If you waved at Saturn on Friday, some of the photons that bounced off your arm could be in this image.
Seen from about 1.4 billion kilometres away, Earth is the bright white dot hovering below Saturn's famous rings. The snap comes from NASA's Cassini spacecraft, which on 19 July was taking pictures of the giant planet backlit by the sun. Cassini's goal is to stitch together a portrait of the entire planet in this lighting, which allows the team to see details in the fainter, more diffuse rings. The full mosaic won't be ready for another six weeks, but Argentinian astronomy blogger Guillermo Abramson has already colourised this raw Cassini picture – posted over the weekend on a NASA website – of Earth photobombing Saturn.
People all over the planet were looking up at Saturn at 9.27 pm GMT on 19 July, as Cassini was taking a photo of the rings with Earth in the frame. Cassini's telescopic camera also zoomed in for a closer look at Earth and caught a glimpse of the moon as well.
Of course, the odds that the spacecraft caught a photon bouncing off a waving arm are about one in a million, according to back-of-the-envelope calculations by Sky & Telescope magazine. But the event probably marks the first time people on Earth have been smiling for the camera when a spacecraft took our picture.
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