Our Pale Blue Dot (Image via NASA – public domain)
You know a person is famous when they are auto-tuned posthumously into a geeky internet music hit! This year, in honor of what would have been his 75th birthday, a great group of sponsors will be hosting the first annual Carl Sagan Day on November 7th. The event will be held at the Broward College Central Campus in Davie, Florida.
Sagan is most famously known for his Cosmos series that originally aired in 1980 on PBS. Cosmos went on to be one of the most watched PBS shows of all time. In addition to being a great geek-to-layman translator, Sagan was also an astronomer and author. I remember reading Sagan’s novel Contact when I was in high school. I credit this book with being a big factor in putting me on the path to space geekery that I’m on today.
The image above was taken at the request of Sagan by the Voyager 1 science team as the robot was passing the 3.7 Billion miles-from-home-marker. Yes, that’s us on that little dot at the center right of the image.
As I remember watching Cosmos, I think about how lucky my kids are to have the plethora of cool science related edutainment around now. There are entire channels on the cable highway dedicated to science, not to mention what’s available on the internet.
If you are in the Davie, Florida area this weekend (Davie is just north of Miami) , be sure to take the kids and drop in on the events. If you have never had the opportunity to catch Cosmos, you can find episodes all around the intertubes. Here is the intro:
Fist pound to Phil Plait over at Bad Astronomy for the heads up on this great celebration!
