See that little dot up there, in the upper right of that photo? That’s the planet Earth, as photographed from about 3.7 billion miles away 35 years ago Friday, on Feb. 14, 1990. “That’s home ...

The Pale Blue Dot is a photograph of Earth taken Feb. 14, 1990, by NASA’s Voyager 1 at a distance of 3.7 billion miles (6 billion kilometers) from the Sun. NASA/JPL-CALTECH.

The blue white dwarf, known as WD J1922+0233, was found to have formed about nine billion years ago, meaning its planets existed and faced their apocalypse before that.

“Earth systems science”, as it is now known, unites scientific understanding of the planet, its biosphere and its changing climate. The Blue Marble photo of Earth, taken from Apollo 17 in 1972 ...