These six narrow-angle color images were made
from the first ever "portrait" of the solar system taken by Voyager 1,
which was more than 4 billion miles from Earth and about 32 degrees
above the ecliptic. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech. › Full image and caption
The cameras of Voyager 1 on Feb. 14, 1990, pointed back toward the sun
and took a series of pictures of the sun and the planets, making the
first ever "portrait" of our solar system as seen from the outside.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech. › Full image and caption
This narrow-angle color image of the Earth, dubbed "Pale Blue Dot," is a
part of the first ever "portrait" of the solar system taken by Voyager
1. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech. › Full image and caption
Valentine's Day is special for NASA's Voyager mission. It was on
Feb. 14, 1990, that the Voyager 1 spacecraft looked back at our solar
system and snapped the first-ever pictures of the planets from its perch
at that time beyond Neptune.
This "family portrait" captures Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, Jupiter,
Earth and Venus from Voyager 1's unique vantage point. A few key members
did not make it in: Mars had little sunlight, Mercury was too close to
the sun, and dwarf planet Pluto turned out too dim.
Taking these images was not part of the original plan, but the late
Carl Sagan, a member of the Voyager imaging team at the time, had the
idea of pointing the spacecraft back toward its home for a last look.
The title of his 1994 book, "Pale Blue Dot," refers to the image of
Earth in this series.
"Twenty-five years ago, Voyager 1 looked back toward Earth and saw a
'pale blue dot,' " an image that continues to inspire wonderment about
the spot we call home," said Ed Stone, project scientist for the Voyager
mission, based at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena.
The image of Earth contains scattered light that resembles a beam of
sunlight, which is an artifact of the camera itself that makes the tiny
Earth appear even more dramatic. Voyager 1 was 40 astronomical units
from the sun at this moment. One astronomical unit is 93 million miles,
or 150 million kilometers.
These family portrait images are the last that Voyager 1, which
launched in 1977, returned to Earth. Mission specialists subsequently
turned the camera off so that the computer controlling it could be
repurposed. The spacecraft is still operating, but no longer has the
capability to take images.
"After taking these images in 1990, we began our interstellar
mission. We had no idea how long the spacecraft would last," Stone said.
Today, Voyager 1, at a distance of 130 astronomical units, is the
farthest human-made object from Earth, and it still regularly
communicates with our planet. In August 2012, the spacecraft entered
interstellar space - the space between the stars -- and has been
delivering data about this uncharted territory ever since. Its twin,
Voyager 2, also launched in 1977, is also journeying toward interstellar
space.
Voyager 1 is more than three times farther from Earth than it was on
Valentine's Day 25 years ago. Today, Earth would appear about 10 times
dimmer from Voyager's vantage point.
Sagan wrote in his "Pale Blue Dot" book: "That's here. That's home.
That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever
heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. ...
There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits
than this distant image of our tiny world."
A video clip of Ann Druyan, Carl Sagan's co-author and widow, discussing the pale blue dot image, is available at: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/video/details.php?id=1363
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, built and
operates the twin Voyager spacecraft. The Voyagers Interstellar Mission
is a part of NASA's Heliophysics System Observatory, sponsored by the
Heliophysics Division of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in
Washington.
For more information about Voyager, visit: http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov
Media Contact
Elizabeth Landau
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-6425
Elizabeth.Landau@jpl.nasa.gov
Source: JPL-Caltech/News
