The folks over at JPL have commanded the Cassini spacecraft currently orbiting Saturn to turn it’s cameras back towards the Earth today. From between 2:27 and 2:42pm PDT Cassini will be positioned behind Saturn… and the Earth will be positioned perfectly below the rings. Although the Earth will only be several pixels across it will still represent one of the iconic photos capturing our home in the cosmos.

Here is a video tour showing both the Saturn system – along with Cassini. At around the 59 second mark this shows approximately what Cassini will see when it takes our photo.

note: Original video provided by Southern Stars (makes of Sky Safari apps for iOS, Android and OSx). The video was slightly edited by LookUpTonight to include some additional text information during the video.

Further information on the event

http://thedaytheearthsmiled.com/
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/waveatsaturn/