Pale Blue Dot

Dr Carl Sagan would have turned 76 today but died very much prematurely from myelodysplasia on 20 December 1996.



Dr Sagan is best known for his work on astronomy and his television series Cosmos which was shown world-wide during the 1980s.

Although he did not have the same effect in astronomy as Johannes Kepler, Nicolaus Copernicus, Tycho Brahe or Galileo Galilei (and they were fighting against conventional religious thinking at the time), Dr Sagan brought an understanding of astronomy and science to a lot of people. He was a major proponent of the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project.

"the earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena"