The pale blue dot...

...and some rather fascinating aquamarine streaks.

Today is not the anniversary of Carl Sagan's birth, death, or anything else, but I just so happened to stumble over his visage today on my way to a slew of youtube videos poking fun at creationist banana-awe. It's as good a reason as any to highlight the great science communicator: just watch him go
...and go
...and go.

Carl Sagan was a great speaker, and no where was he more eloquent and moving than when he waxed lyrical about the pale blue dot, our precious earth set in the great "bastion and citadel of the stars". Nothing comes close to the image of our planet from space for communicating in an instant the wonder, vulnerability and mystery of our shared home.

Pictures from space can also have more direct scientific relevance, such as this one showing a plankton bloom off the coast of Patagonia. We can hypothesise about what's going on in the different ribbons of colour there, but it takes real work on the ground to validate and calibrate those sorts of inferences. Enter: Beagle.

Imagine it...
Astronaut: "Greetings, Beagle, you're about to enter a plankton bloom."
Beagle crew: "Thanks, we'll lower the continuous plankton recorder and step up our rate of metagenomic sampling."
Astronaut: "10:04am Beagle, you are moving into a new zone of the plankton bloom."
Beagle crew: "Roger that, time point marked on plankton recorders and gene sampling filters replaced."