The Pale Blue Dot is a photograph of planet Earth taken in 1990 by Voyager I from a distance of about 3.7 billion miles. At the urging of Dr Carl Sagan, Ground Control issued a command that directed the distant space craft to turn around and take photos of each of the planets it had visited. From Voyager's vast distance, the Earth was captured as a infinitesimal point of light, actually smaller than a single pixel of the photo. The image was taken with a narrow angle camera lens, with the Sun quite close to the field of view. Quite by accident, the Earth was captured in one of the scattered light rays caused by taking the image at an angle so close to the Sun. Dr. Sagan later said of this photo:
"We succeeded in taking that picture, and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.
The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light...to me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."
credits
from Voyager,
released January 1, 2015
Composed and arranged by Cailyn Lloyd
Cailyn began playing piano at an early age followed by violin and bass guitar. She settled on lead guitar in her teens,
playing in blues and prog-rock bands in London, England. Nine years ago, Cailyn returned to music full time, devoting most of her time to studio and session work. She is also studying music theory and composition with San Francisco composer, Daniel Leo Simpson....more
Absolutely hooked on this album from first listen. How rare is that with prog!??? Excellent songwriting and musicianship. Can’t wait to dive into the rest of the collection. Thomas Lock
Absolutely LOVE this album. I love these kinds os soundscapes where it seems like you are drifting into space. Perfect for my work (programming). Can't have enough of this kind of "space-prog". I'm also a keyboard player, so it's a must have for me. Now, to listen to it in WAV! Guilherme Müller