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Star Stuff: An Exploratory Case Study of the Cosmos Television Franchise

Solar System Portrait - Earth as 'Pale Blue Dot

This narrow-angle color image of the Earth, dubbed 'Pale Blue Dot', is a part of the first ever 'portrait' of the solar system taken by Voyager 1. The spacecraft acquired a total of 60 frames for a mosaic of the solar system from a distance of more than 4 billion miles from Earth and about 32 degrees above the ecliptic. From Voyager's great distance Earth is a mere point of light, less than the size of a picture element even in the narrow-angle camera. Earth was a crescent only 0.12 pixel in size. Coincidentally, Earth lies right in the center of one of the scattered light rays resulting from taking the image so close to the sun. This blown-up image of the Earth was taken through three color filters -- violet, blue and green -- and recombined to produce the color image. The background features in the image are artifacts resulting from the magnification.

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2. Solar System Portrait - Earth as 'Pale Blue Dot This narrow-angle color image of the Earth, dubbed 'Pale Blue Dot', is a part of the first ever 'portrait' of the solar system taken by Voyager 1. The spacecraft acquired a total of 60 frames for a mosaic of the solar system from a distance of more than 4 billion miles from Earth and about 32 degrees above the ecliptic. From Voyager's great distance Earth is a mere point of light, less than the size of a picture element even in the narrow-angle camera. Earth was a crescent only 0.12 pixel in size. Coincidentally, Earth lies right in the center of one of the scattered light rays resulting from taking the image so close to the sun. This blown-up image of the Earth was taken through three color filters -- violet, blue and green -- and recombined to produce the color image. The background features in the image are artifacts resulting from the magnification.

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An End to the Cold War & the Privatization of Cosmos This is the section of the project devoted to the end of the Cold War and the privatization of the Cosmos television series. The social and economic collapse of the Soviet Union's Eastern Bloc was marked by the symbolic destruction of the Berlin Wall in 1989. This set a chain reaction of events in motion that ultimately led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and an end to the Cold War. All of this was unfolding while Turner Home Entertainment was creating an updated version of Cosmos for their own networks after striking a deal with PBS’s Cosmos studio KCET. They would also publish a subsequent VHS and Laserdisc release for home video. This rendition of Cosmos featured re-edited episodes that were condensed to accommodate advertisements and short updates by Sagan on the science discussed at the end. Below is the 6-minute update to the final 13th episode, Who Speaks for Earth. It discusses the ongoing risk of nuclear war and global warming to life on earth, along with Sagan’s hope for the future.
Along with these segments at the end of each episode, a new 14th episode of the show was also included. This episode was comprised of a 45-minute-long interview with Carl Sagan conducted by Chairman of Turner home entertainment Ted Turner. The interview discusses the likelihood of humans destroying the Earth, the need to think globally as a planetary species, and the possibility of widespread nuclear disarmament. You are welcome to watch the first 8 minutes of it below. The audio was abruptly loud at the beginning so you may want to adjust your device's volume accordingly before starting.
After this update to Cosmos, Sagan would go on to write several books including Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors: A Search for Who We Are with Ann Druyan in 1992, a sequel to the original Cosmos companion book called Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, and 1995’s The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. Turner home entertainment would eventually merge with Time Warner in Fall 1995. If you would like to learn more about that $7.5 billion merger, you can check out this New York Times newspaper article from September 23, 1995.

To speak about Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot from 1994 for a moment. The book is named after a well-known photo that he encouraged NASA to take as the Voyager 1 space probe was leaving our solar system. It showcases the Earth as a barely visible white speck indistinguishable from the other planets. Sagan’s reflections on the photo at the end of the first chapter are among one of his most famous writings. I have posted the photo and quote here if you would like to experience it for yourself.
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 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 (Sagan, 1994, p. 12-13).
On May 27th, 1996, Sagan would give his last television interview on Charlie Rose before his death. The interview focuses on his new book, The Demon-Haunted World, the dangers of a dwindling understanding of science and technology among the American public, the Republican Congress’ decision to dismantle its Office of Technology Assessment, and the relationship between science, politics, and religion. They also talk about Sagan’s battle with myelodysplastic syndrome at the very end. The full 20-minute interview is available below. You can watch as much of it as you want. The blue button at the bottom of the screen can then take you to the section on Ann Druyan’s work after Sagan’s death. You can also return to the homepage to select a different section or use the drop-down menu at the top of your screen.