Saturn: Put a ring on it.

In May 2012 we went to our friends' Dallas and Lindsey's wedding in gorgeous Scottsdale, Arizona.  I love this part of the country!  My mom lived in New Mexico for a while before I was born, which she loved, and I think she passed it on to me in utero.  

Here are a few pictures of that beautiful desert wedding:

Me and Stephen before the ceremony:

The happy couple:

This was my favorite picture from the wedding.  Mandy and Lauren, who have been friends with the bride since college, were glowingly beautiful, pregnant bridesmaids.  Who wouldn't want to be this beautiful in flowy dresses while pregnant?  Their babies were later born within 24 hours of each other.

It was a great weekend, and it also coincided with our 5-year wedding anniversary, so we took a few extra days and drove up to Sedona.  Sedona is other worldly.

While we were in Sedona, the hotel where we stayed hired a scientist with a giant telescope to set up on their grounds one night so that the guests could look at the stars.  The telescope was so big that we had to climb up a ladder to look through the lens.  The first thing he showed us was the the moon.  I looked through the lens and it was like was standing in a crater, that telescope was amazing!  I swear I could feel the movement of the Earth while looking through that thing.

I love astronomy and could have stood out there all night.  He showed us stars and planets, and for the grand finale he showed us something without telling us what it was but said "every person standing here will know exactly what it is".  The first person walked up the ladder and looked in the lens, and immediately said, "Saturn!"

Standing on the surface of Earth and looking straight at Saturn was transportive!  I felt like I was going to float right off our planet and out into space, like I could touch Saturn.  

Just recently, NASA released a new picture of Saturn taken from the unmanned Cassini spacecraft.  It is a special shot because it includes not only a close-up of Saturn and its rings, but out in the distance, photo-bombing Saturn's beauty shot, is Earth.  That tiny bright speck is us.

Hello, Earth.

The view of Earth captured here was my view of Saturn, only in reverse.  When I was staring up at Saturn, it was staring back at me.

This particular picture was taken on July 19, 2013, a day that NASA designated as "Wave at Saturn" day.  They encouraged people to take pictures of themselves waving at Saturn to be "captured" as Cassini took this photo of Earth.  Thousands of people participated, and NASA put together a collage of the event.  Click here to see the Earthings waving at Saturn.  This is a hi-res file and might take a while to load, but it's worth it!  Click the collage to see the details.