Image of Earth from Saturn orbit

Nasa has released photos of the Earth and Moon taken by a spacecraft orbiting Saturn - nearly a billion miles away.

Our planet and its only satellite appear only as dots in the picture, which was taken by the Cassini spacecraft on 19 July.

Scientists wanted to pay homage to the "Pale Blue Dot" image captured by the Voyager 1 probe in 1990.

This was the first time people knew in advance that their long distance picture was being taken.

These images were taken when the sun had moved behind the planet Saturn from the spacecraft's point of view, blocking out most of the light.