In this rare image taken on July 19, 2013, the wide-angle camera on NASA's Cassini spacecraft has captured Saturn's rings and our planet Earth and its moon in the same frame. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute)

The Cassini spacecraft in orbit around Saturn and the Messenger craft circling Mercury have captured tiny, yet spectacular, images of Earth from 900 million miles away.In the Cassini images captured Friday, Earth and the moon appear as dots -- Earth a pale blue and the moon a stark white, visible between Saturn's rings. It was the first time Cassini's camera captured Earth and the moon as two separate objects. In the MESSENGER photo, Earth and the moon are less than a pixel, but appear large because they are overexposed, NASA reported.

by asking people around the world to wave at Cassini while it was taking images of Earth. NASA said that more than 20,000 people around the world participated.

This image of Earth and the moon was taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft on July 19, 2013.(NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute)

NASA scientists shared their awe in a:

"We can't see individual continents or people in this portrait of Earth, but this pale blue dot is a succinct summary of who we were on July 19," said Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist, at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Cassini's picture reminds us how tiny our home planet is in the vastness of space, and also testifies to the ingenuity of the citizens of this tiny planet to send a robotic spacecraft so far away from home to study Saturn and take a look-back photo of Earth."

(MORE: )"It thrills me to no end that people all over the world took a break from their normal activities to go outside and celebrate the interplanetary salute between robot and maker that these images represent," said Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team lead at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo. "The whole event underscores for me our 'coming of age' as planetary explorers.""That images of our planet have been acquired on a single day from two distant solar system outposts reminds us of this nation's stunning technical accomplishments in planetary exploration," said MESSENGER Principal Investigator Sean Solomon of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y. "And because Mercury and Saturn are such different outcomes of planetary formation and evolution, these two images also highlight what is special about Earth. There's no place like home."

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