager 1 captured its last images before its cameras were turned off to conserve energy. It would become the first "family portrait" of the solar system among which stood out an iconic image baptized as the "Pale Blue Point".
Now, NASA has decided to give photography a makeover, using up-to-date technology and modern image processing to see it in better color and detail than ever before.
In the original photograph, the Earth is only 0.12 pixels wide and looks like a crescent of light. From Voyager's point of view at the time, the Earth was only separated from the Sun by a few degrees. The new photograph was taken by JPL engineer Kevin M Gill.
"There is perhaps no better demonstration of the madness of human concepts than this distant image of our little world," wrote Carl Sagan when the image was first revealed to the world back in 1990.
