For some reason, November 6th has been declared Carl Sagan Day, to honor the great communicator of science. I can’t find an explanation for why today was picked; perhaps it was the date of some major achievement in his career.

Last year I believe I posted a passage from his book Pale Blue Dot, a masterpiece of hope for humanity. Sagan always held an optimistic view of our future, a mentality that seems sorely lacking now, fourteen years after his death.

This year I thought I’d post a few videos that capture the same spirit that infused Sagan’s work, capturing both the poetry and majesty of the Cosmos.

The first video is a rather poetic tour of our galaxy and the known universe, showing it in all of its wonder and terrible beauty.

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The second is an explanation of perhaps the most important image taken by the Hubble Telescope, generally known as the Hubble Deep Field. Astronomers pointed Hubble at a tiny, empty patch of sky and captured all of the photons coming from that patch of sky for over a week. What resulted was an image of about 7,500 galaxies, some of which were formed a mere 500 million years after the Big Bang, meaning the light we are seeing now has been traveling for 13 billion years to reach us. (For a more in-depth explanation of what NASA did, see this video).

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And finally, my favorite passage from Pale Blue Dot, this time narrated by Sagan himself.

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