Photo of Dust in a Sunbeam

I was trying to get a good picture of my dogs but instead I got this.

Dust floating around in my house.



Thrilling, I know.

Actually- it is. (Hint: I didn't really take this picture.)

A speck of dust in a sunbeam is one way to look at this photo, but a more accurate description is the tiny blue dot in the beam furthest on the right- just about right in the middle- is the "Pale Blue Dot" or, our planet Earth, photographed by Voyager 1, when it was around 3,781,782,502 miles from Earth.

I think Carl Sagan has some very profound thoughts on this image that he encouraged NASA to use Voyager to take:

In the book, Sagan related his thoughts on a deeper meaning of the photograph: from Wikipedia

(speech at Cornell University, October 13th, 1994)

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of particular interest. But for us, it's different. Look again at that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, 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 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 this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, 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. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known. (end quote)

Earth sure is small when viewed from so far away (huge understatement.) I find astronomy interesting anyway, but to relate this to the normal theme of my blog: I always do my best to remind myself dog training is a silly game. And this image helps me with that goal. If that is how small Earth is, I can't even imagine how small I and my dog training game is...Sometimes it is easy to get wrapped up in self-imposed goals or competition with yourself or other competitors. Training and showing can be frustrating due to traffic conditions, rude trial officials, self-centered competitors, weather, and dogs who seem to forget everything we've ever taught them and/or put forth no effort. But looking at that pale blue dot I remember nothing related to my training hobby really matters. And instead of discouraging me with a "why bother" mentality, thinking about the pale blue dot encourages me to have the most fun with my dogs I can. When living on a speck of dust surrounded by the vastness of "the black" (Firefly reference) it isn't important if if ever get Dottie to reach out and grab the dumbbell and return directly to me (rather than making a small loop and sightseeing) and how many bars Pie knocks has absolutely no significance to that dust speck- so I might as well stop stressing and obsessing and enjoy the journey.

Go back and look at the picture again. If you get out a magnifying glass and squint real hard you can see me sleeping with my three dogs cuddled up against me in the bed, warding off the winter chill. We have each other and are doing our best to "to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."