Photos of Earth, Taken 900M Miles Away

Stunning new pictures taken from near Saturn and Mercury make our planet look pretty insignificant. We're just a tiny dot next to Saturn in an image taken by the NASA spacecraft Cassini, Space.com reports. That makes it a little tough to see that some 20,000 humans were reportedly waving toward Saturn when the picture was taken. Saturn was experiencing a total eclipse of the sun at the time; that meant Cassini could snap its shot of Earth, some 898 million miles away, without getting damaged by the light.

"Cassini's picture reminds us how tiny our home planet is in the vastness of space, and also testifies to the ingenuity of the citizens of this tiny planet to send a robotic spacecraft so far away from home," says a Cassini scientist. For pictures of Earth taken from Mercury—a mere 61 million miles away—on the same day, head to Space.com. (More NASA stories.)