The Pale Blue Dot

This is about three minutes from the final episode of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, which (along with one of the producers, Brannon Braga) has just been nominated for several Emmys.  It's the voice of Carl Sagan, who hosted and co-wrote the first Cosmos series, reading from his book The Pale Blue Dot.  The visual is an animation ending with the view of Earth that Voyager 1 got as it passed Neptune on its way to interstellar space (where, by the way, it was further confirmed this week, Voyager definitely is.)

As one of the comments on YouTube suggests, the views Sagan expresses so eloquently in this clip are basic to Gene Roddenberry's vision for Star Trek.  That's one reason I'm posting it.  Another is that the episode this clip comes from can be seen for free on the Internet, but (at least at this site) only for a few more days.  Some earlier episodes will be available there longer. The whole series is available in other ways, including DVD.  I wrote about it here at the beginning, and since then, my admiration for it has grown.  It really is a stellar series.