Looking for more cool astronomy pics after our earlier post today? Look no further than the top 10 astronomy pics of 2006, some fantastic stuff in here, and good explanations of why they’re good too.

That dot in the center of the image is the Earth. It’s us. Cassini was nearly one billion miles from us when it took this image, orbiting a giant ball of gas as exotic and alien as any place we can imagine. From such a terribly removed location, the entire Earth is reduced to a single point of light, just one among an anonymous many as seen from our robotic proxy as our generation, for the first time in all of history, seeks out our neighborhood and takes a really good look.

That’s why this is the best astronomy image of 2006. And it’s one of the best of all time.