Twenty-five years ago last month, the famous Pale Blue Dot image of Earth was born when astronomer Carl Sagan convinced NASA scientists to turn the Voyager 1 camera around and snap a pixel-sized portrait of our home planet from 3.7 billion miles away.
Now, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technography have developed a recursive spatial unmixing algorithm that allows them to infinitely zoom in on, and enhance, any image.
We asked them to try out their algorithm on the Pale Blue Dot–with their with their sights set specifically on Boston–and incredibly, they obliged! Below is the result of a multi-billion dollar effort in image processing: a snapshot of Boston history, when it was time to make the donuts.
