On October 30, 2006, the marvelous Cassini spacecraft took this oblique view of Saturn:
Sigh. So pretty.
It made me think: I’m so used to seeing pictures of planets being “face on” – that is, like you’re looking straight at them – that when I see one taken at an angle like this, it really makes it look like a planet, like a place. It’s not just a light in the sky, or some imagined fantasy land. It’s a world, a physical location, with size, and perspective, and depth. Someday we might go there, live there, play there.
Until then, we can be satisfied that our mechanical proxies do it for us, and do it very well.
