Voyager 1 took the “Pale Blue Dot” photo about 13 years after its launch. It launched on September 5, 1977, and photographed Earth on February 14, 1990, so the elapsed time was roughly 12 years and five months—normally rounded to 13 years in a trivia question.
The picture was part of Voyager 1’s Family Portrait of the Solar System, made after the spacecraft had completed its close encounters with Jupiter and Saturn. Astronomer Carl Sagan strongly advocated turning the spacecraft around for one final view of Earth, even though the image had little conventional scientific value.
Voyager photographed Earth from about 6 billion kilometers away, where the planet occupied less than a single pixel. The image was assembled from frames taken through blue, green and violet filters. Its famous light rays are reflections and scattering inside the camera optics, not beams surrounding Earth. The spacecraft’s cameras were then shut down to conserve power for the remaining mission.