Talk:Pale Blue Dot

	Pale Blue Dot has been listed as one of the Natural sciences good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Article milestones Date Process Result August 11, 2011 Good article nominee Not listed September 16, 2011 Good article nominee Not listed October 24, 2011 Good article nominee Listed
Current status: Good article

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A fact from this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the On this day section on February 14, 2015.

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Archive 1 - March 2006 – September 2011

NASA and JPL's Candy Hansen, and Carolyn Porco from the University of Arizona teamed up to calculate the exposure times for the images and they put together the command sequence to send to Voyager 1. These two should be mentioned in the article, per Sagan's Pale Blue Dot book, pages 4 and 5. Binksternet (talk) 17:45, 24 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry, but couldn't find that particular info in the book [1]. Suraj T 05:44, 30 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Try scrolling down to Google Books page 5 which is listed on the page itself as page 4, meaning page 4 of the physical book. The relevant sentence in Sagan's book says, "The space scientists Candy Hansen of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and Carolyn Porco of the University of Arizona designed the command sequence and calculated the camera exposure times." There ya go. Binksternet (talk) 05:52, 30 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Done. As for the rest of the article, I'm fairly sure that the article is now complete and IMO everything related to the the photograph available in the internet has been added and I've been thinking about nominating the article to be a featured article. And since you reviewed the article for GA status, I was hoping your opinion would be useful. Suraj T 06:48, 30 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I will certainly take part in the FAC process. Binksternet (talk) 15:29, 30 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The article states that the Earth is 0.12 pixel in size, which is contradictory because the pixel is the smallest possible picture element in an image, so I suspect this info is vandalism... can someone check it? Cogiati (talk) 04:19, 23 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I did some fixing up of the problem you encountered. First, the "reference" in the lead section was no good for anything so I threw it out. (It talked about "Dot Earth" which is not mentioned in the article.) Second, I tweaked the wording to say a fraction of a pixel. Third, I brought in an archived URL to make one of the 0.12-pixel references work better. Down in the article body, the 0.12 pixel size is well-supported by references. The pale blue dot is actually not a dot! Instead it is less than a dot—it is a mathematical calculation, with nearby pixels contributing some blue color. Binksternet (talk) 05:19, 23 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

How does Voyager continue to have power to travel and transmit radio signals?

71.237.124.157 (talk) 17:17, 6 February 2014 (UTC) Don Bray[reply]

All outer solar system probes, except possibly the latest Jupiter mission, rely on RTGs - radio-isotope thermoelectric generators. RTGs use the decay of radioactive material, usually plutonium, to generate electricity, since sunlight is too weak to furnish enough power. Over time, as the radioactive material diminishes (half life), the power output decreases, and they have to shut down instruments to operate on the diminishing power supply. Like you realizing you can't run your stove or dryer anymore, and then your TV has to stay off, and eventually you can only run a transistor radio or an LED night light.

I'd like to know what Voyager 1 saw - presumably primarily the northern hemisphere, but with Europe or North America in the foreground? It should be possible to calculate that, knowing its position by time of day and date, and which side of Earth was pointing that way nearly five hours before the picture was taken. GBC (talk) 22:05, 16 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to add a reference to the first time Dr. Sagan publicly used this term and described the earth in the photograph as a pale blue dot. I am aware of his using this term in a commencement speech at the University of Illinois in May, 1990. In this speech, he also described the photo and explained that it would be published approximately one month from that day.

A recording of the speech is available at the Library of Congress here: http://www.loc.gov/item/cosmos000108/

I have not found an earlier use of the term, and since this use predated the release of the photo, I believe it was the first use. If anyone is aware of another earlier use, please share it. If there is no further information, I will edit the page to add this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Blink440 (talk • contribs) 18:00, 10 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There seems a risk that what you are doing is original research, which cannot be our basis for a claim like "first use". What wording are you planning to use? HiLo48 (talk) 18:13, 10 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Why is this particular article linked to Portal:Cosmology? It doesn't seem relevant, at least not in comparison with "billions and billions" of other possible associations. Isambard Kingdom (talk) 18:14, 25 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. Although not completely unrelated, it's a bit of a stretch to consider a photo of a planet as a cosmology subject. --Deeday-UK (talk) 21:33, 25 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

As it's THE 'only' planet that 'matters' in the scheme of things, seems it should be linked, don'tcha think? 66.81.105.44 (talk) 10:26, 24 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]